Funding for downtown sharps bin must be re-directed by Council

Municipal politicians will vote on a motion at Council's next regular meeting that could provide a partial solution to the issue of safe needle disposal facing the City of North Bay, North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit, and other agencies.

Coun. Scott Robertson, who gave notice of his intention to table the motion at the end of Tuesday's council meeting, says it requires the majority of Council to approve a reallocation of funding. If approved, the City would enter into an agreement with the Health Unit and any necessary third parties to install a community sharps bin on City-owned land. 

Robertson stresses there is no new money going to the initiative. The City of North Bay had allocated $10,000 in the 2020 budget toward the Sharps Buy Back program administered by the Health Unit but that program has since been discontinued. The program offered one $5 gift card for groceries for every 100 used sharps, needles, or syringes and was initially deemed a success by officials last fall.

See original story: Health Unit launches program to encourage needle exchange

And: 48,800 needles and syringes returned during 'buy-back' program

The Health Unit says Sharps Buy Back was a "short-term project to help increase the number of sharps returned to the Health Unit and partnering agencies' needle syringe programs, to support specific initiatives each year. It was never intended to be a sustained program."

The Health Unit purchased community sharps bins for installation within the district and approached the City about doing so on municipally-owned land. The Health Unit also requested financial support for regular disposal of the contents of the sharps bin. The previously budgeted $10,000 would go toward the costs associated with maintaining the bin.

"There are clear gaps with the [Sharps Buy Back] program that do not address the needs of individuals who use drugs, including barriers to accessing locations to safely dispose of needles, due to hours of operation, the lack of anonymity and individuals who were not a part of the project’s target audience utilizing the sharps return for the gift card," the Health Unit explains. "The community sharps bin allows individuals to access a discreet location to safely dispose of sharps 24/7. The use of community sharps bins is a long-term and sustainable solution for safer needle disposal which has already been adopted in many other communities across Ontario."

Robertson says the motion states clearly the City of North Bay would not be responsible for the upkeep of the sharps bin that is likely to be installed in the downtown core. 

Discussions on a specific location, official ownership of the bin, and whether a third-party agency will be involved in the program are ongoing. The first step is reallocating the $10,000 in the budget from one initiative to the next.

A similar disposal bin was installed in Sturgeon Falls last January. The Health Unit's Cathy Menzies-Boule said then there are many benefits of having a sharps bin in the community. 

"It is going to take needles off the street and provide a safe place for people to dispose of needles. It will prevent needle stick injuries and probably most importantly, it will help to prevent the transmission of infectious agents such as Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and HIV," said Menzies-Boule, who is the executive director of clinical services and chief nursing officer.

See also: Community Sharps Bin to make disposal of needles safer

There are unknowns when it comes to the effectiveness of centralized needle disposal. Will a sharps education campaign in North Bay reach the desired audience as in West Nipissing? Will those who habitually discard needles in an unsafe manner use the bin?

Through his work in community outreach programs, Robertson says he has safely collected and disposed of hundreds of needles but he sees the disposal of needles as an underlying issue to a much larger set of societal issues. 

"When I go out around my home, as you soon as you go off the beaten path, you find bed downs and you find needles," he observes. "There are a lot of drug users who are conscientious. Plenty who use needles and use pipes and do the right thing. They are already disposing of needles properly."

Although sharps bins can mitigate the problem, Robertson says the far more pertinent, overreaching issue is a lack of housing. 

"If we were to house people, the 'sharps problem' would go away, right away," he says.