The City of Hamilton is exploring whether to declare a state of emergency as it grapples with an opioid crisis, with the municipality’s top doctor saying such…
A motion was introduced and carried unanimously on Jan. 12 to have the city’s top doctor determine the threshold of opioid-related deaths and overdoses that would warrant such a declaration.Sign up to receive daily headline news from Ottawa Citizen, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.By clicking on the sign up button you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.
“We know that with the pandemic, many of these underlying issues around why people may choose to use drugs in a hazardous way ⦠were exacerbated,” Richardson said. Opioid-related deaths “have increased exponentially,” according to a report presented at the city’s board of health meeting earlier this week.
“In particular there are shelters and other places where drug use is having very acute impacts in terms of lack of safe supply, lack of harm reduction possibilities,” Wilson said. “And so it’s really, really clear that there are some opportunities to intervene to save lives.” Abe Oudshoorn, a founding member of the Ontario Alliance to End Homelessness and an associate professor at the University of Western Ontario, said declaring a state of emergency to deal with the crisis in the city is long overdue.
“We’ve had far more people who are experiencing street level homelessness. We’ve seen our shelters vastly overwhelmed,” Oudshoorn said.Article content
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