In what is increasingly looking like a challenge to existing safe injection sites in Alberta, Postmedia columnist Rick Bell and Conservative Premier Kenney launched a broadside assault on impoverished drug users.

Study after study has shown that safe injection sites save lives by preventing more deaths. But that hasn’t stopped Canada’s conservatives from continuously attacking them.

Bell’s column claims locations with safe injection sites are “Scary places. Threatening places. Ugly places.” He also claims they cause “social disorder and crime up the ying-yang.”

Kenney took to Twitter to cite a study that claimed a rise in social disorder, even though many people claimed the study was misleading.

The comments come as Kenney promises to move or potentially end some safe injection sites in Alberta.

In response, social media users are standing up for safe injection sites and calling out Kenney and Rick Bell’s attacks on the most impoverished in society.

That’s not what this data showed, @jkenney. It showed a *perception* of an increase in crime. It didn’t show an actual increase in crime. Nor did it show that such crime was directly connected to the SCS.

You’re misleading people. #ableg #abpoli https://t.co/hWdiFbNgFf

— Kim Siever (@kim_siever) January 23, 2020

Safe consumption sites are used by people from all walks of life and by those of all political ideologies. They are not NDP drug sites; they are places that help keep humans alive. People who die from overdoses rarely benefit from subsequent addiction treatment.

— Timothy Huyer (@tim4hire) January 23, 2020

This is ignorant and dehumanizing language. You show very little understanding of how our broken social system has failed these individuals, and yet instead of extending compassion or real evidence-based solutions, you would rather condemn them. This is not proper leadership.

— Dr. Wing Kar Li (@karliwithakay) January 23, 2020

Way more accurate, informed, and fact-based read than the terror released by Rick Bell and retweeted by our Premier today.

Read this instead ?? https://t.co/T48MQcDMqy

— Aaron Fitchett ?️‍? (@AaronFitchett) January 22, 2020

This dehumanizing column is run-of-the-mill grotesque for Bell, but Kenney's callousness toward those living w addiction + disdain for evidence-based health policy is particularly shameful. #ableg
BTW: People struggling w addiction are just as Albertan and worthy of protection pic.twitter.com/kL5sbp5Fsn

— Alheli Picazo (@a_picazo) January 21, 2020

Jason Kenney and Rick Bell are misleading people about safe injection sites. Instead of doing something to address the opioid crisis, they have chosen to dehumanize those affected by it.

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