VICTORIA — A report from B.C.'s provincial health officer recommends the province expand its "safer supply" program to prevent overdoses, including allowing access to alternatives to unregulated drugs without a prescription.
Dr. Bonnie Henry says in her latest report on the overdose crisis that efforts centred on drug prohibition have not only failed to control access to controlled substances but have also created the toxic unregulated drug supply that has killed thousands since a health emergency was declared eight years ago. Her report echoes the findings from former chief coroner Lisa Lapointe, who said in January before leaving her post that prescribed safer-supply drugs would not solve the crisis that has already claimed more than 14,000 lives in British Columbia since 2016.
At the time, B.C. Premier David Eby rejected Lapointe's pleas, saying he did not believe distribution of opioid drugs should happen without the supervision of medical professionals.
Henry says in her report that 225,000 or more people in B.C. are accessing unregulated drugs and fentanyl continues to be the main killer, with 83 per cent of illicit drug deaths linked to the opioid.
Henry says a system to allow access to safer, regulated alternatives to fentanyl and other drugs is necessary, because a significant number of people who died from the unregulated drug supply did not have substance-use disorders and cannot be protected by "medicalized approaches." "Ultimately, we cannot prescribe our way o.
