Opinion: Unlike COVID, where regulations aim to facilitate prevention through vaccinations and adherence to public health measures, laws concerning illicit drugs actually facilitate overdose deaths.
Since the beginning of January 2020, the health crisis has claimed the lives of more than 4,000 people in B.C. The last few months have seen deaths reach an all-time high, with more than 200 people dying each month, or about six people every day.
While death rates rose dramatically during that period, they continued to increase after mid-2021, with each of the last two months of the year recording the highest-ever number of drug deaths in the province. January of this year was only slightly better, with 207 deaths. But what we’re doing to stem the tide clearly isn’t working — in fact, it’s working against us. And that brings us to the second cause identified in the report: the current legal and regulatory framework. Unlike COVID, where regulations aim to facilitate prevention through vaccinations and adherence to public health measures, laws concerning illicit drugs actually facilitate overdose deaths.
That might sound a little incongruous, since many such facilities are designed to help get people off drugs rather than to keep them on them. And, indeed, the very idea of safer supply seems counterintuitive given our longstanding cultural belief that abstinence is the only answer. You know who cites all of that evidence? That’s right, none other than the federal government. Yes, while maintaining the criminal prohibition on drugs, and while dragging their feet on Vancouver’s applications for an exemption from Canada’s drug possession laws, the feds nonetheless publicly rehearse the evidence in favour of safer supply. Now that’s incongruous.Article content
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