Toronto continues to be in the midst of a drug toxicity crisis. The unregulated drug supply is unpredictable, increasingly toxic, and currently dominated by fentanyl. The unregulated fentanyl supply contains varying concentrations of fentanyl, as well as unexpected drugs such as benzodiazepines.
Toronto Public Health is taking action to prevent overdose deaths, and operates the city’s first supervised consumption service, providing a safer environment for people to inject their own drugs under the supervision of trained health professionals.
We also worked with community partners to develop the Toronto Overdose Action Plan. This plan, approved by the Board of Health in March 2017 and updated in June 2019, includes a comprehensive set of actions for all orders of government to prevent and respond to drug overdoses. Toronto Public Health continuously provides recommendations to the Board of Health on actions to address the drug poisoning crisis, which further intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic.