Op-ed in the Toronto Star by Dr. Dan Werb

As April came to a close and the first hints of summer bloomed across the city, bullets tore through a home on a side street in Leslieville, rattling locals. Two weeks later, a grandmother of three was gunned down outside of her home — a blameless bystander. Three months after that, a young man in his 20s was shot, turning a welcoming community searching for answers.

Ultimately, police concluded that the spate of gun violence in Leslieville was drug-related, and community leaders issued vociferous calls for action.

Given a recent spate of gun violence in Leslieville, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the episode I’ve described above took place this summer. But it does not: these shootings all occurred in the summer and fall of 2016.

As April came to a close and the first hints of summer bloomed across the city, bullets tore through a home on a side street in Leslieville, rattling locals. Two weeks later, a grandmother of three was gunned down outside of her home — a blameless bystander. Three months after that, a young man in his 20s was shot, turning a welcoming community searching for answers.

Ultimately, police concluded that the spate of gun violence in Leslieville was drug-related, and community leaders issued vociferous calls for action.

Given a recent spate of gun violence in Leslieville, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the episode I’ve described above took place this summer. But it does not: these shootings all occurred in the summer and fall of 2016.

Leslieville is once again dealing with the spectre of gun violence. One of those events, the tragic shooting of a mother of two hit by a stray bullet in an apparent drug-related dispute, has galvanized efforts to find, and stamp out, the root causes of violence. Those efforts have coalesced around the South Riverdale Community Health Centre’s supervised consumption site, close to where the shooting took place, and where people who use drugs often congregate to access services.

Outrage reached a boiling point when the police confirmed that among those arrested for the incident was a staff member from the centre, who allegedly helped one of the suspects avoid police detection. Since then, Ontario’s health minister has announced a provincial review of supervised consumption sites.

It would be understandable to conclude that supervised consumption sites undermine community safety. The fact is, though, that closing these sites would do nothing to end shootings, while doing so would deeply undermine efforts to end Toronto’s overdose crisis. Instead, we need to recognize that these twin epidemics — gun violence and overdose — are symptoms of the same problem: a thriving illegal drug market. It should be no surprise, then, when they intersect.