[fatbird]

You didn't see the Downtown Eastside before the safe injection site was opened. Needles filled the gutters. The alleys were where you went to get robbed.

There's a reason the Vancouver City Police support the safe injection site. Crime is down; incidence of AIDs transmission, Hepatitis transmission, STI transmission, down across the board.

I walk through the DTES every day between my home and work. It's ugly. It smells like urine. I walk past people shooting heroin several times a week. It's a hundred times better than it was 20 years ago. It's ugly from our perspective. It's vastly improved from the reality of junkie neighbourhoods when we refused to acknowledge how such communities work and how to help the people in them.