What's behind an increase in discarded needles and drug paraphernalia in Ottawa?

Hintonburg resident Cheryl Parrott has a "show-and-tell" bag of drug paraphernalia. She says the bag is her way of raising awareness and helping community members recognize and safely navigate the risks of the neighbourhood. Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia

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When Cheryl Parrott joins fellow members of the Hintonburg community to clean the local park, she brings a “show-and-tell bag” with items she’s collected over the years.

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Discarded needles. Glass pipes. Water ampules. Tourniquets. Each item serves as an indicator that drug use may have recently occurred in the area.

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“There are certain things that, if you see them, you need to be very cautious, because there may be a needle or a glass pipe around it,” Parrott said.

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She says the bag is her way of raising awareness and helping community members recognize and safely navigate the risks of the neighbourhood.

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“You can tell a kid, ‘Don’t touch needles,’ but quite frankly, what I’ve learned is that adults don’t even know necessarily what these things look like,” Parrott said. “So that’s why I have my little show-and-tell bag.”

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While she says she hasn’t seen a definitive increase in discarded drug paraphernalia recently in Hintonburg, data indicates numbers are on the rise across the city.

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In 2025, 35,917 discarded needles were recovered across Ottawa — a 22 per cent increase from 2024. City data also shows 35,897 glass pipes were recovered in Ottawa in 2025, an increase from 34,897 in 2024. Data for the first four months of 2026 was not yet publicly available.

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Hintonburg resident Cheryl Parrott has a “show-and-tell” bag of drug paraphernalia that she shows to members of the community so they know what to look for and stay away from. “There are certain things that, if you see them, you need to be very cautious,” Parrott said. Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia

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Most of those recovered needles and glass pipes were collected by Needle Hunters, which are patrols by Ottawa Public Health crews in downtown neighbourhoods to retrieve discarded drug paraphernalia in public spaces.

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In 2025, two downtown wards topped the list for most recovered needles: Rideau Vanier saw the most with 24,764 needles, a 22 per cent increase from 2024. Somerset ward was No. 2 with 10,174 recovered needles, representing a 32 per cent increase from the previous year. However, numbers remain below 2023 highs.

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Over the last year, Somerset Coun. Ariel Troster says she’s seen a distinct change in the Chinatown neighbourhood following the closure of the supervised consumption site at Somerset West Community Health Centre in March 2025.

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Since then, she says, her office has received “record numbers of complaints” about discarded needles and public drug use, “because people simply don’t have a place to go.”

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“There was a man who owns a local café who was gardening outside his restaurant and got pricked by a needle,” Troster says. “I had one young mom tell me she found drug paraphernalia and needles in her baby stroller, which is appalling.

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“Removing supervised consumption sites just means that the whole community has become an unsupervised consumption site.”

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What’s behind the increase?

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According to Ian Culbert, executive director at the Canadian Public Health Association, an increase in discarded drug paraphernalia is “just a symptom of a larger problem” as provincial funding is cut off for supervised consumption sites.

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“People who would have been using those services and therefore discarding their paraphernalia at the service don’t have that option, so they’re using in public again,” Culbert says. “And once you have consumed, your ability to make great decisions about discarding your paraphernalia are fairly limited, so it’s going to be left where it’s used.”