Has anyone else noticed it's becoming a thing to write crime fiction about healthcare and present it as fact? People are drawn to crime fiction. It gets their hearts racing. But this crime fiction writing has real victims - patients denied healthcare because of fictitious crime. One recent story that made me ponder this whole strange issue once again is the story of the safe drug consumption sites and the healthcare of addicts.
There has been a push by politicians to shut down supervised drug consumption site by claiming they increase crime in the neighbourhood. One can see this is an effective strategy for closing all supervised drug consumption sites because people worry they could come into their neighbourhood, bringing in a wave of crime. No one wants a crime wave in their neighbourhood, where their children play and grandma and grandpa come to visit. Stories have power and stories of threats to those we love are perhaps the most compelling – they make us act, vote, do anything to protect our loved ones. However, this is fiction, presented as fact.
We have years of data showing that crime doesn't increase around these sites but the latest data from Toronto caught people's attention:
"Toronto police data shows they may have the opposite effect.
Crime types including robberies, bike thefts, break and enters, thefts from motor vehicles, shootings and homicides dropped among neighbourhoods with supervised drug consumption sites between 2018 and 2023, often more than they did in the rest of the city, the data shows....One exception was the crime of assault, which rose by 22 per cent among neighbourhoods with sites, though neighbourhoods without sites saw a rise of 24 per cent“
So, even if these safe consumption sites don't increase crime, why have them in the first place? The answer simple: they are a crucial form of healthcare for addicts and the facts about addiction are concerning.
"More than one in four deaths among young Canadians (in their 20s-30s) between 2019 and 2021 were opioid-related..They found that in three years (between 2019 and 2021) the annual number of opioid-related deaths rose from 3,007 to 6,222. And the number of years of life lost due to opioids increased from 126,115 to 256,336."
This is the other story, a true one, about the young people we know, in the very neighbourhoods many wanted to protect from a fictitious crime wave in the wake of safe drug consumption sites, who are dying in increasing numbers.
Some argue that those young people who die from overdoses were going to die anyway. There is no saving an addict, so why bother?
We should bother because addicts can be saved. The first safe consumption site in North America opened in British Columbia, Canada, in September 2003. With over 4 million visits by users, over 11,000 overdoses reversed, they have had 0 drug overdose deaths. Instead they have many stories, true ones, of success, like Felicella, who spent two decades using drugs and "was one of the first through the door when Insite opened, and he credits it with saving his life. Now married with three kids, he works as a Peer Clinical Advisor for both Vancouver Coastal Health and the BC Centre on Substance Use, and is an in-demand harm reduction public speaker."
These safe consumption sites are healthcare, providing a safe place to do drugs and also the resources to get off drugs and build a life. To have a job, to have children and to help build the community your live in.
This continuing controversy over safe consumption sites is another of the sad tales of healthcare fighting crime fiction. The real victims are patients who can be denied healthcare if these fictional stories are believed and people vote to make them policy. Whether it is safe consumption sites, vaccine safety or a myriad of other issues, healthcare is butting heads with crime fiction. Medicine is faced with constant stories of vaccines that cause death and threats of doctors being jailed or killed in response. One of the latest and weirdest is the crime fiction of babies being murdered by doctors after birth under the name of 'abortion'. These crime stories are made up to make people's blood boil and they create real victims: patients who fail to get the healthcare they need to keep them safe.
As someone who is passionate about healthcare and mystery novels, never did I think the two would meet in such a dangerous way.
