With the increase in the toxicity of the drug supply, the opioid crisis and its impacts, at the Calgary Drop-In Centre in 2018, which was the first year we started measuring or counting the number of drug poisonings that we responded to, we had 87. In 2023, we had over 3,000. It's a significant increase. We thought, yes, it's important to keep people alive, 100%. They need to be alive to take the next step, but it's not enough.
We advocated with the Ministry of Mental Health and Addiction in Alberta to provide medically supported detox or withdrawal management, as well as a recovery transition program for individuals so that we could offer something beyond naloxone. It has become a very critical and central point of the work we do.
The intention there was really about opening up more pathways to housing. If people are dealing with acute addiction issues, they're not going to be successful in housing, so this was a way to open that up.