Marchers remember opioid victims
Activists want province to remove freeze on overdose prevention sites
A community wrought with “despair” over lives lost to overdoses marched to ask the province to lift its ongoing freeze on new sites intended to help fight the opioid crisis.
At a Monday night vigil hosted by the Toronto Overdose Prevention Society (TOPS) near Regent Park, dozens of marchers remembered the hundreds of Ontarians who have died of an overdose in recent years — and warned of a rising death toll if the province does not allow more prevention sites. The event came more than two weeks after the provincial government prolonged the freeze by extending its review of safe injection sites — a move that TOPS says is doing more harm.
“We’re trying to run our dayto-day and supervise people in reversing overdoses,” said Kelly White, a TOPS organizer. “But because it’s so precarious, much of our time is spent trying to fight for what we have.
“So energy that could be spent meeting the needs of our clients is spent just trying to survive,” she said. Community members and supporters on Monday evening marched first to Street Health to read a list of names of people who had died of an overdose, and then to the Moss Park Overdose Prevention Site to sign postcards asking Premier Doug Ford to support the sites.
“There’s sadness and also a lot of anger in our community right now,” White said. “A lot of people are asking us what they can do to try to save our sites.”
TOPS is asking the province to continue with the previous Liberal government’s plan to open three new sites and to increase funding for services that it deems are critical. Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott announced in August — two months after the June election — that the opening of three new overdose-prevention sites would be put on hold. Along with the freeze, the province launched a review of harm-reduction practices and an assessment of whether the sites “have merit.”
On Sept. 28, Elliot delayed a planned announcement on the review, saying the province needed more time.
Without enough overdose-prevention sites, people resort to using drugs in places like public bathrooms, according to Jessica Hales, a nurse practitioner who works with TOPS.
“It seems obvious what the benefits (of the sites) are and they’re backed by research,” Hales said. “So why in the middle of a crisis would you conduct a review?” According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, 1,265 Ontarians died of an apparent opioid-related death in 2017. In the first three months of 2018, there were 317 such deaths in the province. That number puts 2018 on track to match or exceed the number of deaths last year, TOPS has said.
This is the second vigil TOPS has hosted since the province delayed its decision, with the organization staking crosses in the lawn at Queen’s Park on Oct. 1 in memory of those who died of an overdose.