10 Ontario mayors meet to discuss opioids

Sarnia will be at the table Monday as 10 mayors from Ontario cities meet to discuss the threat of opioid drugs and the growing number of overdose deaths in the province.

“I think people realize this is a crisis,” said Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley, who’s meeting in Toronto with his counterparts from Windsor, Brampton, Hamilton, Kitchener, Mississauga, Ottawa, Sudbury, Thunder Bay and Toronto, at the invitation of Health Minister Eric Hoskins.

“We’re all in this together and we have to solve it together,” Bradley said.

Opioids, powerful and addictive painkillers like morphine and fentanyl, were linked to 734 deaths in Ontario in 2015, the most up-todate statistics available.

While fentanyl-patch abuse has been largely brought under control via a provincially instituted exchange program, powder fentanyl scourging western provinces appears to be creeping eastward, Sarnia police have said.

The drug is up to 100 times more powerful than morphine and is sometimes added to other drugs, like cocaine or heroin, leading to overdoses in unsuspecting users.

Meanwhile, there’s a checkerboard approach across the country both in terms of data collection and approaches to mitigating the harm opioids can cause, Bradley said.

More than 900 died in British Columbia last year, where monthly reports on overdose deaths are reported in the coroner’s office.

Understanding different approaches and sharing strategies is important, Bradley said.

“One of the outcomes I’d like to see is, and even this group which is a significant representation of, with the 10 mayors, of the Ontario population, is how can we continue to keep understanding what we’re each doing,” he said.

Families are struggling and need encouragement that leaders are trying to stem the tide of addiction and overdose, he said. “They need a message of hope.” The region that includes Sarnia-Lambton, Chatham-Kent and Windsor-Essex was tops in the province in 2015-16 in terms of how many people — one in five — filled opioid prescriptions, according to a recent Health Quality Ontario report.