Margaret Somerville, the McGill ethicist who was booed at Ryerson over her professional opinion regarding gay marriage/child rearing, has pronounced that the closure of safe injection sites would be unethical.

"In my view it would not be acceptable simply to say 'we don't agree with drug abuse,' " Somerville said Monday.

"It can't be simply, 'We have a political platform and our platform is nobody is going to be helped in any way in terms of drug addiction behaviour or illness.' That would be wrong in my view."

The site, called Insite, has an annual operating cost of $2 million that is paid for by the provincial government.

It will close Sept. 12 unless the Conservative government renews an exemption under Canada's drug laws that allows it to operate legally.

I neither agree nor disagree with the concept of a safe injection site. I have no shame in admitting to being a NIMBY where such things are concerned, but I also believe that if junkies want to off themselves, they should be given every opportunity to do so, with as little risk to you and I as possible.

My interest in blogging this story is my curiosity about the way the left will react. Will they suddenly decide they love Somerville because she is standing up for one of their pet causes? Or do druggies rank lower than homosexuals on the caring activist scale?

It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next two weeks.