Three months after Safeworks supervised consumption site's closure, hardships intensify for some

As the shaven-headed man injected drugs into his arm, his young female companion’s body, pressed face down atop autumn leaves in the corner of an East Village parking lot, was motionless.

Dr. Monty Ghosh gently prodded the ashen-faced woman’s back through her black jacket until her head stirred and she tried getting to her feet. It was a moment of relief.

“It’s all good — you can sit down,” said Ghosh, a substance abuse researcher and clinician who periodically walks Calgary’s inner-city streets to take their pulse.

The encounter occurred just shy of the three-month mark since the June 30 closure of the Safeworks supervised consumption site at the Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre in the city’s Beltline area.

It was a move provincial government officials say was overdue after nearly a decade of operation that many in the surrounding area say brought social disruption outside the doors of their homes and businesses.

And it was a tangible signal, they say, of the government’s intention to phase out harm reduction in favour of recovery and treatment, which they contend reduces the pressure on hospitals.

The Alberta Recovery Model, which a government webpage describes as a “comprehensive continuum of care for prevention, treatment, intervention and recovery,” includes allocating $350 million to establish 11 “addiction recovery communities” across the province, four of which have opened, including one in Calgary.

The province’s latest figures for drug poisoning deaths in Calgary don’t go beyond June, when 13 deaths were recorded, a number that reflects a distinct downward trend in mortality since a 2023 peak when 62 died in the same month. The government attributes that to its recovery-treatment model, though others contend it’s a trend shared by other jurisdictions representing an inevitable thinning of the high-risk demographic.

While the kind of Ghosh’s East Village encounter would occur prior to Safeworks’ shuttering, some say the move has increased the prevalence of public drug use and overdoses while displacing them well beyond areas surrounding the Sheldon Chumir centre.

“Now it’s all over the place . . . it’s all over the streets,” said a man in a slurred voice who’d just injected drugs in an East Village parking lot.

Nearby, a woman clad in a pink sweatshirt said the demise of the supervised consumption site is leading to a more visible drug use presence.

“It’s more garbage in the streets, more needles that are used, people doing it in front of kids,” said the woman who goes by the name of Rain.

“The safe sites are there for people to use discreetly.”

Social agencies that deal with Calgary’s vulnerable populations declined to comment for this story and businesses were reluctant to do so or provide their names for fear of retribution.

But the manager of one business not far from the former Safeworks site said that since its closure, the number of loitering drug users had fallen dramatically “like night and day.”

But he also said part of that change was from increased policing that moved street people along.

Another man said much the same thing.

“It seems much, much better now, there’s less of those guys around,” said a man who works at London Barbers.

“You can feel more safe, the park across the street is better.”

But some businesses farther away, in the downtown core, said people openly using drugs had simply migrated closer to them.

“We have been seeing mass groups of overdosed people in the parking lot beside my office and noticing who must be the drug dealers coming and talking to all these people,” a staffer in a business located in the downtown’s west side said in a text message.

“(There were) probably like 40 (people) all overdosed at once last week.”

A homeless woman standing in the alley behind the Unicorn Pub on Stephen Avenue recalls how she was found almost dead by paramedics “on seven kinds of drugs.”

Nearby, the pub’s manager said Safeworks’ fate hasn’t made much difference to what he sees.

“It’s been insane for years no matter what they do with that injection site,” said Paul Worby. “I haven’t seen anyone back here with needles but we do see a lot of pipes.”

Physician Ghosh said Safeworks’ shuttering doesn’t appear to be leading a significant number of drug users to treatment.

“I think it’s been ineffective, to be honest,” said Ghosh, whose job has taken him to Safeworks, noting it had also connected people to recovery programs.

“I think the site did help some reach recovery from a lens of constant engagement and trust-building.”

He said the Rapid Access Addiction Medicine clinic opened at the site since the closure has seen very few patients in the past three months.

“They replaced (Safeworks) with a program already there (nearby) so it doesn’t really make sense,” said Ghosh.

Some downtown businesses he’s spoken to have reported a dramatic increase in the number of overdose cases they encounter on or near their property, said Ghosh.

“They’re seeing a more visible drug issue — (one business’s) security who were responding to three or four overdoses a week were now seeing seven a day,” said Ghosh.

At the same time, he said it’s too early to determine what the longer-term impact the closure of Safeworks is having on the community.

A city councillor whose ward hosted Safeworks echoed Ghosh’s words of reluctance for a definite conclusion but said what he’s seen and heard since the end of June is disturbing.

“How much the fire department’s responses has gone up is really concerning and different portions of the downtown have reported an increase in incidents and disorder since the closure,” said Ward 8 Coun. Nathaniel Schmidt.

“There is a correlation to the closure at the Chumir; whether it’s causation, we’re not sure.”

He said much of that increase in disorder has been found in the East Village, suggesting issues that once surrounded the supervised consumption site have simply dispersed.

“Closing the Chumir does not make the problem go away,” said Schmidt, who has a background in social work and as a defence lawyer.

Complex problems of addiction require a collaborative effort from all levels of government to aid municipalities that have the fewest resources to handle them, he said.

Wait times are too long — running into multiple months — for treatment that needs to be more immediate to make up for Safeworks’ shuttering, said Schmidt.

A volunteer who does outreach with the city’s vulnerable said the closure comes at a dangerous time given the hazardous composition of much of the city’s fentanyl supply that’s laced with animal tranquilizer.

That reality means supervision following consumption is more important than ever, said Cecilia Fraser of the group Street Cats.

“With the closure of the site puts stress on people like us, it’s not a good idea and we’re seeing that now,” she said.

The supervision site represented a community hub where medical care was available and relationships forged, she added.

“There’s a big hole there that I’m not sure can be filled,” said Fraser.

Another outreach group said it’s seen a huge increase of people turning to them seeking detox and treatment referrals as well as mental health inquiries in the past three months compared to the same period in 2025.

BeTheChangeYYC said it’s also observed “concentrated overdose events, increased wellness checks, concerns about unregulated drug supply and people being displaced from areas where outreach workers previously knew they could reliably find them.”

The group’s head, Chaz Smith, called those numbers “actually quite alarming . . . it’s beyond what our paramedics and we can handle.”

It comes as his outreach group — now a registered charity — is without government funding, he said.

With Safeworks’ exit, it’s harder for their clients to access clean needles, syringes and other paraphernalia. This invites the spread of diseases like hepatitis, HIV and antibiotic-resistant staph infections, said Smith.

The demise of the consumption site means the loss of a life-saving stopgap at a time when there’s still insufficient detox and treatment spots, he added.

“It closes a place where people were going to consume substances because they weren’t able to get a place for detox or treatment, which can take many days or weeks,” said Smith.

Closing off a vital harm reduction tool, he said, ignores the complexities, nuances and timing of recovery.

“It’s a precious moment when someone’s ready for help,” said Smith.

At the same time, he said the Calgary Police Service’s Operation Order, which targets crime and social disorder in high priority areas while also providing service referrals, “is dispersing vulnerable populations into communities and across the city.”

His team, he said, notices overdose increase “a day or two” after the police sweeps. “We see a mental health crisis unfold.”

Rapid Access Addiction Medicine, which provides specialized addiction medicine assessment, treatment, and connections to ongoing care in lieu of Safeworks, saw 27 unique clients for a total of 73 visits from July 1 to Aug. 31, according to Recovery Alberta.

And another body, the Recovery Response Team (RRT), dealt with 138 unique clients in July and another 99 in August in providing addictions-related support, much of which was reversing overdoses.

“Recovery Alberta remains focused on continuity of care for people who need addiction services in Calgary,” the provincial agency said in an email.

Ghosh said he expected the RRT numbers to be higher, adding he suspects the figures for the RAAM clinic were referrals to another similar site.

“There’s no physicians at the (Chumir) RAAM clinic,” he said, adding the RAAM clinic two blocks away doesn’t seem to be any busier since June 30. “It’s steady as always . . . our clinic gets 13 new (patients) a day.”

Back in the East Village, some of Safeworks’ former clients say its closure has spread social disruption across the inner city and downtown.

“It was clean and controlled and there were no kids around — everyone’s very sensitive about kids,” said a woman in a dirty fleece outfit, adding she got hooked on fentanyl following back surgery.

Even so, she and a man with salt and pepper hair who produced small blue chunks of crystal meth for sale said more of the consumption these days is through inhalation, while Safeworks was strictly for injection.

“The bulk of the community is smoking, so (the closure) doesn’t really make much difference,” said the man.

A few minutes later, the man said the price of crystal meth he sells has shot up considerably in recent days, and that he can’t talk anymore.

“I’ve got a couple of customers — got to go,” he said.

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