Editor,
There’s a great deal of outcry about the recent Ontario government decision to close ‘safe addiction sites’, due to safety concerns, and the fear that such sites only empower and promote further addiction.
I don’t want to comment on that, because we are fairly insulated from that intense proliferation of drug addiction, and I really don’t know how the residents of municipalities in Grey and Bruce would react to a legal drug injection site near them…although I have a pretty good idea.
My purpose in this letter is to point out some of the hypocrisy in the governmental approaches to addiction.
Alcohol is a serious addiction for far too many people, and causes every type of strife imaginable, and yet the Ford government somehow feels that adding as many as 8500 new places to purchase beer, wine, and ready to drink spirits is a great idea. This doesn’t just facilitate greater consumption, it will likely result in more crime, as convenience store and gas bars are easy targets.
Gambling is an addiction for many, and also can cause every kind of strife that exists. But Ontario has paved the way for the enlargement in scope of every type of online gambling there is.
Exclusive of the province’s own OLG lottery and gaming operation, the 50 (yes, 50) licensed online casino hustlers in “iGaming” report a revenue in the first quarter of this fiscal year of $18.5 billion dollars, a 31% increase over the first quarter of the previous fiscal year.
In addition the haul of iGaming, OLG generated $9.2 billion revenue for the year ending December 2023. This is from lotteries, horse racing and brick and mortar casinos. This is about a 30% increase over the previous year. More people are gambling more often, and betting more money.
Maybe the government itself is suffering from its own addiction, all that revenue from their harmful initiatives.
Mike Robertson, Meaford
