A poster on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside with a message for the government. Photo: Simon Charland/APTN.
A report that investigated over 6,000 overdose deaths in British Columbia is calling for the province to urgently develop a policy to distribute a safer drug supply.
“This report includes realistic, actionable recommendations that the panel believes will reduce the number of people dying due to toxic, illicit drugs in our province,” said Michael Egilson, death review panel chair.
“We recognize that many of the timelines in the report are aggressive, but COVID-19 has demonstrated how swiftly policy-makers can act when lives are at stake and we know that every month of inaction equates to hundreds more lives lost.”
The death review panel report released by chief coroner Lisa Lapointe’s office has targeted May 9 as the date by which the government should create a policy in collaboration with the BC Centre for Disease Control and the BC Centre on Substance Use.
It’s calling for collaboration among the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, the Health Ministry and all health authorities to rapidly expand access to a safer supply of drugs across the province, including in rural and Indigenous communities.
The report says barriers to obtaining a range of medical alternatives to toxic drugs should be lowered and the criteria must be adopted by practitioners in all health authorities where better access to care is also needed.
It says the review of the 6,000 deaths between August 2017 and July 2021 shows that an increasingly toxic drug supply and a policy of prohibition forces people to use street drugs.
Read More:
B.C. group ‘Moms Stop the Harm’ want more action from province to alleviate opioid crisis
More than 8,800 people in B.C. have died from fatal overdoses since the province declared a public health emergency in April 2016.
Mental Health and Addictions Minister Sheila Malcolmson says the report confirms the urgency of the government’s work related to a safer drug supply and the continuum of care.
“We agree that one of the most important actions we can take to save lives is to separate people from the toxic drug supply. That’s why B.C. implemented in 2020, and expanded in 2021, a safer supply program, the first and only province in Canada to do this,” Malcolmson says in a written statement.
