Brockville harm reduction workers push for safe consumption site

Workers at aBrockville, Ont.,methadone clinicare pushing for asupervised consumption site, but they saystrict federal and provincial rules make it nearly impossible for smaller citiestoqualify for funding.

Calls for a facility where people can consumedrugs under the supervision of health workerscomeasan especially toxic drug supply filters into the community fromToronto andother major cities, causing a sharp spike inopioid overdoses and deaths.

But while Toronto's drug supply hasmade it into smaller cities, the same level ofprovincialfunding and health supporthasnot.

"Toronto has many safe consumption sites that people can go to use. We don't have anything like that here in Brockville," said Jes Besharah, a harm reduction worker with Change Healthcare in Brockville.

"That's something we could look at doing on a smaller levelto give people who are alone or just want to be safe, a safe place to use for now."

Change Healthcare administersless potent opioids likemethadone to help treat users accustomed to anunregulated street supply. Besharahsays it isn't enough.

Opioid deaths in Ottawa nearly doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic, and surrounding communities were similarly impacted.

The Leeds, Grenville and Lanark District Health Unit, which includes Brockville,recorded fouropioid-related deaths in a ten-day periodin late July. The health unit has now seen more reported overdoses in the first half of 2021 than it did all of last year.

Much of the increase comes asthe emergence of morepotent opioidsin places like Torontois making thedrug supplyacross the province stronger and more toxic.

"We need[a supervised consumption site] badly," said Besharah."Pretty much everybody whoknows somebody who'susing right now wants somewhere safethey can go."

That demand, said University of Ottawa professor and drug law researcherEugene Oscapella, is present in both large and small cities.

"Small communities are having problems with drug overdoses, and small communities have needs for some sort of supervision over the use of drugs," he said.

'So much red tape'

A lengthy, two-tieredapplication process stands between drug users inBrockville and their goal of a safe place to use.

Supervised consumption sites in Canada require an exemption granted by Health Canada. After theRespect for Communities Act was passed under former prime minister Stephen Harper in 2015, dozens of new requirements slowed the application process.

Rob Boyd, director of the Oasis program at the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre in Ottawa, applied to get an exemption forthe supervised consumption site he now overseeswhile those requirements were in effect.

"There were just a lot of these little tick boxes that were absolutely unnecessary," he said. "It was really an attempt to paper over orsend the message out not to bother even making the application."

Boyd said conflicting federal and provincial policies further complicatethe process.

"The thing about this is all along, it was the simple and obvious solution to the crisis we were seeing at the time," he said. "The fact that in order to get it done, there were so many hoops and so much red tape that we had to overcome, was completely senseless."

Crisis is 'provincewide'

Thefederal government scaled back the number of conditions considerably under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but the federal exemption is just the first step. If a group in Ontario wants to run a site with provincial funding, it must meetadditional requirements under the province's Consumption and Treatment Services program.

Onlyone site in Canada, Saskatoon's PrairieHarm Reduction,has survived off donations alone.

Both Health Canada and the Ontario Ministry of Health did not respond to a request for comment.

"We don't qualify under federal regulations right now," said Besharah."We don't have the space or the money or the resources to meet their qualifications."

Boyd agreed itcan be "very difficult" to sustain a safe consumption site without the added stability ofprovincial funding.

"Thereare verysmall or remote communities that this is never going to be in their capacity to operate," he said.

"The opioid crisis is a provincewide crisis. It's something that exists everywhere and we need to think about how we can implement things like supervised or witnessed injections across the province."