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.
Labels: British Columbia, Decriminalization, Exemption, Federal Government, Harm Reduction, Overdose Deaths
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