Toronto hospital becomes first in Ontario to provide supervised consumption services
I think given the current toxic drug supply or the drug poisoning crisis, we know that there has been an increase in the number of deaths associated with overdose in the community so just by having the supervised consumption site means that people are able to consume in a safe manner and overdoses are able to be reversed in a timely and safe and supportive model,” he said.
“We think that all hospitals, all health care institutions really need to think about how they work with people who use substances because this is actually not a moral issue. This is a health issue,” she said. “They know that there are people there that are coming in for health care, but also are using drugs, and this is just a recognition of that fact to stop judging people for that,” said Nick Boyce, director of Ontario Harm Reduction Network.
“It’s opening up a conversation with people around their drug use and just being able to connect with them and being open and honest with what’s happening. So it’s great to see this happening,” he added.Mortality data on Hamilton’s homeless population points to overdoses as top cause of death “The first one in Canada was almost 20 years ago in B.C., the first ones in Ontario didn’t start legally happening until about five years ago. And then the last few years we haven’t had any scaling up of those … and in terms of the hospitals, there’s just an extra layer of stigma around drug use in hospital settings, in health care settings that makes it harder for those institutions to think about this,” he said.