Toronto opens its first legal safe injection site

Toronto opened its first legal supervised injection site on Monday, just over a week after harm reduction workers set up an illegal pop-up overdose prevention tent in response to unprecedented drug overdoses and deaths across the city.

The site, run by Toronto Public Health and consisting of a table with three chairs, is an interim measure until the city officially opens the three supervised injection sites that were approved by Health Canada earlier this year. Those sites are expected to open sometime in the fall, but no specific dates have been set.

And even though Toronto Mayor John Tory said on Friday he hopes the expedited interim site would mean workers would dismantle the illegal pop-up in Moss Park — about a kilometre from the supervised injection site — those running it say they plan to keep it open indefinitely as it serves a different purpose. And they hope that other pop-up sites like it will open across the city.

“I think it’s really great that the interim site has opened so quickly … and it wouldn’t have happened had we not opened the Moss Park site,” Zoë Dodd, one of the harm reduction workers spearheading the pop-up site run by the Toronto Harm Reduction Alliance, told VICE News. “But it isn’t enough and we’re not doing enough to address the emergency that we’re in. Even with our prevention site, it’s still not enough.”

“It’s not an either or.”

So far, those working at the pop-up site say they have reversed five overdoses with the opioid overdose antidote naloxone, and also with rescue breathing. About 12 to 25 people use that site every day, and workers have distributed more than 200 naloxone kits. The group has also raised thousands of dollars in donations.

On top of that, Dodd says she and other workers have been able to connect with users about the quality of their drugs, which have become increasingly contaminated with synthetic opioids like fentanyl and carfentanil. They plan to conduct drug testing in the near future and are in the process of looking into acquiring test strips for users to do so.

Dodd added that the city’s sanctioned supervised injection sites and the pop-ups can exist simultaneously, like they do in Vancouver. And the Moss Park site serves those living in a different neighborhood than the city’s site. She explained that while drug users are allowed to inject, or maybe snort, their drugs at the supervised injection sites that the city is opening, they won’t be able to smoke — like they can at the unsanctioned location.

Despite calls to shutter the pop-up site, Toronto Police chief Mark Saunders confirmed to CP24 that officers will continue to allow it to operate.

“If we get an injunction then we will act on it, but if not, chances are we won’t be,” said Saunders.

The first legal safe injection site in North America opened in Vancouver in 2003. The Liberal government recently made it easier for public health authorities to open them, and has so far granted 16 applications to open them in other cities in B.C., as well as in Ontario and Quebec.