It's wild how conservatives constantly have the worst takes on absolutely everything. It'd be funny if I weren't so worried. How they always end up having whichever opinion is furthest away from scientific consensus and/or human decency is actually absurd. You'd think they'd at least occasionally end up having a few reasonable, well thought-out views.
Reading psych studies on people who have authoritarian beliefs is eye opening. Here's a study (pdf) that found authoritarians will seek out media that confirms their biases when scared. The "when scared" is important. Participants that weren't scared showed no difference to non-authoritarians. The authors suggested that authoritarians will seek out confirmation of their beliefs as a mechanism of dealing with fear.
I suspect that Poilievre believes his supporters are more likely than average to cling to the outmoded belief that addiction is a moral failing rather than a medical issue, so it's to his benefit to demonize any and all services directed at harm reduction. (In other words, I am disgusted but not at all surprised.)
Supervised consumption sites are "drug dens" that a future Conservative government would not fund and seek to close, party leader Pierre Poilievre said Friday.
They also provide access to clean supplies to reduce rates of HIV and other diseases, as well as offer referrals to users seeking treatment options.
He suggested the federal government has the power to close existing sites under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, under which it grants them an exemption to operate.
However, he did sit as a member of the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, which passed the Respect for Communities Act in the years following the Supreme Court's decision.
The controversial law required prospective supervised consumption sites to meet 26 criteria in order to open, such as tracking crime rates and providing medical evidence, along with handing in letters from provincial health ministers, local police and other stakeholders.
In fact, the staff have attended to about 50,000 overdoses [and] medical emergencies since 2017, with no reported fatalities on site," she wrote, adding thousands are alive because of access to such facilities.
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