Opinions in the Sault have been largely divided when it comes to supervised consumption sites.
As defined by chief nursing officer for Algoma Public Health Kristy Harper, a supervised consumption site provides a safe, clean space for people to bring their own drugs to use in the presence of trained staff, preventing accidental overdoses and reducing the spread of infectious diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis C.
While there are no such facilities in the Sault area at this time, local non-profit organization, Safe Space, a 'mobile harm reduction site,' sparked controversy when many on social media accused organizers of operating an illegal injection site.
Safe Space was slapped with a trespass notice by Sault Police.
Given the heated debate taking place locally around the issue, we thought we'd poll Saultites on whether or not they would support a supervised consumption site locally.
So, we posed the question: Would you support a supervised consumption site in Sault Ste. Marie?
Our poll results show that the majority of respondents would not support a supervised consumption site here in the Sault. While 63 per cent of voters said no, one-third of voters say they would support such a facility.
The breakdown was as follows:
- 798 (37 per cent of) respondents voted yes
- 1,354 (63 per cent of) respondents voted no
A total of 2,152 local votes were cast in the poll. This poll had a 2.08 per cent margin of error, 19 times out of 20.
SooToday's polling system allows for the capture of relevant local data and gives us the ability to detect and prevent fraudulent votes, as well as detect and prevent robots and filter out non-local duplicate votes.