Trade unions join forces with health-care advocates to fight opioid crisis

A group of trade unions, health-care advocates and non-profits is calling on the province to take action against the opioid crisis, and they say construction workers continue to be especially vulnerable.

One Step Forward: An Alliance for Advancing Recovery has put together a list of recommendations for the Ontario government to help combat the opioid crisis, including improving access to more treatment methods.

Jeremy Baker, with Local 27 Carpenters Union, said he was only 16 years old — on his first job — when he saw the effects of opioid addiction in the trades.

"The journeyman that was training me was heavily addicted to opiates, and I watched him go from being a functioning member of society to eventually passing away," Baker told CBC Toronto in an interview. 

"It scared me … And ever since then, it's been one person a year who has passed away in similar situations."

According to a 2022 report by the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network, one in 13 opioid toxicity deaths happened among people working in the construction industry.

The alliance has issued four recommendations to the provincial government:

• Establish an emergency task force to coordinate efforts.

• Launch a virtual opioid addiction treatment service.

• Reform funding models to put patients' needs first.

• Allow pharmacists to administer opioid treatment.

The proposals are meant to empower people with addiction who are looking for treatment and recovery, said Dr. Larisa Eibisch, a family doctor who has witnessed first hand how opioid addiction begins and evolves in people working in construction.

She said they often work big stretches of long shifts, deal with the loneliness of remote work, suffer from painful injuries and the pressures of a "work hard, pay hard mentality," including easy access to drugs on the job.

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"You look at these cultural factors, and it's no surprise to see that addiction and specifically opioid use disorder is omnipresent within the trades," Eibisch said.

Over three-quarters of opiate toxicity deaths in trade workers happened to individuals who had a prior pain diagnosis, she said, but only one in six had a prescription for an opioid replacement medication.

"It tells us that people who are dying of opioid toxicity in the trades have a problem, they have an addiction, and yet they are not accessing care," Eibisch said.

"That is what we want to target with this alliance."

Province says it's made investments in addiction support 

The province is working to create a "modern mental health and addictions support system," a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health told CBC Toronto in a statement.

"As part of our government's 2024 Budget, we are investing an additional $396 million over three years to continue to support the stabilization, improved access, and expansion of existing mental health and addiction services and programs for years to come," said spokesperson Hannah Jenson. 

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She didn't answer questions about whether the province was considering, or planning to adopt, the alliance's recommendations, but Jensen said that the Ontario government was the first in North America to require naloxone kits on construction sites — a move Eibisch applauds. 

"But that's just a part of the solution," Eibisch said.

Stigma still prevents many workers from accessing care, said Finn Johnson, a spokesperson for the Carpenters' Regional Council, which represents workers in Ontario and western Canada.

"There's a bit of a macho attitude in construction … You have to be tough because you're doing physical work," Johnson said.

Baker, who is now 36 years old, said unions are very supportive of workers and do their best to help people who need it, but it doesn't change the root problem: men are overworking themselves in gruelling conditions.

He said he's worked 120 days straight, all 12-hour shifts, something that is common among his peers.

"We're breaking our bodies down," he said.