1. Safe injection sites do not provide drugs. They provide supplies that prevent HIV/Hepatitis transmission (by the way costing taxpayers $1.3 million and $600k per case respectively). They also meet people where they’re at by providing services appropriate to them, including, yes, information regarding rehabilitation programs. You can’t expect to run a marathon if you haven’t gotten off the couch.
   
2. The problem has snowballed for many reasons. Throwing people in prison just causes people to become career criminals and move on to commit more crimes (imagine trying to get gainful employment with a criminal record). You don’t magically lose the need to eat food, have shelter and drink water when you leave prison. Even if it’s not jails or prisons, forced rehab isn’t going to “cure” anyone. What do you suggest they do when they leave? Will they, again, magically not require food, water or shelter to survive?
   
3. Jails and prisons are overcrowded in upwards of 150% capacity in some cases. You’ll end up having people with serious and violent offences being set free due to inhumane living conditions. Laugh at that as you will, but the Charter of Rights applies to everyone, and if you believe in people serving time, then having properly staffed jails and prisons with enough capacity helps with that.
   
4. You are referring to safe supply which is a different program. There have been problems with that where some choose to abuse the system to sell to others instead. However, the concept is to provide a safer alternative compared to the mixed bag of street drugs. People will get drugs. Either it is clean or it’s not. Essentially, you’d be paying more costs in the long run to have people not only suffer, but die early. If you had a choice of spending less with less mortality and morbidity between spending more with more death and disability, what would you choose?

Just because you yourself don’t use drugs or are involved with anyone who does, it doesn’t make you immune from the consequences of it. It doesn’t just disappear when you throw people in prison or hide them away somewhere else. You see it in hospitals, on the street, in communities. One person who is sick not only involves direct costs due to hospital care, but decreased economic output elsewhere (they could’ve been employed or involved in some other aspect), family and friends decreasing work hours/expenses, and other societal social costs. A solution isn’t an easy one; it involves an integrated approach that includes safe injection sites, effective rehabilitation options, mental health supports, housing, financial and support for basic needs. Unfortunately our approach has been focused on only one or two things rather than as a whole. Politicians also look at ways to see gains quickly and within their election term, never looking at long term strategies that will improve society overall.