Over the past five years, Toronto has grown from a city known for its progressive conservatism to being at the forefront of progressive drug policy, moving from a war on drugs mentality to endorsing the decriminalization of small amounts of illegal possession of drugs. drugs
On Monday, following the advice of Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto’s top physician, the health board voted unanimously to ask the federal government to exempt all city residents from criminal charges for possession of small amounts of illicit drugs such as crack and heroin. Following in Vancouver’s footsteps, Toronto would be only the second Canadian city to seek that status.
The recent evolution of the city has been fueled by a rising death toll from overdoses, the successful legalization of cannabis, and a changing police outlook.
For those on the ground who have seen the fallout from a drug intoxication crisis that still plagues the city with overdoses and deaths, decriminalization is the logical next step in a deliberate approach to addressing addiction as a health problem, at the same time. time that the excess of vigilance of the black and indigenous population changes.
In 2005, after the HIV / AIDS crisis, activists came together to form the Toronto Drug Strategy Advisory Committee, an odd mix of community users, health and justice workers, police officers, and law enforcement officials. city who sat at the same table.
The result was the Toronto Drug Strategy, a plan to increase harm reduction and treatment options, reduce stigma, and prevent overdoses, in stark contrast to the prevailing approach of treating drug addiction as a crime.
“This was the era that everyone believed in the war on drugs,” Coun said. Gord Perks, who now chairs the drug strategy implementation panel.
Perks said the panel’s work was bolstered by Vancouver’s Insite, the first supervised injection clinic in North America.
Following its opening in 2003, the agency Insite runs won a historic legal battle against the government of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper when the Canadian Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that there should be a clear path for such sites to operate with federal permission.
That opened the door for Toronto and others to go ahead with their own supervised injection services.
In 2016, the city signed a plan to open three supervised injection sites downtown: in South Riverdale, Yonge-Dundas Square and Parkdale.
Coun. Joe Cressy, who chairs the city’s board of health, said that downtown people who witnessed the overdose crisis in their backyard “knew the status quo had been broken” and were ready to support a new solution.
“The overdose crisis has reached a point where it is impossible to ignore,” he said of the mindset.
But the process of requesting and obtaining approval from the health minister for injection sites supervised under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, as well as obtaining provincial funding, was slow.
Though word finally came in June 2017 that both legal status and seed funding had been approved, workers needed time to get specific sites up and running, and a drug poisoning crisis was overtaking them.
That summer, officials’ fears came true: Fentanyl, the deadly drug sweeping British Columbia, had reached Toronto and overdoses related to drugs laced with fentanyl were on the rise.
In August, community volunteers pitched a large, makeshift khaki tent on the edge of Moss Park in the center east of downtown to try to prevent their friends, colleagues and neighbors from dying.
Trained harm reduction workers supervised self-injectors while offering training on how to use life-saving naloxone, a drug that can reverse the effects of an overdose.
Despite the unauthorized site not being allowed by federal law, the unofficial outpost in the park became a crucial life-saving service that police and city officials tacitly allowed to continue to operate as deaths increased.
On November 8, 2017, Toronto Public Health opened the first legally supervised injection clinic with Ottawa’s permission in The Works building in downtown Victoria Street.
Just a year later, on October 17, 2018, another big change came when cannabis was legalized in Canada and now retail stores have popped up all over the city.
Although there were fears about minors’ access to legal marijuana and that legalization would lead to heavy use, early Statistics Canada data showed that youth intake had not skyrocketed, only incremental increases in overall use for the rest of the population. national population.
Research has long shown that a criminalizing “war on drugs”, one that began in North America in the 1970s, has not had a significant impact on drug supply or demand, according to a Toronto Public Health discussion paper published in 2018. outlined.
According to this document, the criminalization of drug use has made drug users distrust accessing services and supports, has created criminal records that make it difficult to find work or shelter, and has forced risky behaviors that have caused infections, illnesses and overdose, while costing Canadian taxpayers about $ 2. billion annually to enforce.
There are now nine supervised injection clinics from Parkdale to South Riverdale, operated by trained staff who monitor consumption and monitor clients for signs of overdose and infection, while offering in-house services and referrals for addiction treatment and other basic needs. .
In a further development on the new approach to drug addiction, the federal government announced in August 2020 that it was funding a $ 1.58 million pilot trial to provide a safe supply of opioid medications through two of the consumption sites. monitored in an attempt to combat street drug contamination. There was little, if any, setback.
There have been unlikely supporters of progressive policies at stake.
Mayor John Tory, in a statement to the Star, spoke about meeting two families who lost youth to an overdose last year and earlier witnessed a woman injecting herself into the neck in the unauthorized Moss Park tent.
“I had a strong urge to try to do more to help just because I met her.”
In the summer of 2020, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, which represents various forces responsible for policing drug users, surprised observers when they fully agreed with decriminalization.
“The simple act of arresting people for the simple possession of illicit drugs has proven to be ineffective,” said a report published by the association.
Last week, the city’s police chief, Ramer, wrote in support of the Toronto Public Health decriminalization plan.
Ahead of Monday’s vote, health board member Perks said he thinks about the people who didn’t live to see his drug strategy play out, or the services offered that could have saved them.
Like Cindy Reardon, one of the community members on the original drug strategy committee, who died in 2017 before the first supervised injection site opened.
“Remarkable people, all of them,” Perks said.
Reference-www.thestar.com