Toronto’s Drug Checking Service is a community-led public health service offering people who use drugs timely and detailed information on the contents of their drugs, as well as a major source of real-time information on Canada’s unregulated drug supply since 2019.
TDCS have recently received funding from Health Canada’s Substance Use and Addictions Program to extend and expand their operation within Ontario until June 2025. Known as phase 2, primary goals for the program are to improve accessibility to drug checking services and contribute to standardizing drug checking service provision and centralizing the analysis and public reporting of unregulated drug market trends for the province. The extent to which they can deliver (rather than support) drug checking services outside of Toronto will depend on additional funding acquired, in particular from Ontario’s Ministry of Health.
They are committed to ensuring phase 2 adds value for people who use drugs, as well as those who care and advocate for them. They have created a brief survey to inform their plans and hope you will consider completing it.
Here are a few things to consider:
- The survey will take up to 15 minutes to complete. If you are not actively delivering drug checking services, completing the survey should take about 5 minutes.
- Please complete the survey by Friday, October 13, 2023.
- Your responses will be used internally by the central team for Toronto’s Drug Checking Service to inform their phase 2 plan and for reporting to the Public Health Agency of Canada who funded this work. Your responses will not be used for any other purpose without your permission.
- Ideally, they would receive a single response from each organization that chooses to complete the survey. They encourage multiple organizations in the same jurisdiction to complete the survey together if that makes the most sense to you.
- Please feel free to share this survey with colleagues within or outside of your organization, to ensure your jurisdiction is accurately represented.
Click here to complete the survey.
With questions or comments, you can reach the TDCS team at drugchecking@cdpe.org.
Karen McDonald (she/her)
Lead | Toronto’s Drug Checking Service
Director, Program Development and Operations | St. Michael's Hospital