One week after taking a victory lap on safer streets, the B.C. government is getting yanked back into reality by municipal councils and police frustrated by the rising street disorder, crime and public safety concerns around safe consumption sites.

In Nanaimo, Coun. Ian Thorpe put forward a motion on Monday to demand the Vancouver Island Health Authority close an overdose prevention site located next to city hall. The city had previously considered erecting a 10-foot-tall fence around the municipal property to address vandalism, crime and safety issues from the site that were hurting city staff and residents.

“The consumption site is a symbol of our failed government policy,” Thorpe told radio station CFAX.

“What I want council to do, and I hope eventually we might, is to send a message to the province saying, please look again at your policy of how we're dealing with drugs on our streets and let's see if there's a different and a better way of supporting these people.”

Council voted to defer the motion for a month, to get more information from Island Health.

Thorpe called the BC NDP government’s experiment on decriminalization, and its normalization of open drug use in the name of compassion, “an abject failure.”

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