"You're just trying these interventions to save people but it's not enough because this crisis is structural. We need housing, we need support. We need a foundation to heal." Zoe Dodd, co-founder of Moss Park overdose prevention site.

This summer Glasgow will be the first UK city to open a sanctioned safer drug consumption facility. People will bring their own drugs and inject them supervised by staff able to respond immediately if anyone overdoses.

Similar overdose prevention sites and consumption facilities have opened at more than 100 sites in 11 countries over the last 30 years.

Ahead of the Glasgow service opening, The Ferret visited one such project, the Mosspark Treatment and Consumption Service in Toronto, to find out what difference its community-focussed approach can make.

This podcast follows drug users and staff through a day-in-the-life of this service, exploring its roots in civil disobedience and its ongoing fight for recognition.

We heard from those struggling to cope with the realities of addiction to super-strength fentanyl as well as those whose lives had been saved by the Moss Park team.

Texas, MK, Sarah, Erin and others tell stories of love and loss, and of systemic failure in the midst of an ongoing toxic drug death crisis.

But they also highlight the importance of hope, the possibility of healing and the impact that being part of a community can have.

Read the script here.

This podcast is written, recorded and produced by Karin Goodwin for The Ferret. Additional editing and sound design is by Alan Bryden.

Deep thanks go to everyone in the Moss Park community. This podcast is dedicated to the people they’ve lost.

If you need help or support in relation to your drug use you can contact wearewithyou.org.uk, or if you need someone to talk to, you can call thesamaritans.org or call 116 123.

Please support our work by becoming a member, or giving us a donation at theferret.scot and please share this podcast and leave us a review. It really does help.

In 2017 synthetic opioid fentanyl hit the Canadian city of Toronto and people using drugs started dropping. Drug deaths hit record levels - across the state of Ontario there were 1,270 that year.

Health professionals, activists and drug users called for an emergency response to the toxic drug death crisis facing them. And when authorities failed to set up a safer drug consumption facility activists in the Moss Park neighbourhood of the city took matters into their own hands.

They gathered supplies and nurses and set up an unsanctioned overdose prevention site in the park where they ran it illegally for a year before being granted permission to operate by the health authority and moving inside with funding.

With the UK’s first safer drug consumption facility due to open in Glasgow this summer The Ferret visited the Mosspark Treatment and Consumption Service in Toronto, Canada to find out what difference the community-focussed approach it takes can make.

We heard from those struggling to cope with the realities of super-strength drug fentanyl as well as those whose lives had been saved by the Moss Park team. We heard stories of love and loss, of systemic failure and of the limitations of a service like this.

The toxic drug crisis is ongoing with deaths in the state more than doubling to 2,857 in 2021 and continued alerts about the contaminated drug supply causing multiple deaths.

But we heard stories of hope and healing and the impact that being part of a community that cares can have.

"Our deaths by suicide rate is not coming down because we have too many poor people. They don’t have enough money, they can’t feed themselves, they don’t have any hope because they don’t know what’s coming down the road. " Sean McCann, trauma psychotherapist

In part three of The Ferret investigates…the health gap – a three-part special podcast from The Ferret media co-op and Greater Govanhill magazine – we turn our attention to the mental wellbeing of young and middle aged men, another issue driving health inequalities in Scotland.

In Scotland, men in the most deprived areas of Scotland have a life expectancy of almost 14 years less than those in the most affluent areas. Of the 753 people that completed suicide in 2021, three quarters were men.

In this episode we hear from James, a joiner from Glasgow, about his struggles with his mental health and Bill Hill of the Lighthouse charity tells us about the way the construction industry, which is currently losing two workers to suicide every day, has been forced to mobilise to save lives.

We also visit San Francisco's Harm Reduction Therapy Center and find out how offering people struggling with substance use therapy on the street is dismantling the myth that some are hard to reach.

In the studio our hosts are joined by Linda Birnie of Mikey’s Line which offers suicide prevention and a helpline across the Highlands and was set-up following the tragic death of two friends, Martin Shaw and Michael Williamson.

Other guests include Graeme Callander of We Are With You, a charity which works with people struggling with their mental health, or alcohol or substance use and psychotherapist Sean McCann, who also works for Strathclyde University

You can find all three episodes of The Ferret investigates...the health gap on The Ferret or wherever you get your podcasts.

Credits:

Hosts: Karin Goodwin, of The Ferret and Samar Jamal, of Greater Govanhill magazine

Interviews: Karin Goodwin

Production: Halina Rifai and Karin Goodwin

Episode editing and sound: Halina Rifai

Music: Loris S. Sarid



Package about the Harm Reduction Therapy Center

Reporting, sound recording and writing: Karin Goodwin

Editing and sound design: Flora Zajicek