Desperate Moves to Save Lives Hovering on Extinction

"Despite throwing all this at it, we still are seeing terrible increases in drug toxicity and terrible loss of life."

"We hear from people on the ground that stigma and shame is making people hide their drug use."

"I certainly hope that it's the first thing that is on Minister Bennett's desk. This is something that could inform approaches in the rest of the country."

"And we've got a lot of support here in British Columbia to move quickly and the public emergency demands that we move urgently."

"Criminalizing it and driving it into the shadows has not worked; it has not helped."

Sheila Malcolmson, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, British Columbia

"As the opioid and overdose crisis continues to worsen, we must take every measure possible to reduce harms and save lives."

"We recognize the different approaches cities, provinces, and other organizations are taking and are supportive of their work."

"We know there is more to do and our government will remain engaged with them to move these health-based approaches forward."

Mental Health and Addictions Canada statement 

A rose placed at the intersection of East Hastings and Main streets in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver on Feb. 11, in memory of those lost to the opioid crisis. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

 

British Columbia has been the first province in Canada to open controversial harm-reduction clinics and to experiment novel new stances in the hope that the humanitarian impulse to help the addicted move away from their drug dependency, and in worst-case scenarios where diehard drug abusers cannot be convinced to take steps to turn themselves away from drugs, helping them to inject safely with required attention to the vital importance of hygiene in this time of COVID-19, have found themselves facing a brick wall of failure.

Despite all the best efforts of health care institutions, humanitarian aid and government intervention, the rate of overdose deaths simply keeps rising. Now, the provincial government has approached the federal government with a request for exemption for people in possession of small amounts of heroin, cocaine and other illicit drugs, including fentanyl. The request is that the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act be suspended at this historical time of COVID intersecting with drug overdose increases.

To allow people possession of up to 4.5 grams or less of heroin, fentanyl, crack or powder cocaine and methamphetamine, lifting the fear of criminal charges and seizure of the drugs by police. Such an exemption to be based on a like principle permitting supervised injection sites to operate within the law, to apply province-wide. There are observers who question whether decriminalization would succeed in reducing deaths by overdose, citing the reality that there have been such policies in place in B.C. for years, none of which have succeeded in reducing opioid deaths.

During the pandemic, overdose deaths have actually soared. Furthermore, the province's solicitor-general had given instruction to provincial police forces to no longer make arrests for simple possession, long before the arrival of the pandemic. Over a year ago in another effort to address ways of reducing the constraints, the Public Prosecution Service of Canada had directed prosecutors that the most serious drug crimes be focused on; "and to otherwise pursue suitable alternative measures and diversion from the criminal justice system for simple possession cases".

Despite all of these moves 1,204 people died from drug overdose; 184 of them in July alone,according to the B.C. Coroners Service. A new record awaits of over 2,000 deaths in the current year, over five times the number of fatal overdoses that occurred ten years earlier. Such overdose deaths now exceed deaths linked to suicide, homicide and car accidents in total; Fentanyl is implicated in 86 percent of these overdose deaths.

 

Over 100 treatment beds have been opened, with another 200 in the planning stages, by the B.C. government. Safe supply programs have been created, allowing doctors and nurses to prescribe opioids (including fentanyl patches), alcohol, stimulants and benzodiazepines in an effort to persuade users to avoid street drugs laced with fentanyl.  

These are clearly acts of desperation in desperate times. The best of intentions appear to fuel the problem rather than dampen the situation. Making drugs more readily available in sterile situations  to avoid COVID infections may diminish the spread of the virus, but it also has the effect of normalizing drug addiction since the addicted, while being referred to drug-reduction programs also have the option of refusing them, their needs being met in the short-term. The programs may not expire, but the addicted do.

It is expected that others will follow British Columbia's example. It's the compassionate way to address the human obligation to give aid and support to others in need. And the demographic that fits into the category of desperate addictions is steadily growing. Even as their numbers reduce through untimely deaths new recruits to the hopeless impulsion of drug misuse are multiplying, exacerbating a situation already past dire. 

The City of Toronto is witnessing the steady growth of overdose deaths as are many other municipalities, all of which feel compelled to face the growing problem not with punishment of people whose lives have been turned toward a ritual revolving around rewarding drug dealers with the offshoot problem of petty crime to feed the need of a wasted life. City councils, in desperation, turn to calling for exemptions or broader access to a safe supply of illicit drugs.

People hold signs during a memorial march to remember victims of overdose deaths in Vancouver  Globe & Mail