THE OPIOID CRISIS IS GROWING EVERYWHERE — INCLUDING TORONTO. CANADA’S LARGEST CITY HAS NO FORMAL HARM REDUCTION PLAN, BUT NO ONE HAS STOPPED VOLUNTEERS WHO HAVE SET UP A CLINIC IN A CITY PARK.
IT’S UNOFFICIAL — BUT WELCOME
The tent went up at ten to four on Sunday — a big tan tarp slung over a metal base in the last ungentrified sliver of Toronto’s downtown. Around it, tattooed volunteers shifted supplies: black naloxone kits, water bottles, baggies stuffed with sterilized needles and gear.
“Don’t you think this is so cool,” Angie Austin said to a group of friends sitting on the grass nearby. “What is it?” one replied.
“It is,” she said, “a safe injection site.”
For the second day in a row Sunday, harm reduction advocates in
Toronto operated a guerrilla injection site out of a tent in a public park, just behind a hockey arena and not far from a playground. They did so in full view of the police, who watched on bicycles from a distance and made no move to intervene.
For the volunteers, this is a literal matter of life and death.
Toronto addicts are overdosing and dying at an unprecedented rate, said Matt Johnson, from the Toronto Harm Reduction Alliance. They’re falling victim to heroin laced with fentanyl and carfentanil in the latest wave of North America’s brutal opioid crisis.
Austin, a heroin addict, said she lost 10 friends to overdose in the last year alone. Her friend Joanne, who didn’t give her last name, said she overdosed twice last week. Her husband brought her back the second time with naloxone. He walked through the door just in time.
Toronto has plans to open three sanctioned safe injection sites, with one scheduled to come on line as early as this fall. But Johnson and other organizers of the guerrilla site don’t think they can wait that long.
On Saturday, they marched into Moss Park, in an area on Queen Street East known for public drug use, pitched a large tent and declared themselves open. They have a volunteer nurse on site at all times, Johnson said. He thinks about 15 people used the site Saturday. Another 30 or so took naloxone kits or other clean needles.
The police have so far decided to let the tent be. Supt. Heinz Kuck said the department isn’t encouraging or endorsing drug use but, for now, officers, under direction from the deputy chief of police, won’t take it down. Nor will they arrest or hassle users coming in or out of the tent.
“There is a pressing argument for saving lives,” Kuck said.
Under the agreement with police, organizers will operate the site between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. with a registered nurse supervising the action inside. No one seems sure exactly how long it all will last.
Toronto Coun. Joe Cressy, chair of the city’s drug strategy, said he won’t condemn the activists.
“We have front line harm reduction workers who are losing their colleagues to overdose, they’re losing their clients, they’re losing their friends, and we know that these deaths are preventable,” he said.
“Frankly, given the scale of the crisis, I can’t blame them.”
A spokesman for Toronto Mayor John Tory wouldn’t comment directly on the pop-up site. She said in a statement that Tory remains focused on getting the sanctioned sites online.
At about 5 p.m. Sunday, Austin sat inside the tent with Joanne. She injected heroin into a vein just above her elbow, then helped Joanne inject the same into her neck. Joanne also smoked crack inside.
They sat on plastic chairs at a folding table. The bright summer light filtered dimly through the tarp and onto their colourful hair.
WE KNOW THAT THESE DEATHS ARE PREVENTABLE ... GIVEN THE SCALE OF THE CRISIS, I CAN’T BLAME (THE ACTIVISTS).