This week, we recognized Overdose Awareness Day. In 2021, 560 people died from an overdose. That is the highest number of drug poisoning deaths ever recorded in Toronto. Acute drug toxicity is the current number one cause of death for youth in Ontario aged 15 to 24. Ontario has an opioid crisis.

These are the words of Zoë Dodd, a leader in the work to save people’s lives. This is what she says: “The US and Canada have now been in a devastating drug poisoning crisis for a decade. This isn’t happening like this anywhere else in the world. These deaths are preventable. This crisis will end when we truly shift as a society.”

To the workers leading change on this crisis’s front lines, you have been to too many funerals. To the families who have lost people to drug overdose, I am so sorry.

International Overdose Awareness Day is a day for us to remember those whom we’ve lost and to continue to advocate for better solutions.

That means listening to health professionals who see clean and safe supply as a way to stop people dying from toxic street drugs. It means permitting and funding opioid consumption sites like the one in Kensington, so people can safely use; it means increasing funding to mental health treatment and addiction treatment that’s been proven to work; and building more permanent supportive housing.

This is a complicated crisis, and compassion and kindness are needed to address it.