Date de publication
Géographie
Langue de la ressource
Texte disponible en version intégrale
Open Access / OK to Reproduce
Évalué par des pairs
L’objectif
Launched in October 2019, Toronto's Drug Checking Service has operated as a pilot program. This report summarizes 10 key findings related to the impact of the pilot period. The goal of this report is to add to the evidence supporting the necessity of drug checking services and be used to advocate for services and safer alternatives for people who use drugs (PWUD).
Constatations/points à retenir
The 10 key findings are: (1) Drug checking provides potentially life-saving information to those at highest risk of overdose; (2) Drug checking facilitates behaviour change; (3) Drug checking provides a gateway to accessing harm reduction services; (4) Drug checking services enable monitoring of the unregulated drug market and public dissemination of drug market trends in real time; (5) Drug checking informs clinicians and care; (6) Drug checking findings improve health and social services; (7) Drug checking empowers PWUD to advocate for themselves and help develop solutions that impact them; (8) Drug checking generates evidence to support advocacy for services and safer alternatives for PWUD; (9) Toronto’s Drug Checking Service has created turnkey solutions for other organizations and jurisdictions to establish local drug checking programs, increasing system efficiencies and limiting redundancy; (10) Drug checking is valuable to PWUD.
The report concludes with two recommendations: (1) Formally integrating drug checking into the suite of harm reduction services in Ontario and across Canada; and (2) Committing to sufficient and long-term funding to sustain Toronto’s Drug Checking Service and scale drug checking service delivery across the province.
