Toronto drug checking could be significantly impacted by closure of SCS sites [Video]

Ontario’s plan to shut down six supervised consumption sites in Toronto may significantly impact one local organization’s ability to verify and analyze the city’s unregulated drug supply.

Toronto’s Drug Checking Service (TDCS) says if the proposed move happens it will lose six of its 10 collection sites. Roughly 80 per cent of all samples gathered by the program since it’s inception five years ago come from these locations, it said.

“The reality is if these six sites close it could potentially greatly impact our ability to offer drug checking services and monitor the unregulated drug supply,” Karen McDonald, the operations manager for the Centre for Drug Policy Education, which coordinates the free and anonymous public health service, told CP24.com.

“If these sites close our program we would need to pivot. We’d need to re-evaluate where and how we’d operate.”

Since the fall of 2019, the federally funded service has collected …