Board votes to declare an opioid emergency
Health minister has rejected call to upgrade status of crisis
After hearing anguished, exasperated pleas from Toronto drug users and overdose prevention workers, public health board members voted Monday to step up efforts to save lives in the ongoing opioid crisis.
Ontario’s health minister, however, has already rejected one key call — that the province declare the surge in opioid overdoses and deaths an “emergency” under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act.
The health board voted unanimously to ask for the emergency designation after Dr. Eileen de Villa, the city’s medical officer of health, said that, in B.C., such a designation improved access to overdose data and helped “create (new) overdose prevention sites” in that province.
An emergency designation in Ontario, she said, could trigger “a smoother flow, per se, of dollars” to do likewise here, but acknowledged the province would still have ultimate control over the timing and distribution of roughly $300 million it has so far pledged to help reduce overdose deaths.
At Queen’s Park hours earlier, Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins told reporters that declaring a state of emergency is unnecessary because it “would not provide me with opportunities or powers that I don’t already have. I feel confident in my current ability to work, in collaboration with partners, to address the public health crisis that is the opioid crisis.”
Hoskins added he is “confident that we’ve got the tools that we need — but we’ve got a lot of work to do, and it’s multi-faceted,” suggesting more funding could be coming to reverse a spike in overdose deaths seen across Canada since fentanyl, a highly toxic painkiller, started hitting the streets.
Councillor Joe Cressy, the head of Toronto’s drug strategy, told fellow health committee members that “the province has to treat this more seriously than it has . . . this is an emergency, thus they have to call it an emergency.”
The word itself is not important, he said, but discussions with B.C. authorities suggest the designation could bring urgency to an response to the overdose crisis that he, along with the drug users and harm-reduction workers, say is already years behind, at the cost of Torontonians’ lives.
Other measures approved by the health board include having de Villa look at adding more safe-injection sites in Toronto — there is currently an illegal volunteer-run site in Moss Park, a city-run one on Victoria St. near Ryerson University, with two more set to open in community health centres in late October — and adding safe-inhalation so that people can smoke crack and other drugs with medical help nearby and without fear of arrest.
Safe inhalation happens at Moss Park, but is currently not allowed under the Health Canada rules being followed for the other sites.
De Villa is going to report back with her “best possible health advice” on the issue of fully decriminalizing drugs — she has already said Canada’s current crime-based approach has failed and a health-based approach should be considered.