Toronto will distribute 500,000 free condoms for the World Cup
Enjoy your soccer-fan trysts, but remember to use protection
Everyone is preparing for this summer’s FIFA World Cup differently. Some are planning to try for tickets during the next phase of sales this month; others are angling to escape before hundreds of thousands of tourists arrive. Part of Toronto Public Health’s preparedness plan: making 500,000 free condoms available for the massive sporting event.
Related: Hotels are mad about Toronto’s World Cup tax increase
Last month, the city published a report for action—we won’t make a joke here, lest we seem unserious about sexual health—announcing a targeted intervention that will include condom-distribution and education campaigns. According to the report, which Toronto Today highlighted yesterday, increases in sexually transmitted infections are common during mass gathering events.
Last year, over 14,000 cases of chlamydia and 7,000 cases of gonorrhea were reported to Toronto Public Health, according to the report. It would be a shame for that to get worse due to soccer-related sex.
Back in 2015, the city’s CondomTO program launched a series of limited-edition sports-inspired condoms for the Pan Am Games. On the packages were cheeky phrases such as “Let the games begin.”
Whatever does it for you!
Related: We’re loving the love between Toronto’s sports teams
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
