Ryerson students organized naloxone training sessions this week that were so popular they filled up within a day and additional sessions had to be planned.
The events, organized by a coalition comprised of the Ryerson chapter of Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy (CSSDP) and their allies, are part of a larger initiative to foster more awareness of harm reduction on campus.
Zev Shoag, 19, said he went to the session because he wanted to know how to save a life. The second-year theatre student said he didn’t give much thought to overdoses before moving to Toronto for school, despite the prevalent drug culture associated with the arts industry.
“Even though I don’t know much about medicine, at least I have the skills and know what to do in case of an overdose,” Shoag said. “It’s really important I know those things — more people should.”
At the session, attendees learned how to administer naloxone, the potentially life-saving medication that quickly reverses an opioid overdose. They were also given examples of what a harm reduction approach to drug use looks like. The facilitator, Dr. Samim Hasham, urged attendees not to judge their peers who may use drugs and to consider systemic issues in both the health and justice systems.
Some of the attendees from this week’s sessions came from George Brown College and the University of Toronto.
The organizers also circulated a petition to gather community support for the Supervised Injection Services site at The Works, which is adjacent to Ryerson’s campus. That move was required after the provincial government introduced new legislation around supervised injection. Under the new legislation, sites can’t be within 600 metres of each other or a post-secondary institution without community support.
Toby Stevens-Guille, a fourth-year nursing student, was one of the organizers of this week’s events. He met Hasham when she gave the same session at an addictions and rehabilitation centre Stevens-Guille was working at for his third-year placement.
“It blew my mind when I first got it … this is the simplest way to save lives and I had not heard of it whatsoever in my nursing program,” Stevens-Guille said. He was also part of a group that brought naloxone training to his program through a pilot project, with naloxone being featured at the third-year nursing orientation.
“It stunned me that it was not available in the nursing program,” he said.
Alannah Fricker, founder and president of CSSDP, also helped organize the training sessions. She said it was important to her, as someone who lost a friend to an opioid overdose, that everyone in the community have a chance to learn how to use naloxone. “Our end goal is to really have the school actually do this because it is a safety issue.”
Taking illegal drugs is prohibited under Ryerson’s non-academic code of conduct, which means students may be subject to punishments, such as potential expulsion, if they overdose on campus. Fricker and the CSSDP want to see such a policy put into place to protect students. “It should be publicly stated that students are protected under the law and our school policies as well,” she said.
In an emailed statement from Nov. 19, president Mohamed Lachemi said inclusion, safety and security are top priorities for the school. Administration is “committed to reviewing policies and procedures on a regular basis to best meet the needs of our community and surrounding neighbours,” he said.
Kim Bailey, director of outreach and community engagement with the Faculty of Community Services, is working with Fricker and the university to help implement more harm reduction strategies at Ryerson next year. She said it’s important that Ryerson acknowledge its unique proximity to the opioid crisis. “It’s often discussed as a challenge around being this close to the supervised injection site, but I see it as a really amazing opportunity as well for students who may not be exposed to some of the issues related to the inner city,” she said.
“You can’t really avoid it when you go to Ryerson, it’s in your face … I think some of the interest is you’re not in a leafy, Ivy League campus somewhere where you would never come across it.”
According to Toronto Paramedic Services data released earlier this month, the neighbourhood around Ryerson had 358 suspected opioid overdoses attended by paramedics between August 2017 and August 2018 — the most in the city.
Corinne Hart, associate professor in the school of nursing who helped Stevens-Guille with his pilot project, said that even the most aware and careful people are at risk of overdosing due to the increasingly toxic drugs being sold in Canada. “We’re looking at university students who party, who go out, who may take something … I do think people want to be safe.”
According to Canadian Institute for Health Information statistics released in June, the fastest growing population being hospitalized for opioid poisoning is youth and younger adults aged 15 to 44. In Ontario, roughly one in five people who died due to opioid-related deaths in 2017 were aged 20 to 29, according to Health Canada statistics.
Similar to the guerilla overdose prevention sites in Moss Park and Parkdale, the push for harm reduction on campus is coming from volunteers and people who have been directly affected by the overdose epidemic. Hart said this is often how radical change happens. “You’re not going to have a bunch of people at the top, the policy-makers, say, ‘Well, let’s do harm reduction — let’s tell our students it’s OK to do drugs and we’ll just protect them.’”
Despite this, the training sessions — and harm reduction initiatives as a whole — have been met with support from Ryerson, Hart said. “Overall, this university is looking at ways to make this work at a higher level. I don’t think Ryerson is shying away from this at all.”
Hart also said she hopes that everyone — administration, faculty, students and the community at large — is inspired by the work the organizers are doing. “When students are given the opportunity to run with something good, really good things happen,” she said.
