Plans are afoot to give the Moss Park “pop-up” safe-injection tent, established by volunteers just over a month ago as an emergency response to overdose deaths, a permanent future in a nearby building.

And the city councillor leading Toronto’s overdose crisis response foresees similar facilities — where people can safely inject drugs without fear of arrest — in “three or four” other neighbourhoods in addition to the four sites Toronto will have by the end of October.

“The experience in Moss Park demonstrates that safe injection saves lives and works,” Councillor Joe Cressy said in an interview Friday.

Leigh Chapman, a registered nurse who lost a brother to a suspected fentaynl overdose, is one of the volunteers who helped in mid-August set up the Moss Park tent. They staff it between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m.

Volunteers have administered the fentanyl antidote naloxone 26 times to people overdosing, she said, and intervened with verbal directions and sometimes oxygen to help many others escape a “deep nod” with dangerously shallow breathing.

People have injected drugs about 1,000 times in one tent. Another tent, used to “chill” or smoke drugs including crack and fentanyl, has seen between 1,500 and 1,700 visits.

Knowing cold weather is coming, and toilet facilities and electricity would make users’ lives easier, some of the volunteers met Friday with Cressy and other city officials.

They agreed to look for a new home for the site in a nearby social service building and to seek funding for paid staff and other expenses from the Ontario government, which recently earmarked $222 million in new funds over three years to help fight the growing opioid crisis.

“I can say without a doubt we have saved lives,” Chapman said, adding the spike in overdose deaths demands an urgent response in Toronto.

“We need at least three more pop-ups. We definitely have been approached by groups from other parts of the city wanting to know the ins and outs of doing a pop-up and expressing their grief at the number of overdoses that they’ve seen.”

After the Moss Park tent went up, the city’s public health department fast-tracked the opening of its safe-injection site at The Works needle exchange on Victoria St. near Ryerson University. Staff there report almost 200 visitors, two of whom overdosed and were saved without naloxone.

A larger, permanent site will open there in October along with one run by the South Riverdale Community Health Centre on Queen St. E. and a third at the Queen West Central Toronto Community Health Centre on Bathurst St.

Cressy said original plans for three Toronto safe-injection sites, based on Vancouver’s pioneering Insite, were predicated on an overdose problem that has since become significantly worse, largely because of the increasing prevalence of the highly toxic painkiller fentanyl.

“Three years ago when I started working on safe-injection the question was ‘Should we do it?’,” Cressy said. “Now the question is ‘Why can’t we do it sooner to save lives?’ That’s a sea change in this city and country.”

The Ward 20 Trinity-Spadina representative wants to eventually see safe-injection sites incorporated into existing health facilities throughout the city.

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In the meantime, the city and the Toronto Overdose Prevention Society are hearing from people in other neighbourhoods where new safe-injection sites could soon be established, he said.

“As we deal with an overdose crisis, I think it’s fair to assume that another three or four neighbourhoods may urgently need consideration.”