The Drug Strategy Network of Ontario (DSNO) (formerly the Municipal Drug Strategy Coordinator’s Network of Ontario) brings together members from across Ontario who represent more than 40 local, cross-sectoral, community, municipal or regional-based drug strategies.
Objectives:
The DSNO aims to:
- Reduce the harms associated with alcohol and other drugs in Ontario, including addressing systemic drivers like failed drug policies and the criminalization of people who use substances, which continue to exacerbate these harms.
- Provide a forum for collaboration and information exchange, and for developing and sharing strategies that lend support to provincial, regional, and local community initiatives.
- Facilitate peer-to-peer connection and networking with a focus on strengthening and sustaining drug strategy work at the local level.
DSNO Values:
- Knowledge Translation: The DSNO seeks opportunities for synergizing efforts to engage and work with organizations, groups, and individuals to achieve positive change, through information sharing and advocacy.
- Evidence-Informed: The DSNO is committed to using the best available evidence in our decision-making processes, and in guiding the development of community-based approaches with a focus on accountability and indicators.
- Diversity and Inclusion: The DSNO promotes and supports the unique makeup of the Network and respective communities and are committed to working with equity seeking groups, including individuals with lived/living and front-line experience.
- Respect: The DSNO recognizes that every individual has value. We actively listen, are open to ideas, and seek to find common ground despite differences that may exist across the Network.
Initiatives:
Choosing a New Direction
The DNSO has developed a series of three fact sheets advocating for an end to the drug poisoning crisis.
Overall, the DSNO is amplifying the recommendations made by Health Canada's Expert Task Force on Substance Use (2021), which calls for (among other recommendations), the development and implementation of a single public health framework with specific regulations for all psychoactive substances, including currently illegal drugs as well as alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis. This framework should aim to minimize the scale of the illegal market, bring stability and predictability to regulated markets for substances, and provide access to safer substances for those at risk of injury or death from toxic illegal substances.
Fact Sheet 1: Addressing the drug poisoning crisis in Ontario
This fact sheet presents an overview of the costs and harms (both human costs and costs to society) of continuing with the current approach to drug policy.
Read below or download in English | Français | Plain text
(Note: adjust the PDF size using the '-' and '+' buttons in the PDF viewer):
Fact Sheet 2: Understanding how the unregulated opioid supply impacts the drug poisoning crisis in Ontario
This fact sheet presents data from Toronto's Drug Checking Service (TDCS) which demonstrate that at the root of the drug poisoning crisis is an increasingly contaminated, increasingly toxic and unpredictable opioid supply - that is what is killing people. View a recent presentation from Karen McDonald of TDCS here.
Some questions for personal or collective reflection are provided.
Read below or download in English | Français | Plain text
(Note: adjust the PDF size using the '-' and '+' buttons in the PDF viewer):
Fact sheet 3: Actions municipalities can take to influence provincial and federal drug policies and practices
This fact sheet outlines actions municipalities can take to influence drug policies so that substance use issues are addressed from a health-based lens. The DSNO calls on municipalities to take action to end the drug poisoning crisis, and provides a non-exhaustive list of potential actions to choose from.
(Please note - the pdf is interactive so will need to be downloaded to access some of the attached content).
Read below or download in English | Français | Plain text
(Note: adjust the PDF size using the '-' and '+' buttons in the PDF viewer):
Contact:
Michael Parkinson, DSNO Coordinator, ontariodrugstrategies@gmail.com
EENet Knowledge Broker:
Leah Green, Leah.Green@camh.ca
To learn more about the DSNO, visit the DSNO website
Check out the rest of EENet's CoIs/CoPs here: https://kmb.camh.ca/eenet/communities.