Health organizations request public needle disposal boxes in Leamington

Leamington council heard from two health care organizations at Monday night's meeting saying they would like two needle disposal boxes to be installed in public spaces.

AIDS Committee of Windsor and Windsor Essex Community Health Centre, both of which provide services in Leamington, made the request.

Michael Brennan, executive director of the AIDS committee, said the problem is less visible in smaller cities and people need to talk about it.

"This region was demonstrating higher rates of opioid use, opioid-related emergency room visits," he said.

One of the boxes in Windsor saw 45,000 syringes collected from June to September this year, said Brennan. Another box outside of the Windsor Essex Community Health Centre saw roughly 1,000 per week in 2018.

In Leamington, a resident said she's been noticing "more and more needles" in alleyways in the past two years.

"And I was starting to find needles being tossed under my vehicles, because I live by an alleyway," said Julie Schmitt, who has lived in Leamington for 15 years.

She also said she has seen people walking on used syringes.

The two organizations suggest the boxes be installed at the Leamington community health centre and at the youth community centre.

However, the mayor of Leamington isn't so sure that installing boxes will help solve the issue of discarded needles.

"I really struggle with this whole thing," said John Paterson. "I know it's a needed service. But many would consider it almost contributing to the problem."

"It just seems to be spread over a lot of our municipality and I know it's a really bad problem," he said.

For now, council has asked administration to review the request made by the two organizations and collect more data to report back to council. After that, council will decide if they will debate on the issue.