Unfortunately, treatment on demand remains the exception to the types of substance use services that are offered. Most of the time, if people are looking to access particular detox or recovery services, there can be a considerable wait. Those delays can result in adverse harms and deaths during the waiting period, given the crucial importance of having services available when people try to access them.
I would say that, in general, there's a huge gap there in terms of treatment on demand throughout the country. That delay has worsened during COVID-19. People aren't even able to become eligible for wait-lists, for example, because services are at capacity, given they're not able to accommodate as many clients as they would have been able to even before COVID-19. Treatment on demand remains highly limited. That includes evidence-based treatments like pharmacologic agents that can be really life-saving for people—methadone, buprenorphine, morphine formulations, etc.