'We are so incredibly relieved': Toronto's drug checking pilot gets greenlight to expand

Toronto's Drug Checking Service is expanding to cover more areas within and outside of the city after four years of operating as a pilot project.

Since launching in the fall of 2019, the service has analyzed more than 10,000 samples from the unregulated drug supply in the city. Now, a new go-ahead from the federal government means the program can expand within Toronto and provincially to serve those hardest hit by illicit and unpredictable supply, such as in rural and northern Ontario. 

"We are so incredibly relieved to have received further funding," said team lead Karen McDonald, the lead of Toronto's Drug Checking Service.

"We're a little overwhelmed by the amount of work that we have to do, but we're super excited."

Since April, the program has been operating without dedicated funding, prompting staff to dip into reserves and rely on temporary commitments to make do, said McDonald.

But thanks to renewed funding from Health Canada's Substance Use and Addictions Program announced this week, staff can not only continue the service over the next two years, but also help groups outside the city establish their own drug checking program or extend theexisting  service to those communities, she said. 

McDonald says the money will go toward doubling the number of collection sites in Toronto, which are presently in or near the downtown core, from five to 10 and optimizing the drug analysis process. The service hopes to start formally implementing the expansion in the new year, she says.

The expansion comes as the opioid crisis continues to worsen across the province, with a recent report showing 7,467 people died from opioids between 2018 to 2021 alone. Similar figures can be seen throughout the country, with opioid overdoses claiming 38,514 lives in Canada in the past seven years, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Tara Gomes, a scientist for Unity Health Toronto and program director of the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network, says making the service available to more people can empower them by helping them determine what's in their supply.

"From an individual level, the more we can expand this and make this available to different people in different parts of our city or different parts of our province, the better we can move ahead in keeping people safe," said Gomes.

The expanded program can also help harm reduction workers better adjust and target their programs, she says.

"Having the data that is obtained through the drug checking publicly posted and available to researchers, it really helps many people who are organizing within communities," said Gomes.

The federal government says the service will help groups across the province design and execute their own drug checking programs, with the original team acting as a "central repository" for the data generated. Researchers with Toronto's Drug Checking Service will then analyze the data, helping to paint a fuller picture on how unregulated drug supply trends are playing out across the province and comparing them to the rest of the country.

"The overdose crisis is one of the most serious and unprecedented public health threats in Canada's history and is a priority for the Government of Canada," Health Canada said in a statement to CBC Toronto.