Canada’s largest public health board is calling on Ottawa to decriminalize all drugs, arguing that saving lives is more important than stigma-laced arguments against the idea.

Toronto’s public health board, a mix of city councillors and public appointees, voted 10-0 Monday to endorse the recommendation from Dr. Eileen de Villa, the city’s medical officer of health.

The vote came after the release last week of her research-filled report on the subject and argument that people have always used drugs and all those consumed today — including tobacco, alcohol, coffee, pharmaceuticals and illegal street drugs — can be hazardous to health.

“The potential harms associated with any of these drugs is worsened when people are pushed into a position where they have to produce, obtain and consume those drugs illegally, so that’s what we’re trying to address,” de Villa said, with a call for a “public health approach” focused on treatment and harm minimization rather police, courts and jail.

Councillor Joe Cressy, Toronto council’s point person on drug policy, noted her report triggered only a handful of public responses at the meeting and they were supportive of the shift in focus.

The deadly and worsening opioid overdose epidemic has “shifted the landscape,” he said, in support of safe-injection sites and decriminalization because so many people know someone touched by tragedies involving fentanyl, a highly toxic painkiller, and other drugs.

Read more:

Chief medical officer calls for decriminalization of all drugs for personal use

Opinion | The case for decriminalizing drugs

Overdose deaths taking ‘huge toll’ on advocates

“I don’t believe that drug use is safe, nor does endorsing the position in support of decriminalizing of drugs advocate for drug use,” Cressy said.

“I don’t want people to use drugs,” he said, adding criminalization has pushed them into unsafe situations, avoiding treatment and burdening many with criminal convictions with lifelong implications.

Councillor Joe Mihevc, the health board chair, got his colleagues to agree to send the recommendation to other health boards and agencies across Canada in hopes some will follow Toronto’s lead and increase pressure on Ottawa to abandon a “punitive approach to drugs.”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“Let’s make a national thing of this,” to get people to see drug use and think of helping users with medical or public health resources rather than punishing them with police, Mihevc said.

“I don’t think we’re there yet and the only way in which federal laws are going to change is if we provoke that national conversation.”