The City of Hamilton’s Public Health Board unanimously decided to move forward with an 18-month pilot of a new action plan aimed at addressing the opioid crisis in the city.
Melissa Biksa, manager of Mental Well-being and Substance Use for Hamilton Public Health, said the new plan has three goals: reduce the number of opioid deaths, reduce the harms caused by opioid use and increase access to different treatment options.
The plan will address short term and long term goals to address the opioid crisis, she said.
In mid-April, the city declared a state of emergency over residents experiencing homelessness, opioid addiction and mental health.
“This is not a ward-centric issue. This is a citywide issue,” said Ward 9 Coun. Brad Clark.
Plan to meet short-term, mid-term and long-term goals
In the first six months of the opioid action plan, the city would scale up safe consumption sites across Hamilton, develop safe use policies in the city’s hospitals, provide support to primary caregivers and increase drug testing programs.
Clark said he was concerned about the city being held liable for potential deaths or overdoses if drug testing programs at safe consumption sites are inaccurate.
“Supervised consumption sites are evidence-based, effective programs that do reduce overdoses and deaths,” Biksa said.
The city would also implement an “Opioid Action Table,” which would include people with lived experience, as well as health and social service workers.
At the six month mark of the plan, the city would introduce youth prevention programs, expand family supports and increase shelter access. The city would also focus on providing drug users with more pathways to accessing healthcare providers.
Over the next year, the city would increase the number of doctors who could provide safer supply programs, expand stabilization services to provide support systems for patients, increase rapid detox and treatment programs and further increase safe consumption sites in men’s shelters.
Ward 1 Coun. Cameron Kroetsch shared concerns that shelters in the city do not have the capacity to expand services, as part of the city’s action plan, and that it will be difficult to find a location to launch the pilot.
Michelle Baird, director of Housing Services, said the city is aware of the concerns.
“The shelter system right now is quite pressured and struggles to maintain the staffing they have even now, so I don’t think this will be easy but I think it’s a necessary step,” said Baird.
Some councillors shared concerns about the cost of the pilot, which would potentially push a $547,000 bill into the 2024 and 2025 city budget.
Mayor Andrea Horwath said the board cannot afford to push approving the action plan to another date.
“We really do have to stop kicking stuff down the road, folks. We have a crisis and an emergency in front of us,” she said.
Most drug-related deaths in Hamilton occur in private residences
Public health physician Dr. Mark Cachia said Hamilton paramedics receive 19 opioid-related calls a week, with most calls concentrated to Wards 2 and 3 in Hamilton, according to a report from Public Health.
Between January and April, there were 62 suspected drug-related deaths in Hamilton.
The city says public health data, provided by the office of the chief coroner, shows an average of one death every two days, or around three and a half deaths per week.
He said these deaths were drug related, not specifically opioid related, but said the data is a good indicator of trends.
Most of the city’s drug-related deaths occur in private residences, with only 9 per cent of deaths occurring to people living outdoors, according to data from the coroner.
Ward 13 Coun. Alex Wilson said the data shows a different story than common misconceptions about drug use in the city’s encampments.
“Understanding that [the data] also shows that more residents in our city are homed than unhomed, and who is represented in these fatality statistics, seems to indicated to me that this problem is much broader than encampments,” Wilson said.
Ward 1 Coun. Maureen Wilson said, “What can we do as a board of public health? We can talk about it in terms of health, not in terms of morality, and that this is a crisis.”
How they voted
Who was in favour of moving forward with Opioid Action Plan
Mayor Andrea Horwath; Maureen Wilson (Ward 1); Cameron Kroetsch (Ward 2); Nrinder Nann (Ward 3); Tammy Hwang (Ward 4); Matt Francis (Ward 5); Tom Jackson (Ward 6); John-Paul Danko (Ward 8); Brad Clark (Ward 9); Mark Tadeson (Ward 11); Craig Cassar (Ward 12); Alex Wilson (Ward 13); Ted McMeekin (Ward 15).
Who was opposed
No one.
Absent
No one.
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