A safer supply program will not be part of the initial wraparound services offered at 150 Main St. if and when a consumption and treatment services (CTS) program is approved for the Cambridge site.
Kristin Kerr, executive director of Stonehenge Therapeutic Community in Guelph and the Cambridge North Dumfries Ontario Health Team (OHT) liaison for the City of Cambridge, says a safer supply program would require a separate application to the federal government to fund such a project in Cambridge.
In June, the feds announced they would provide $2.3 million to run a two-year safer supply project in Kitchener and Waterloo, providing referrals to people living in those cities with access to pharmaceutical opioids to replace the illicit and toxic street supply.
The project is operated by Sanguen Health Centre in partnership with The Working Centre and the Inner City Health Alliance.
Sanguen, which also operates the Kitchener CTS site at 150 Duke St., began taking up to 20 referrals a month for the safe supply project in September. At the same time, they began turning people away from Cambridge.
Safer supply projects are considered an effective way to support people with opioid use disorder and prevent overdoses caused by a street supply that’s often laced with fentanyl.
In pitching the project to Kitchener council last fall, Michael Parkinson of the Waterloo Region Crime Prevention Council explained that "instead of going to a dealer and purchasing drugs, you'd go to a health professional and procure pharmaceuticals from there.
“You have a high degree of confidence that it's not contaminated with who knows what.
“It's like shopping at the grocery store where you can feel safe assuming the food you buy won't kill you. You wake up and you know where your drugs are going to come from so the whole hustle and grind of stealing stuff, getting the money, locating a dealer, doing the drugs and then repeating several times a day — all of that disappears."
Without a safe supply program for individuals in Cambridge, a CTS site approved for 150 Main St. would launch with provincially mandated services, including supervised consumption of drugs and onsite overdose prevention; onsite access to wraparound services like primary care, mental health, housing and other social supports; harm reduction services including education, distribution and disposal of needles; and access to naloxone and oxygen.
Kerr told CambridgeToday last week the search for an operator for the Cambridge CTS site is moving ahead as quickly as possible knowing how urgently the harm reduction service is needed.
The latest data from the Waterloo Integrated Drugs Strategy (WRIDS) shows there have been 1,353 overdose-related emergency calls to date in 2021, up from 1,243 calls in 2020.
The WRIDS data also shows a sharp rise in naloxone administrations compared to previous years, with the overdose-reversing agent used 179 times so far this year. It’s the highest amount on record, surpassing 2019’s figure of 120 and 110 naloxone administrations in 2020.
- With files from CityNews Kitchener.
