'What we are doing isn’t working': St. Thomas, Ont. councillors discuss potential supervised consumption site

St. Thomas city councillors held an open discussion Monday around the possibility of a safe consumption site coming to the region.

The input came after city staff prepared a report which was accompanied by public health data regarding opioids in the Southwestern Public Health (SWPH) region.

“What we are doing presently isn't working,” said Coun. Gary Clarke. “It's important to note that they do not increase crime rates in their geographical area, but they do decrease fatal overdoses, so that is good news.”

Coun. Steve Wookey was cautious about supporting anything without seeing more information.

“I’d love to see the models of urban municipalities our size,” he said.

The conversation comes a week after a survey by SWPH came to a close. It had close to 500 respondents.

“We also had a number of focus groups,” said Peter Heywood, SWPH’s community health program director. “Those focus groups include the people who lived in living experience. We wanted to ensure they're sharing their stories and their experiences with us. It’s important that they tell their story, to help us inform how we're going to move forward with the recommendations.”

The survey and feasibility study was created after SWPH had the same number of opioid related deaths in an 11-month span from April 2021 to March 2022 as they did in 25 months from May 2017 to June 2019.

The opioid-related death rate for the southwestern catchment area was higher than the provincial average per 100,000 people.

SWPH will bring the results of its study, survey and council's comments to its upcoming board meeting.

“Now we're going into the depths of the data,” said Heywood. “We're going to look for trends and patterns in the data to help paint a picture that may be facing the community.”

While local advocates support the need for increased services, Earl Taylor, who chairs the St. Thomas Downtown Development Board, recently told CTV News London he supports a supervised consumption site, but he stressed that careful consideration needs to be given as to where it’s located.

“We do have concerns with social issues in our downtown, that this would not be one of the things that we’re looking for,” said Taylor last month.

Mayor Joe Preston closed the discussion Monday night and said he wants to see the results from increased supportive housing, and the three new detox beds which have opened in St. Thomas.

“We've been working exceptionally hard for the last three years or four years on rehab and detox, an actual cure for addiction," said Preston. "I’m not sure I want to get to 'Let's try a new solution' before we've actually had the old solution in place for longer than a couple of days.”

He added he’s looking forward to seeing “the next steps forward” after the report from SWPH goes to before the board.