A death review panel from the British Columbia Coroners Service is recommending community groups be allowed to hand out drugs without a prescription in an attempt to stop the relentless overdose death toll.
The panel's report coincided with the monthly overdose death toll of 175 people in September, which the coroners service says is a 10 per cent drop from the same month a year ago, but still equal to 5.8 deaths a day across B.C.
Jennifer Whiteside, B.C.'s minister of mental health and addictions, immediately rejected the proposal in a letter to chief coroner Lisa Lapointe, saying a non-prescription model is not being considered and she can't accept the main recommendation.
It is with heavy heart that B.C. continues to lose loved ones throughout our communities. In September, we lost 175 people to the poisoned drug supply circulating our province. No words can soften these losses and we know there is more to do.https://t.co/N0TAdGDsEZ
— Jennifer Whiteside (@JM_Whiteside) November 1, 2023
The report says about 225,000 people in B.C. use unregulated substances but fewer than 5,000 people a month have prescriptions to receive safe-supply drugs.
Michael Egilson, the chair of the Coroners Service death panel review, says in a statement that the report's recommendations reflect the sense of urgency in the province to prevent more overdose deaths.
The panel says the fastest way to reduce deaths is to cut dependence on the unregulated toxic drug supply.
"A fundamentally different approach is urgently required as incremental increases of existing interventions are unlikely to make a meaningful population difference and people will continue to die at unprecedented rates," the report says.
"The urgent need for a practical, scalable response to the public health emergency requires pursuit of a non-medical model that provides people who use drugs with an alternative to the unregulated drug market."
The report says such an approach would complement the existing medical model and would be more nimble to meet the unique needs of people in communities that are rural and remote, or that lack the infrastructure needed by medical clinics.
More than 13,000 people have died since April 2016, when B.C. declared a public health emergency for the overdose crisis as the powerful opioid fentanyl became more common on the streets.
Health Canada granted B.C. an exemption under the Controlled Drugs Act last January to allow people in B.C. to possess small amounts of hard drugs in an effort to reduce the stigma associated with drug use and prevent deaths.
