Toronto’s medical officer of health is pushing for the decriminalization of all drugs for personal use as part of a shift to a public health approach to overdose prevention in the midst of a deadly and worsening crisis. Dr. Eileen de Villa is urging the city’s board of health to call on the federal government to decriminalize possession of drugs for personal use, while scaling up “prevention, harm reduction and treatment services.” She is also recommending Ottawa convene a task force made up of people who use drugs, alongside experts in policy, health care, human rights, mental health and criminal justice experts “to explore options for the legal regulation of all drugs in Canada.” Those positions are detailed in a new report entitled A Public Health Approach to Drug Policy that will be presented to the city’s board of health next week.“There is an opioid overdose epidemic that is happening in our city and too many people are dying,” de Villa said Monday. “I believe we have scientific evidence and evidence from other jurisdictions that would suggest this different approach, a more public health approach to drug policy, is at the very least worth trying.” De Villa has previously called for public conversations around decriminalization of all drugs, but only for personal use, but the spike in deaths across the country has brought new urgency to that position. Toronto Public Health reported that in 2017, 303 people in the city died from drug overdoses, up 63 per cent from the previous year.The federal government has already approved the legalization of marijuana, which takes effect Oct. 17. The basic idea is to move away from treating individual drug use as a crime and viewing it more as a symptom of broader social failures, including a lack of housing and mental health and addiction services, or seeing it first as a health issue. It is an approach supported by more than 60 per cent of the general po ...
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