Pubdate: Thu, 12 Nov 2015
Source: East York Mirror (CN ON)
Contact:  2015 East York Mirror
Website: http://www.insidetoronto.com/eastyork-toronto-on
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2219

TALK ALONE WON'T SOLVE TORONTO'S DRUG PROBLEM

The war on drugs may be nearing an end, but the war of words on drugs 
is just getting started.

At last week's Toronto Council meeting, a debate on banning hookahs 
in Toronto business establishments couldn't go for long before 
hand-wringing questions about the implications of legalized marijuana 
would have on such a ban. Toronto's chief medical officer of health 
Dr. David McKeown told councillors again and again that the 
fulfillment of the Justin Trudeau government's promise to legalize 
the drug wouldn't have much impact on this ban one way or another. 
But that didn't stop the rhetoric.

It is an easy target for fear-mongering politicians, pot 
legalization. What terrible things might happen when Toronto 
residents are granted easier, consequence-free access to the 
long-unlawful, debatably unhealthy drug?

Here's the thing: Torontonians are already ingesting substances 
illegal and legal that cause different degrees of harm. And Toronto 
has been dealing with that reality for a decade now, through the 
Toronto Drug Strategy.

On Monday, Dr. McKeown provided an update on the city's attempts to 
deal with the problems that arise from addiction, experimentation and 
overdose in the city.

Overdose right now is the big problem faced by public health 
officials. Over the past 10 years, death by drug overdose has 
increased by 41 per cent, and is now the second biggest cause of 
death for young people. (Vehicle collisions remain the first.)

The culprit in the overdose spike is a resurgence in popularity for 
opiates like heroin - highly addictive and so difficult to discourage 
with the threat of arrest and long jail sentences.

There is no easy way to deal with this, and the Drug Strategy's 
implementation board has come up with a partial solution: POINT, a 
Toronto Public Health program to prevent overdoses in Toronto. POINT 
distributes a kit for delivering Naxoline, a drug that can reverse 
the fatal effects of an overdose if administered immediately. So far, 
2,000 kits have been distributed, and the drug has been used 300 times.

More lives might be saved if the province and federal government 
passed a Good Samaritan law so that people present at an overdose can 
call 911 without fear of arrest themselves. That won't solve things 
either, but that is the reality: when it comes to drug use and abuse, 
there's no solution, just mitigation. And no amount of talk will change that.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom