Toronto’s mayor says he is committed to formulating a “complex and comprehensive” strategy to prevent and respond to an uptick of opioid-related drug overdoses in the city.
Mayor John Tory held a meeting Monday to discuss the plan to deal with the rise in fentanyl-related overdoses and deaths in the city, and how to prepare if the situation escalates.
The meeting was held hours after the government of Ontario announced funding for three supervised injection sites in the city. Council voiced their support for the injection sites last year.
Health Minister Eric Hoskins spoke to Tory earlier today to voice his support for the initiative, and reportedly wrote to the federal health minister to say having a comprehensive strategy that includes safe injection sites will help save lives, The Canadian Press reported.
Toronto’s Acting Medical Officer of Health Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Coun. Joe Cressy and City Manager Peter Wallace all attended the meeting along with representatives from more than 20 organizations and community groups, including harm reduction groups and drug users.
Speaking to reporters following the meeting, Tory said he reached out to Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson after hearing about 100 fentanyl-related deaths wreaking havoc on the city in the month of November alone.
He said Robertson told him to “get ready,” as the crisis faced in the west is bound to spread east.
“As mayor, I will continue to work with everybody in our own public service here to take whatever measures we can to more effectively deal with the cases in front of us,” he said.
“It is not acceptable in our city, it is not acceptable in our country that people who, in many cases, suffer from a form of mental illness through addiction are dying in a lonely fashion and dying without us doing everything we can when we know there are things we can do to prevent those deaths.”
Fentanyl is a highly potent opioid that’s said to be 100 times more powerful than morphine. The drug is often prescribed for chronic pain relief and sedation but has trickled into the illicit drug market where components are imported illegally, reproduced and sold in a synthetic form.
According to the chief coroner’s office, fentanyl was involved in 165 deaths in Ontario in 2015, up from 154 from the previous year.
In Toronto, 45 fentanyl-related deaths were recorded in 2015, up from 23 in 2014. It’s not yet clear how many died from opioid overdose in 2016.
“Toronto is facing an escalating opioid crisis, people are dying in increasing numbers and these deaths are preventable,” Cressy, who chairs the city’s drug strategy implementation panel and who has been a stalwart supporter of opening supervised injection sites in Toronto, said Monday prior to the meeting.
Cressy later told reporters that despite today’s funding announcement from the province, “more work needs to be done.”
Toronto’s numbers don’t compare to the vicious opioid battle British Columbia has long been fighting. According to the Coroners Service in British Columbia, between January and October 2016, there were 374 drug-related deaths where fentanyl was detected. That number is an increase of 194 per cent over the number of deaths (127) that occurred during the same timeframe in 2015.
Tory hopes Monday’s meeting will be the start of a monthly effort to reduce the effects of the crisis when it reaches the city.
Tory told The Canadian Press that he also plans on discussing the issue at a meeting with fellow big-city mayors sometime this year.
Last month for the first time, Toronto seized a quantity of drugs containing the deadly drug. Toronto Police said on Dec. 7 that a substance seized near the end of October, purported to be heroin, was tested and determined to be a concoction of carfentanil, cocaine and caffeine.
Carfentanil, which is byproduct of fentanyl, is said to be about 100 times more potent than fentanyl. Only 20 micrograms of carfentanil – approximately the size of a grain of salt – is enough to kill someone.
Previously, the closest police seizure of the opioid to Toronto was recorded in Waterloo.
“Our concern is that after illegal fentanyl comes into the Toronto market, (it will) spike the already too high number of people who are dying of overdoses of fentanyl here in our city of Toronto,” Toronto city Coun. Joe Mihevc told CP24 Monday.
Provincial health and safety officials have been ramping up efforts to combat the crisis in recent months, including a two-day training symposium organized by the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police aimed at educating front-line officers on what authorities have deemed ‘one of the most significant health and safety crisis in Ontario today.’
Meanwhile, Health Minister Eric Hoskins announced in October that Naloxone, an opioid antidote medication, would be made available in Ontario free of charge.
Cressy said that through Toronto’s overdose prevention program, naloxone kits are available but that they need to be even more accessible.
He said Toronto’s ‘Preventing Overdose In Toronto’ program has distributed over 3,500 naloxone kits in the last four years, half of those kits were handed out in 2016.
Of the 3,500 distributed, 545 of those successful reversed the effects of the deadly opioid on the person.
“That’s 545 lives saved by Toronto Public Health,” Cressy said.
Toronto Paramedics alone used more naloxone kits in 2016 than in the two years prior.
“People are dying, but this isn’t new,” Cressy said. “People use drugs and have been dying because they use drugs for years, but far too often it was in the shadows because drug use was marginalized and stigmatized.”
“If it takes a crisis to bring to the overdose situation to light, if it takes a crisis to make us think about drug use differently, to make us think about drug use from a public health framework… then that’s what it takes.”
With files from the Canadian Press
