With the looming closure of five supervised consumption sites in Toronto, harm reduction advocates took time Wednesday to train members of the public on how to reverse drug overdoses.
Zoe Dodd, a co-organizer of the Toronto Overdose Prevention Society (TOPS), said the training is akin to emergency preparedness because the consumption sites save lives.
“If the supervised consumption sites were to close, we are afraid that people would be overdosing outside in public and that we’d need the public to help us to save lives. We also know that paramedics cannot get out fast enough and it’s a respiratory emergency, so people don’t have time,” Dodd, a harm reduction worker, added.
“In a supervised consumption site, we can act fast, but out here, if someone’s left four to six minutes, they could get hypoxia to their brain, a brain injury, a cardiac arrest, and die.”
In an accompanying news release, TOPS said the training is necessary because advocates believe the planned closures of the sites will have deadly consequences for people who use drugs. The group called the closures a “callous policy change.”
Premier Doug Ford’s government is planning legislation that will close at least five Toronto supervised drug consumption sites by March 2025 because they are located within 200 metres of schools or daycares.
The province would also prohibit new ones from opening, as it shifts its approach to the drug overdose crisis toward a model it says focuses on treatment, recovery and community safety.
Hannah Jensen, a spokesperson for Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones, said in an email on Tuesday that people in the province have made it clear that the sites cause safety problems in some communities.
“Ontarians deserve more than a health care system that is focused on providing people struggling with addiction with tools to use illegal drugs,” Jensen said.
Jensen said the province’s new addictions plan, which involves opening 19 homelessness and addiction recovery treatment (HART) hubs, backed by more than $300 million in funding, will provide a “system of care.”
The hubs will not offer safe supply, supervised drug consumption or needle exchange programs. Instead, the government says, they will offer other forms of support such as supportive housing, employment help and addiction care.
In its news release, also called on the government to do the following:
- Reverse the decision to force supervised consumption sites across the province to close and stop attacking harm reduction.
- Remove the ban on new supervised consumption sites opening, immediately fund and open the sites in Timmins, Sudbury and Windsor that were forced to close, and scale up sites to Northern communities.
- Expand supervised consumption sites to include supervised inhalation services.
- Provide voluntary and evidence-based detox and treatment on demand.
Ontario’s shifting approach to the drug overdose crisis has ignited a fierce debate between those who see supervised consumption sites as critical spaces that save lives every day and others who say they’ve made the neighbourhoods where they’re located unsafe.