A Hamilton city councilor’s attempt to stop a hospital from providing harm reduction supplies like needles and crack pipes in a vending machine has been overturned.

The majority of councilors rejected the councilor’s motion. John-Paul Danko at a public health meeting Monday after hearing from experts including Dr. Robin Lennox, a family physician specializing in addiction care.

She helped develop the vending machine initiative, called Our Healthbox, for Hamilton General Hospital, in part because health-care workers do not have the capacity to oversee the distribution of “every needle and syringe needed to meet the needs of the community.”

And the need is great, Lennox said. Providing people with safe injection and inhalation equipment (24 hours a day, seven days a week) reduces the risk of HIV, hepatitis C and bacterial infections, and avoids long and costly hospital stays and premature deaths.

“I have heard concerns from some council members that providing harm reduction supplies somehow enables drug use,” Lennox told councilors.

“I cannot emphasize enough that that is simply not the case.”

Our Healthbox vending machines are installed in 10 locations across Canada, including Winnipeg.

In Hamilton, a vending machine is to be installed at the hospital as part of a pilot project led by the city’s public health department and the Greater Hamilton Health Network (GHHN).

Lennox said she has treated thousands of substance use disorder patients in Hamilton clinics, hospitals and shelters, and not one person started using drugs because harm reduction supplies were available.

“To the contrary, many of my patients did not learn about harm reduction supplies until too late in their journey, when they were already at risk,” Lennox said.

The creator of vending machines defends its program

Danko’s motion would have requested that the Department of Health not provide funding for harm reduction supplies at Healthboxes and would have stated that the public health committee does not support the “unsupervised distribution of paraphernalia intended for ‘use of illegal drugs’.

“This is our opportunity to say, ‘No, a vending machine that dispenses crack pipes, bowls of meth and needles is not acceptable to the residents of the City of Hamilton,'” said Danko.

The committee does not have the power to prevent the program from rolling out, public health staff said.

The Department of Health does not fund Healthboxes and “does not support the provision of means to consume illicit drugs,” spokeswoman Hannah Jensen said in a statement.

Danko was supported by the advisor. Esther Pauls, who said the vending machine sends the wrong message.

“I raised four boys and the first thing I say is, ‘Never drugs,'” Pauls said. “But we don’t hear that anymore. We hear, ‘We will help you, we will empower you.'”

Dr. Sean Rourke, a clinical neuropsychologist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, developed Healthboxes for hospitals and organizations to provide customers with a range of low-barrier supplies from HIV self-test kits to clothing and socks, as needed.

He told the public health committee that Healthboxes are a “health care intervention” that also shares with users where they can access treatment and collects real-time data such as who is using them and when.

About two dozen Healthboxes are already in use across Canada, including three in Ontario, said Rourke, also a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto.

“When someone goes to the machine, they don’t need to ask permission to do something,” he said. “They understand them and they don’t have to feel ashamed.”

After Rourke spoke, Danko told him, “I don’t understand why you’re here today” and asked him why he was “traveling around the country” giving similar presentations.

“Why would I do that? Because it actually helps improve the lives of people, communities and families across the country,” Rourke responded.

Mayor Andrea Horwath voted against Danko’s motion, saying it is the committee’s role to decide what goes into Healthboxes and that it should be left to the experts.