Action Alert: Call on elected leaders to step up and end the opioid crisis!

In every province and territory across Canada, in both urban and rural communities, the opioid overdose crisis rages on. Since 2016, nearly twenty-thousand lives have been lost to opioid overdoses in Canada.

The crisis has intensified in the context of pandemic-mandated measures. Nearly 2,500 people died of opioid overdose in Ontario in 2020 – a 60 per cent increase over 2019. The City of Toronto reports a 78 per cent increase in the number of opioid-related deaths in 2020 over 2019.

Join us! Call on politicians at all orders of government to work together to save lives and bring this crisis to an end.

Much has been left undone at the federal level. We need a commitment to the national decriminalization of possession of drugs for personal use. Further, the federal commitment to safer supply remains tentative and underfunded.

The Government of Ontario, now over three years into their mandate, has yet to fulfill its election promise of 21 consumption and treatment service sites. Ontario has failed to take advantage of the federal class exemption and fund overdose prevention sites. And, Ontario has failed to amend its drug formulary to support safer supply programs.

The City of Toronto, in spite of a rapid escalation of opioid overdose deaths, refuses to call on the federal minister of health to decriminalize personal possession of drugs in the City of Toronto. Instead of leading, it leaves advocacy to the board of health. 

Join us! Call on those elected to all orders of government to bring this public health crises to an end. These are preventable deaths. The failure of leadership is costing thousands of young lives and causing enormous grief.