Public health board members call on Ontario to declare opioid crisis state of emergency

Members voted to step up efforts to save lives in the ongoing opioid crisis, but Ontario's health minister has decided the province won't declare the surge in opioid overdoses and deaths an "emergency."

Thestar.com
Sept. 25, 2017
By David Rider

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. And, if city council agrees, she will be designated Toronto's "overdose co-ordinator with authority to direct and co-ordinate city's response across divisions and agencies."

Amy Wright, a harm reduction worker who lost a brother to suicide after he struggled with addiction, told the committee that when the phone rings she always expects to hear that another family member has died from overdose. She has called the public health threat "a huge crisis."

"I am praying for this city to do something, there needs to be a mass shift in how we view substance abuse," she said.

Olympia Trypis, a 22-year-old peer mentor in the youth shelter system, cried as she described the stigma of drug use. She fears that an overdose will end her life, or that she'll be arrested or robbed of her drugs She believes that politicians follow the public, and aren't going to lead change.

"I am just begging you to be a hero because every day at the site I see heroes," she said, referring to volunteers who ensure people can use drugs safely and rescue those who start to overdose.

"We need the public to push you guys to be leaders so you guys can decriminalize drugs that are killing people."