(Toronto) Toronto is preparing to call on the federal government to decriminalize possession of illicit drugs for personal use in the city, saying the move is necessary as drug-related deaths soar.
A public consultation on the issue ended this week and the city’s chief medical officer of health said Toronto plans to send its request to Health Canada later this fall.
“In Toronto, deaths involving all substances, including opioids, have reached record levels,” said Dr.r Eileen de Villa in a statement. The situation remains urgent and more action is needed to respond to it. ”
Toronto Public Health said a total of 521 confirmed opioid overdose deaths were recorded in the city last year. This represented a 78% increase from the deaths recorded in 2019, she said.
Data from the city also shows that in the first three months of this year, paramedics responded to 1,173 calls for potential opioid overdoses, 93 of which were fatalities. By comparison, 46 calls involving death were recorded in the first three months of 2020.
Toronto’s demand for decriminalization – which will seek an exemption from Health Canada under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act for the personal use of drugs in the city – will follow a similar request made by Vancouver in May.
Leigh Chapman, a registered nurse and co-organizer of the Toronto Overdose Prevention Society, says the Toronto request is “a step in the right direction.”
She lost her 43-year-old brother, Brad, to an opioid overdose in August 2015, a few weeks after being released from prison. Her death prompted a coroner’s inquest which resulted in a series of recommendations to better protect vulnerable people living with addictions.
One of the recommendations was that the federal government consider decriminalizing the possession of all drugs for personal use and increasing prevention, harm reduction and treatment services.
Mme Chapman claimed that these measures could have saved his brother.
“Brad’s whole life would have been different if he hadn’t literally had a cycle of incarceration for probably over 20 years on and off,” she said.
A 2016 study published in the journal PLOS ONE found that between 2006 and 2013 in Ontario, one in ten adult drug poisoning deaths occurred within one year of release from provincial incarceration.
“I think we need to reduce the harms of criminalization so that we can better meet the needs of people, meet them where they are and see how we can help them stay alive,” Mr.me Chapman.
Toronto City Councilor and Chairman of the Toronto Board of Health, Joe Cressy, said city staff are “currently consulting on the details of what an exemption would look like” with respect to the decriminalization of personal-use drugs in the city. the most populous city in Canada.
“We are facing a public health crisis,” Cressy insisted. And the way to fix it is with a health response. ”
Decriminalization is a key part of a series of measures needed to tackle the overdose crisis, alongside treatment, increased harm reduction services and safer supply, he added. .
“This is a critical component and I believe that a range of experts, from police to health workers, calling for such action nationwide, is only growing because people continue to die from it. preventable deaths, ”he said.
The Toronto Center for Addiction and Mental Health recently released a statement on the matter, saying that turning criminals into addicts has been ineffective and counterproductive.
Health Canada did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This dispatch was written with the financial assistance of Facebook and The Canadian Press for news exchanges.