Toronto to submit request to decriminalize drug use

Unprecedented opioid overdoses have led to renewed calls for governments to implement new measures in addressing a crisis that has only worsened during the pandemic.

Toronto is the latest municipality to seek an exemption from the federal government to decriminalize personal drug use.

“I think the approach that we’ve been taking for quite a long time now is a war on drugs, so criminalizing drug takers,” said Taryn Grieder, Staff Scientist and Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. “It doesn’t help if we take someone who is suffering from addiction and put them in jail, where there’s very little treatment, and they come out of jail not having developed any new skills.”

Changing drug laws is only one piece of the puzzle, but experts say it is crucial in addressing a domino effect of social and health impacts that come with criminalization.

Nazlee Maghsoudi, Manager of the Policy Impact Unit at the Centre on Drug Policy Evaluation, says interactions with the criminal justice system have long-term negative impacts on an individual’s life.

“Criminal records follow people throughout their lives, reducing access to services, employment services, housing opportunities and not to mention the stigma that comes along with having a criminal record,” says Maghsoudi.

Toronto Public Health is currently analyzing the results of a questionnaire completed by 5,000 people, dozens of interviews and roundtables from stakeholders and people impacted by drug use, and two public consultations.

The data will help to inform the city’s submission to Health Canada that is anticipated sometime in the fall.

“If we can decriminalize drug use and hopefully destigmatize it as well, people will hopefully feel like they have more opportunity to get back in a place in life where they want to be,” said Grieder.

Vancouver recently submitted a similar application asking for an exemption for decriminalization, which is currently under review by Health Canada.

Maghsoudi said it’s vital that in their application to the federal government, Toronto centralizes the voices of people who use drugs and gives this population the autonomy to approve this process because otherwise decriminalization will not have its intended effects.

“They are the most impacted stakeholder and their voice is one, when it is included in these types of bodies, is often tokenistic and performative,” Maghsoudi explained. “We need to ensure that Toronto is really meaningfully, and substantially and in an ongoing way engaging people who use drugs in this process as the central stakeholder, and as the stakeholder whose voice matters most.”

Portugal, which became the first country to decriminalize drugs 20 years ago, is often times seen as a prime example of the impacts changing drug laws can have on the problem.

“If people needed drugs, they had to go get them from the government and when they did that they were set up with programs, counseling, and job skills programs,” said Grieder. “They took all of the money that was going into law basically and put it into programs that help the person change their lives. But they do want to change, but they don’t have the tools to do so, it seems.”

Toronto Public Health declined to do an interview with CityNews, but said this crisis is worsening.

“The increased involvement of stimulants alongside opioids directly contributing to the cause of death in overdoses in Toronto means that what we are facing goes beyond an opioid poisoning crisis and is now most accurately described as a drug poisoning crisis,” a TPH spokesperson said. “The drug poisoning crisis is also reflected in results from Toronto’s drug checking services, which continue to identify larger quantities of unexpected substances of concern in the unregulated drug supply.”

Maghsoudi says the supply is unregulated and contaminated as a result of criminalization.

“We’ve chosen to leave the unregulated drug market to the unregulated market, and what that means is there’s no accountability and there’s no responsibility for individuals to provide what they are intending to sell,” she says. “The drug market will always come back with something that is replacing what has been scheduled, criminalized and more perused by law enforcement.”

‘Unprecedented’ rise in deaths

Between 2016 and 2020, over 6,800 people died from opioid overdoses.

In Toronto, TPH states “deaths involving all substances, including opioids, have increased to record highs.”

A spokesperson notes that there was a 71 per cent increase in suspected drug-related overdoses in 2020, compared to the previous year. Adding that these ‘alarming increases’ are ‘unprecedented’.

The data also shows that calls to paramedics have also increased to ‘record high’s’, including a 102 per cent increase in calls involving deaths. In the first three months of 2021, Toronto EMS responded to 1,173 suspected opioid overdose calls, 93 of those calls involved a death.

TPH adds that compared to 2019, the number of opioid-related deaths among people experiencing homelessness in Ontario, more than doubled during the pandemic.