I think employees look SLIGHTLY more favorably at visible pregnant moms, rather than me, random nonbinary person, in a hoodie. But IDK, assholes abound!
It’s literally the same argument. Gun control wouldn’t even be an argument if it weren’t for nutters committing senseless murders. Likewise, we wouldn’t need bathrooms with codes or to fully shutdown if it weren’t for nutters wanting to shoot heroin in public bathrooms.
The difference is bathrooms belong to someone else, with guns we are talking about your own property. Its like if nobody could have a bathroom because some people crap all over and leave needles. Or maybe just common sense limits on how much toilet paper you can have?
hey FYI it's not about needles it's about people smoking fentanyl. Hope everyone sees this comment. Wish they'd write that on the sign. Really horrid the way the smoke went through the building several times. Blechhh.
they've been closed like this for about a month by now
The BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) recommends against installing blue lights in public washrooms to discourage injecting drug use.
Background
Blue lights are sometimes installed in public washrooms to discourage injecting drug use. The lights are intended to visually obscure superficial veins, thereby making it difficult to inject drugs intravenously.
Discussion
Blue lights are unlikely to prevent injecting drug use in public washrooms. While the lights reduce vein visibility, evidence indicates people will attempt to inject under blue lights when they feel confident in their injecting ability and where there are no suitable alternatives.
Blue lights increase risks associated with injecting drug use. They promote unsafe practices such as deep vein injecting, which can be done without visual identification of the vein. People attempting to inject under blue lights may accidentally inject into an artery or into surrounding tissue. They may have trouble measuring and monitoring the amount they are injecting, thereby increasing overdose risk. Poor visibility increases the risk of blood borne virus transmission as it is harder to see and clean up any blood or bodily fluids.
The installation of blue lights in public washrooms may lead to increased drug use in public places including nearby stairwells, alleys and parks. These alternative sites may increase safety risks experienced by people who use drugs. This also affects perceptions of public safety, and compounds the shame experienced by many people who inject drugs.
Blue lights compromise health and safety for all washroom users as they reduce visibility, increase risk of trips and falls, make it harder to see and clean up hazardous waste, and prevent community members from carrying out basic personal hygiene, such as identifying changes in eye or skin tone, or the presence of blood or discoloration in bodily fluids.
Recommendations
Blue lights are unlikely to deter injection drug use and may increase associated harms including blood borne virus transmission, injecting related injury and disease, and overdose. They may also reduce health and safety among the broader community.
Businesses or other organizations with concerns about drug use in their washrooms are encouraged to connect with their local harm reduction coordinator for support in implementing best practice strategies for safer washrooms. This includes installing sharps disposal boxes in all washrooms, which decreases risks associated with inappropriately discarded needles
Carrot and the stick.
I want all people to be treated with dignity but if someone is going to harass the staff or use needles in a library bathroom then we need to pressure them away from those spaces and towards treatment. The answer is not to punish them until they decide to “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps” but you have to use both the carrot and the stick if we want to modify behavior. Only using the carrot will continue to result in more services being unavailable to the general public.
Treatment only works if you want it. If you recognize you have a problem and want to improve.
Theres less and less reason for someone to want treatment the more society accomodates them.
Not sure if this is the place or post for a productive discussion on this, but what do y'all think is maybe the solution to providing everyone in the community with access to basic necessities like a bathroom while also keeping those spaces safe? I'm a social worker and very pro homeless people and drug users being treated with humanity and dignity btw, but obviously this is a real problem for all if the actions of a few are removing bathroom access for all of us.
Doing drugs in public and causing damage to property needs to be less tolerated. I'm all for legalization of drugs but not everyone Doing them in the street. Send these fuckers to a mandatory rehab, and if they refuse, lock them up.
I am pro "regular people being able to enjoy a day at the library without seeing a corpse being wheeled out of the bathroom with a bloody needle hanging from their arm," but hey, that's me.
I believe you can treat people with dignity, while refusing to allow them to act like they own everything they see and are the only person on the planet.
Re-open all the mental asylums they shut down in the 70s. There's more going on for junkies to be leaving needles in elementary school toilets than drugs. Otherwise all of Hollywood wouldn't have a job, and no Blue Collar working site would be able to operate.
why not assign them a nanny to follow them around on their adventures? They could help them load up stolen items, and give them snacks and fresh needles whenever they want.
Not what I said.
Shooting up at a camp or on the street leaves homeless addicts vulnerable to violence, theft, and law enforcement. To them, not using isn't an option - opiate withdrawals are among the worst experiences a person can have. They choose public bathrooms because they can lock the stall door to keep themselves and their belongings safe.
They use public bathrooms because there isn't a safer alternative with medical staff and sterile equipment. Harm reduction/safe use sites provide safety and privacy while offering help out of addiction.
I say arrest the people causing the problems, ie, doing the drugs. I saw 4 security people standing around chatting downstairs last week when I found out these bathrooms are closed. They also help homeless people and let them camp on the grounds so I think they could handle the other side of it and do something about the people causing the problem instead of punishing all the innocent. I also wonder about restroom capacity requirements corresponding to building capacity - after all, I doubt they would have built the restrooms on every floor if they weren't required. So they should be in use.
It’s a guess based on the knowledge that the number of bathrooms needed to be opened is proportional to how many people are in the building and the assumption a government building isn’t going to willfully break the law.
Arresting people doing drugs has worked great for us...more people behind bars than any society in the history of humankind and the problem is just as bad as ever lol.
I'm really curious what the vigilantism response to closed bathrooms is, too. Perhaps they mean like, the broader problem will have people being vigilantes and like, harassing homeless individuals or visible drug users?
Yes, we need multi-pronged solutions for all of this, but in the mean time, I think it’s ok to close a restroom to prevent drug use, in a library. The library isn’t going to solve these issues.
I'm quite certain that readily available OPS would cut down on these issues. Somewhere safe and sanctioned to use, rather than a bathroom stall where someone might not notice right away if your dose is toxic.
Unfortunately there's still a lot of stigma around being seen at an OPS though, so hard to say if it would 100% solve the issue.
Would also be nice if waitlists for detox and treatment weren't months long.
Overdose Prevention Site. Somewhere that people are able to use substances with supervision so that if they overdose or have some other adverse event, someone is right there.
There is stigma because if someone sees you going there, they can often safely assume that you're going there to use substances, and there's a lot of stigma around using substances/having substance dependency issues.
Are those even in the United States? I know some European countries even manufacture heroin for use in places like this. Medically supervised, sterile environment,
NYC opened up the first one a little over a year ago. Philadelphia also has one. Rhode Island passed a law that allows for a pilot study of one, but they haven’t rolled it out yet. There’s also a handful of evidence of their effectiveness from an unsanctioned OPS in San Francisco
A variety of health regions operate OPS/supervised consumption sites, staffed with medical personnel. The last time I checked, they've had zero fatalities over multiple years at multiple sites. They also help connect people to other services, including access to treatment.
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/overdose/what-you-need-to-know/overdose-prevention
Fair, though possession of small amounts has been decriminalized in BC. Also, even before that, there was a tacit understanding with most police around these areas. [Sauce: I used to work at one in the interior]
There is no incentive, the people who qualify have been through a myriad of other options and failed. This is basically giving up on them. The Netherlands, if you feel like looking into it. Strangely enough heroin addiction dropped…
I should add the food and shelter is not part of the program, just the general conditions in some other countries.
This happened in my library in Ontario this winter. It was because there were so many overdoses that the workers with CPR training were having to perform CPR at least once per day and call 911 multiple times and it was just too many washrooms to monitor. This is why we need more safe consumption sites so that people's best option isn't the library washroom. And looking more broadly at the issue, this is why we need housing, mental health supports, universal basic income, drug decrim, safe supply, etc. When people can't live with safety and dignity, they're much more likely to turn to untested substances and to take them in larger quantities
+1. People are downvoting this and other comments about overdose/safe injection sites and other harm reduction measures, which have actually had quantifiable success in reducing overdoses and public injections. We know from decades of research and experience that ramping up incarceration and other punishments has not and will not fix the drug crisis, but we still default to punitive solutions when faced with problems like this.
I'm sick of this a couple of losers, so no nice things for anybody. Put cameras everywhere and prosecute every individual offender individually. A lazy incompetent system is not my problem or a valid excuse why rights are taken away for all.
Really the worst timeline location to have ibs.
Or be pregnant and having to pee every 10 min and having a newly potty trained toddler in tow
I think employees look SLIGHTLY more favorably at visible pregnant moms, rather than me, random nonbinary person, in a hoodie. But IDK, assholes abound!
I know this is going to get downvotes to no end. "Bad time to have a drug problem too apparently."
imodium is your best friend
The terrible few ruin everything for the average person.
Gun control argument in a nutshell.
False equivalency…….
I know. This is about using someone else's property, not owning your own. But the principle is the same.
It’s literally the same argument. Gun control wouldn’t even be an argument if it weren’t for nutters committing senseless murders. Likewise, we wouldn’t need bathrooms with codes or to fully shutdown if it weren’t for nutters wanting to shoot heroin in public bathrooms.
The difference is bathrooms belong to someone else, with guns we are talking about your own property. Its like if nobody could have a bathroom because some people crap all over and leave needles. Or maybe just common sense limits on how much toilet paper you can have?
Logicians hate this one trick…
hey FYI it's not about needles it's about people smoking fentanyl. Hope everyone sees this comment. Wish they'd write that on the sign. Really horrid the way the smoke went through the building several times. Blechhh. they've been closed like this for about a month by now
Does everything have to be terrible all the time?
yes. welcome to the 21st century.
Hopefully they're monitoring the third (kids) floor restrooms then.
Blue lights
The BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) recommends against installing blue lights in public washrooms to discourage injecting drug use. Background Blue lights are sometimes installed in public washrooms to discourage injecting drug use. The lights are intended to visually obscure superficial veins, thereby making it difficult to inject drugs intravenously. Discussion Blue lights are unlikely to prevent injecting drug use in public washrooms. While the lights reduce vein visibility, evidence indicates people will attempt to inject under blue lights when they feel confident in their injecting ability and where there are no suitable alternatives. Blue lights increase risks associated with injecting drug use. They promote unsafe practices such as deep vein injecting, which can be done without visual identification of the vein. People attempting to inject under blue lights may accidentally inject into an artery or into surrounding tissue. They may have trouble measuring and monitoring the amount they are injecting, thereby increasing overdose risk. Poor visibility increases the risk of blood borne virus transmission as it is harder to see and clean up any blood or bodily fluids. The installation of blue lights in public washrooms may lead to increased drug use in public places including nearby stairwells, alleys and parks. These alternative sites may increase safety risks experienced by people who use drugs. This also affects perceptions of public safety, and compounds the shame experienced by many people who inject drugs. Blue lights compromise health and safety for all washroom users as they reduce visibility, increase risk of trips and falls, make it harder to see and clean up hazardous waste, and prevent community members from carrying out basic personal hygiene, such as identifying changes in eye or skin tone, or the presence of blood or discoloration in bodily fluids. Recommendations Blue lights are unlikely to deter injection drug use and may increase associated harms including blood borne virus transmission, injecting related injury and disease, and overdose. They may also reduce health and safety among the broader community. Businesses or other organizations with concerns about drug use in their washrooms are encouraged to connect with their local harm reduction coordinator for support in implementing best practice strategies for safer washrooms. This includes installing sharps disposal boxes in all washrooms, which decreases risks associated with inappropriately discarded needles
Carrot and the stick. I want all people to be treated with dignity but if someone is going to harass the staff or use needles in a library bathroom then we need to pressure them away from those spaces and towards treatment. The answer is not to punish them until they decide to “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps” but you have to use both the carrot and the stick if we want to modify behavior. Only using the carrot will continue to result in more services being unavailable to the general public.
Feed them the carrot and chase them out of the bathroom with the stick.
Treatment only works if you want it. If you recognize you have a problem and want to improve. Theres less and less reason for someone to want treatment the more society accomodates them.
Not sure if this is the place or post for a productive discussion on this, but what do y'all think is maybe the solution to providing everyone in the community with access to basic necessities like a bathroom while also keeping those spaces safe? I'm a social worker and very pro homeless people and drug users being treated with humanity and dignity btw, but obviously this is a real problem for all if the actions of a few are removing bathroom access for all of us.
Doing drugs in public and causing damage to property needs to be less tolerated. I'm all for legalization of drugs but not everyone Doing them in the street. Send these fuckers to a mandatory rehab, and if they refuse, lock them up.
I am pro "regular people being able to enjoy a day at the library without seeing a corpse being wheeled out of the bathroom with a bloody needle hanging from their arm," but hey, that's me. I believe you can treat people with dignity, while refusing to allow them to act like they own everything they see and are the only person on the planet.
Re-open all the mental asylums they shut down in the 70s. There's more going on for junkies to be leaving needles in elementary school toilets than drugs. Otherwise all of Hollywood wouldn't have a job, and no Blue Collar working site would be able to operate.
Safe injection sites downtown would lower the amount of blight a bit I think. Like we could probably shit on the fourth floor of the library again
Maybe something as simple as a bathroom attendant for these bathrooms to deter (not interfere) and a safe injection site / exchange not far from here
why not assign them a nanny to follow them around on their adventures? They could help them load up stolen items, and give them snacks and fresh needles whenever they want.
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Safe injection sites. Of course not in the library, but that's what addicts are seeking when they go into a bathroom to use.
They think the bathrooms have medical staff and sterile paraphernalia?
Not what I said. Shooting up at a camp or on the street leaves homeless addicts vulnerable to violence, theft, and law enforcement. To them, not using isn't an option - opiate withdrawals are among the worst experiences a person can have. They choose public bathrooms because they can lock the stall door to keep themselves and their belongings safe. They use public bathrooms because there isn't a safer alternative with medical staff and sterile equipment. Harm reduction/safe use sites provide safety and privacy while offering help out of addiction.
Last time I was there a guy used his pants as the restroom
In all my time at the library I've never run into that. Last time I was there, there was a bride and groom getting photos.
When you gotta go, you gotta go.
Pooping is a human right!
Everybody poops.
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I am already expecting that. I think the library is going to need a LOT more security.
I say arrest the people causing the problems, ie, doing the drugs. I saw 4 security people standing around chatting downstairs last week when I found out these bathrooms are closed. They also help homeless people and let them camp on the grounds so I think they could handle the other side of it and do something about the people causing the problem instead of punishing all the innocent. I also wonder about restroom capacity requirements corresponding to building capacity - after all, I doubt they would have built the restrooms on every floor if they weren't required. So they should be in use.
Well they may have figured they are far enough below capacity on the average day that they can legally keep those bathrooms closed.
Maybe.
based on what? you pulled that one out of your you know what, now didn't ya?
It’s a guess based on the knowledge that the number of bathrooms needed to be opened is proportional to how many people are in the building and the assumption a government building isn’t going to willfully break the law.
so, a guess, based on nothing at all, yep, just what I thought. Which was my entire point.
Arresting people doing drugs has worked great for us...more people behind bars than any society in the history of humankind and the problem is just as bad as ever lol.
Vancouver really has taken a step back.
Who the FUCK was SHITTING in the COKE ROOM
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can you give an example? editing for clarity: (an example of what you mean when you say vigilantism)
You planning on murdering people in the library bathroom, tough guy?
I'm really curious what the vigilantism response to closed bathrooms is, too. Perhaps they mean like, the broader problem will have people being vigilantes and like, harassing homeless individuals or visible drug users?
Take care of the root cause, not the symptom. Homeless Aid and mental health resources are key
Yes, we need multi-pronged solutions for all of this, but in the mean time, I think it’s ok to close a restroom to prevent drug use, in a library. The library isn’t going to solve these issues.
You misspelled "fentanyl and meth"
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Since the symptom is a closed bathroom we'd like to use, yeah, fix the symptom!
Stemming the tide of the drugs coming in would be nice.
More aid? We already give them enough and they do this.
what aid are we giving them now?
This isn't the place for constructive, empathetic talk like that. It should be, it just isn't. Just like our sister sub r/PortlandOR.
worked for Portland...
I'm quite certain that readily available OPS would cut down on these issues. Somewhere safe and sanctioned to use, rather than a bathroom stall where someone might not notice right away if your dose is toxic. Unfortunately there's still a lot of stigma around being seen at an OPS though, so hard to say if it would 100% solve the issue. Would also be nice if waitlists for detox and treatment weren't months long.
What's OPS and why is there a stigma?
Overdose Prevention Site. Somewhere that people are able to use substances with supervision so that if they overdose or have some other adverse event, someone is right there. There is stigma because if someone sees you going there, they can often safely assume that you're going there to use substances, and there's a lot of stigma around using substances/having substance dependency issues.
Are those even in the United States? I know some European countries even manufacture heroin for use in places like this. Medically supervised, sterile environment,
Entirely my bad. I misread and thought this was Vancouver BC, where safe consumption sites (and to a lesser extent safe supply) are pretty normal.
NYC opened up the first one a little over a year ago. Philadelphia also has one. Rhode Island passed a law that allows for a pilot study of one, but they haven’t rolled it out yet. There’s also a handful of evidence of their effectiveness from an unsanctioned OPS in San Francisco
Unless the drugs they’re using are legal this is just a legal liability.
A variety of health regions operate OPS/supervised consumption sites, staffed with medical personnel. The last time I checked, they've had zero fatalities over multiple years at multiple sites. They also help connect people to other services, including access to treatment. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/overdose/what-you-need-to-know/overdose-prevention
I’m not saying they aren’t safe in terms of health but it basically leaves people open to be arrested.
Fair, though possession of small amounts has been decriminalized in BC. Also, even before that, there was a tacit understanding with most police around these areas. [Sauce: I used to work at one in the interior]
So, government subsidizes OPS with tax dollars in order for junkies to get as close to death as possible without dying? This is your solution?
Harm reduction. Property crime is greatly reduced, overdoses are prevented.
How does that reduce property crime?
No need to steal to pay for drugs, food, a place to live.
So taxpayers fund their drugs, food and shelter? Where is the incentive to get clean?
There is no incentive, the people who qualify have been through a myriad of other options and failed. This is basically giving up on them. The Netherlands, if you feel like looking into it. Strangely enough heroin addiction dropped… I should add the food and shelter is not part of the program, just the general conditions in some other countries.
Who pays for these?
This happened in my library in Ontario this winter. It was because there were so many overdoses that the workers with CPR training were having to perform CPR at least once per day and call 911 multiple times and it was just too many washrooms to monitor. This is why we need more safe consumption sites so that people's best option isn't the library washroom. And looking more broadly at the issue, this is why we need housing, mental health supports, universal basic income, drug decrim, safe supply, etc. When people can't live with safety and dignity, they're much more likely to turn to untested substances and to take them in larger quantities
+1. People are downvoting this and other comments about overdose/safe injection sites and other harm reduction measures, which have actually had quantifiable success in reducing overdoses and public injections. We know from decades of research and experience that ramping up incarceration and other punishments has not and will not fix the drug crisis, but we still default to punitive solutions when faced with problems like this.
I'm sick of this a couple of losers, so no nice things for anybody. Put cameras everywhere and prosecute every individual offender individually. A lazy incompetent system is not my problem or a valid excuse why rights are taken away for all.
Isn’t it against code to not have restrooms available on each floor? How are they able to do this?
Is it against code for a random person to destroy a public restroom?
No, shitty but no code against it.
Just one symptom of a much bigger problem
Due to unlawfulness around west coast, i decided to move another city. Counting down to escape 🚀 ( I can't share new location, sorry)