Toronto normalizing open drug use as taxpayers pick up tab

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Just after 8:30 on Friday morning, as students and commuters near Bay St. and Avenue Rd. attempted to get their morning coffee, there was someone stopping them.

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A man hunched over in a zombie-like state was in the doorway swaying back and forth, crackpipe in one hand, cigarette in the other, unable to light either – or move.

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It’s sadly becoming a common occurrence in Toronto.

Open drug use, not just someone smoking a joint, but someone smoking crack or meth openly on the streets is becoming normalized.

It happens on street corners, in doorways, in parks and on streetcars, and on the subway system.

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Open drug use is becoming normalized

Last month, while watching someone openly struggling with their drug issues, curled up in a ball on the floor of a subway car, a man called out and stated the obvious that no one else would say.

“I’ve never been to a city where everything that is wrong has been normalized,” he said.

I started talking to him.

He was from Barbados, just visiting Toronto at this point, but says this isn’t the same city he knew and loved 10-15 years ago. It’s a sentiment that we can all agree with – this city is changing and not for the better.

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And acceptance of open drug use is just part of the problem.

Taxpayers are funding the problem

Across the city you can see people suffering in a zombie-like state from their drug addiction and we are part of the problem.

Under the guise of a false compassion, we are aiding and abetting people with their addictions; we are helping create these people who look they have come out of the Walking Dead.

Consider the millions of crack pipes that taxpayers have paid for, and the city has handed out over the past several years. It’s not just crack pipes; it’s also millions of needles and millions of meth smoking pipe kits as well.

In Freedom of Information documents obtained by Integrity TO and shared with the Toronto Sunit turns out that the city procured 2.34 million meth pipes, 3.45 million crack pipes and 14.92 million syringes over a five-year period between 2021 and 2025.

On average, that’s almost 700,000 crack pipes handed out each year, just shy of half a million meth pipes and close to three million syringes.

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Harm reduction: A lie pushed by those wanting to liberalize drug laws

It’s called harm reduction and the claim is that it helps save lives.

That’s a lie pushed by people who have an agenda and want to liberalize drug laws. In British Columbia, the jurisdiction at the forefront of this political movement, they went so far as to decriminalize all drugs, offer so-called safer supplies and easy access to drugs and paraphernalia.

Overdose deaths went up and up.

Mayor Olivia Chow endorsed following the same path as British Columbia and asked for permission to decriminalize all drug use in the city back in 2024.

Thankfully, seeing how badly things were going in B.C. the feds rejected that request.

Overdose deaths remain elevated

In 2015, there were just 137 opioid overdose deaths in Toronto. In 2024, a decade later, there were 467 overdose deaths. That’s down from a record high of 601 during the dark days of pandemic lockdown when overdose deaths spiked everywhere, but it is still 3.4 times higher than a decade ago.

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The policies that are being pushed, the policies endorsed by Mayor Chow and council, are not working and need to change.

The full official numbers have not been released for 2025, but preliminary numbers show a decline in overdose deaths. That decline coincides with the province’s decision, an order by Premier Doug Ford and his Health Minister Sylvia Jones, to shutter a number of so-called safe injection sites in the city in late 2024.

When you keep doing the same thing over and over again and getting bad results, you should change what you are doing. On drug policy in this city, we have embraced the wrong model – we have followed the wrong policies put forward by the wrong politicians.

It’s another reason that this October, Mayor Chow and her cadre of progressive councillors need to be swapped out for someone new.

blilley@postmedia.com

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