More than a dozen Canadian medical doctors specializing in addiction have written the federal government to voice their opposition to the “safe supply” of drugs like hydromorphone and opioids.
“‘Safe Supply’ is a nice marketing slogan. The reality is it is not safe,” said the 17 doctors who signed the Sept. 25 letter, sent to Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Ya'ara Saks.
“It is harmful to give people addicted to opioids almost unlimited access to free opioids. It is harmful to our communities for inexpensive pharmaceutical grade opioids to be flooding our streets,” the letter said.
“We are a group of experienced Canadian Addiction Medicine physicians who are calling on the government to ensure that all hydromorphone prescribed to people with addiction is provided in a supervised fashion or that funding cease for this harmful practice.”
The doctors added that free, government-funded “safe supply” hydromorphone practices are unsafe. Hydromorphone, they noted, is a potent opioid about four times more powerful than morphine orally and seven times more powerful when injected. According to the doctors, the quantity being used for “safe supply” is seven to 10 times the maximum recommended morphine equivalents per day.
They said that free government-funded hydromorphine is based on “methodologically weak research,” and is “causing devastating harm to our communities,” by “increasing the total amount of opioids on the streets and providing essentially unlimited amounts of opioids to vulnerable people with addiction.”
The doctors said the result is new patients with addictions, “additional unnecessary overdoses and death,” and “creating more children with addiction in our Junior High and High Schools.”
They also suggests that the free government hydromorphone has created a “significant source of income to people with addiction” who sell their prescription drugs on the street market. There is “widespread evidence that this is occurring,” they said, and that the money obtained for selling the government-provided hydromorphone is then used to purchase more potent opioids like fentanyl.
The doctors provided a list of risks of unsupervised government-funded hydromorphone, noting that drug addicts prefer to inject the product.
“Injected, hydromorphone creates a similar elevated risk of serious infections that all users of intravenous substances face, such as Hepatitis C, HIV, cellulitis, bacterial endocarditis, respiratory suppression, overdose, and death,” they wrote.
They also said that a large supply of free hydromorphone increases individuals’ addictions and delays them from entering other treatments that have proven to be effective.
According to figures from Health Canada, there have been a total of 38,514 deaths from opioid overdoses or toxicity between January 2016 and March 2023. Of those, 1,904 occurred just in the first three months of 2023.
