‘It is just not slowing down’
Rally in response to the opioid crisis hears tales of loss and ‘burnt out’ workers
Kim Paré said his family did everything they could to help their bright and beautiful daughter, but in the end she couldn’t fight the illness of addiction.
It’s been almost four years since Kaitlyn died, at 24, from a prescription opioid overdose and from her father’s perspective nothing has really changed.
“We are losing a generation of people who could be valuable members of our society. We have to help them,’ Paré said, speaking to about 30 people at a rally at King and York Sts. Tuesday’s event was part of a National Day of Action in response to the opioid and contaminated drug crisis.
Paré told the Star his daughter turned to drugs and alcohol in her teens to manage “debilitating anxiety” and eventually to prescription drugs.
She asked her parents for help, but getting her into rehabilitation was a long and difficult process. They found a program on the West Coast, but she was kicked out. The same thing happened at a second program. She took a bus home to Hamilton and was staying with a friend, about block from their family home when she used again.
“That is how strong the pull was,” Paré said. “The police came to our house on March 15, 2014, and told us she had passed.”
“I feel like we have had our head in the sand for the last four years since my daughter died,” he said. “I’ve never blamed the system for this, but I don’t think enough has been done by government to address the crisis.”
The rally included speakers and supporters from the Toronto Overdose Prevention Society (TOPS), Prisoners HIV/AIDS Support Action Network, Black Lives Matter, the Toronto Harm Reduction Alliance and the South Riverdale Community Health Centre.
TOPS and the harm reduction alliance have been running a “pop up” overdose prevention site in Moss Park since mid-August.
Harm reduction worker Zoë Dodd said their team has reversed 168 overdoses at the site, where healthcare workers and volunteers have overseen 5,185 injections.
“It is just not slowing down,” Dodd told the Star. “People are ODing every day and we are burnt out and burdened with what is happening.”
Dodd and fellow advocates are calling for the immediate decriminalization of all drugs and for the government to declare a state of emergency.
Toronto has an overdose action plan and safe injection sites are operating out of a Toronto Public Health building housing the Works needle exchange program and the South Riverdale centre. A third site will open at the Fred Victor Centre on Wednesday.
Councillor Joe Cressy said a fourth Queen St. site will open within weeks, 1,700 members of front-line city staff have been trained in overdose prevention and the city has received federal approval to implement drug testing at safe injection sites.
A public awareness campaign will launch soon and the city is working to improve harm reduction services at live music festivals, he said.
“I think it is fair to say the city of Toronto is at the cutting edge of progressive harm reduction policy,” Cressy said. “But that doesn’t mean that it is enough,” he said, adding all levels of government need to boost their efforts.
The federal health minister’s office said the government has responded to the crisis in a “comprehensive and collaborative manner,” including a $100-million investment to be spent over five years in prevention, treatment, harm reduction and enforcement, while supporting the Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act. The act can offer some legal protectionagainst charges for possession, if people call in a suspected overdose.
The government also allows agencies to apply to open temporary sites without fear of criminal charges.
Toronto police do not carry Naloxone kits, to reverse overdoses. Advocates say fear of arrest prevents people from calling for help.
“Every time our friend, our brother, our sister, our mother or daughter dies, it takes a piece out of us,” said advocate Olympia Trypis, 22.
Trypis has spoken about her own drug use, the loss of several friends, and the need for more mental health services for people managing constant grief.
“We are never going to get to see them again and it takes a huge toll on us.”