Should London open a 'safe' site for smoking drugs? Here's what mayor, health unit say

London's mayor and medical officer of health are voicing their support for bringing an inhalation centre to London, joining calls from London's supervised drug-use site, Carepoint Consumption and Treatment Service.

Under the funding framework for Ontario's supervised consumption sites, Carepoint can only offer people a space for injecting, snorting or swallowing drugs.

Individuals who smoke substances like fentanyl and methamphetamine are left to do it “outside people’s houses, on the street or anywhere,” said Angela Crawford, a London woman who consumes drugs by inhalation. 

“People that use drugs usually don’t care, or they hide in an alleyway or a doorway downtown,” she said.

“Businesses are affected by it, because you hang in their doorway out of the wind.” 

In Crawford’s view, having a safe inhalation centre would not only lower overdoses, but also lower the number of people outside who are smoking in public “around kids and people that don’t do drugs.” 

This gap in London's harm reduction services was brought up during a meeting of the Community and Protective Services Committee at city hall on Monday as councillors discussed a motion that would restrict city-funded services from distributing safe-use drug supplies. 

The motion failed, but it did lead to Mayor Josh Morgan and Dr. Alex Summers, London’s medical officer of health expressing support for adding inhalation services to Carepoint’s safe consumption model. 

“People need pathways into treatment and recovery, which a facility like Carepoint can be and has been for many people,” Morgan said. 

Morgan stressed that the best pathway to not seeing open drug use is proper care, including addiction recovery beds. But without adequate beds, safe consumption services are one way to “triage the situation we have on our streets.” 

“The open-air drug strategy that London Police are working on would work more effectively if there was a place to refer people on inhalation drugs because we know that that is a significant issue on our streets, and it is something that we absolutely have to tackle.”

Since the open-air drug strategy was implemented in April 2025, officers have been able to refer intravenous drug users to Carepoint.

Crawford said when people are stopped for smoking drugs, police will still tell them to go there, anyway.

"It's false information," she said. "You can't smoke drugs there, but that's what they tell you."