BC Government Rejects Provincial Health Officer’s Call to Expand Safer Supply

Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry speaks in the press theatre at the legislature in Victoria, B.C., on March 10, 2022. The Canadian Press/Chad Hipolito

The B.C. government has rejected a proposal by the provincial health officer to expand the supply of non-prescribed safer supply drugs to address the ongoing overdose crisis in the province.

In a newly released report titled “Alternatives to Unregulated Drugs,” Dr. Bonnie Henry proposed that the province consider allowing access to non-prescribed alternatives to unregulated street drugs.

The July 11 report describes easier access to non-prescription safer supply drugs as an essential part of addressing the growing problem of drug poisonings and overdose deaths.

But Premier David Eby maintains that opioids shouldn’t be distributed without medical supervision, a point Mental Health and Addictions Minister Jennifer Whiteside stressed in response to Dr. Henry’s report.

Ms. Whiteside’s office said in an emailed statement the government does not agree with Dr. Henry’s safer supply recommendations and “will not go in the direction” of “non-medical models of distributing medications.”

Report Snapshot

Drug bans may be put in place to control access, but instead serve only to exacerbate the overdose issue, Dr. Henry said in the report.

This “prohibitionist approach” also creates the “toxic unregulated drug supply” that has resulted in more than 14,000 overdoses deaths since B.C. first declared the public-health emergency in April 2016, she said.

“For some, a safer alternative to unregulated drugs could have been the right support,” she wrote. “Ultimately, we cannot prescribe our way out of this crisis. Finding new ways to enable access to alternatives to unregulated drugs will require bold conversations, system-level changes, and thinking outside of the constraints that have so far failed to turn this crisis around.”

Putting a system in place that allows users to access regulated alternatives to fentanyl and other drugs builds on Canada’s current food and drug laws, she said.

“Access to quality-controlled drugs that are not subject to such unpredictability and that helps separate people already using drugs from the unregulated drug supply would result in fewer poisonings and deaths,” she added. “This is a logical extension of the principle applied to other consumable products.”

Expansion of safer supply programming is just one part of dealing with the drug crisis, the report said, adding that prevention and treatment are also key components.

As many as 225,000 people in B.C. are accessing unregulated drugs each year, with fentanyl the culprit in more than 80 percent of drug-poisoning deaths since 2017, the report said.

Report Reaction

Ms. Whiteside said while the government respects the advice of Dr. Henry, “this is a topic we do not agree on.”

“Addiction is a health issue and people struggling with addiction need access to the full continuum of services provided by our health-care system,” she said in the statement. “Prescribed alternatives to street drugs are an option to separate people who are at the highest risk of death and harm from the poisoned drug supply.”

BC United leader Kevin Falcon and leader of the Official Opposition said his party rejects the legitimization of illicit drug use.

“We must make a dramatic shift towards treatment, recovery and rigorous enforcement against drug trafficking to protect our communities,” he said in a July 11 X post.

The B.C. Conservative Party issued a strongly-worded statement July 11 in response to the report, and called for Dr. Henry’s “immediate dismissal from her position.”

B.C. Conservative MLA Elenore Sturko described Dr. Henry’s stance as “deeply troubling.”

“The recent proposal to offer a range of substances including methamphetamine in government- run or private retail spaces is a deeply flawed and dangerous model,” she said in a statement on her party’s website.

“The idea that hard drugs could be sold in various formats and compositions with government-determined pricing is reckless. This government would effectively be using taxpayer dollars to subsidize drug trafficking and there’s no oversight to where the drugs go after they’re sold.”

Only the Green Party appeared to support Dr. Henry’s findings. Leader Sonia Furstenau accused the other parties of “ignoring expert advice in favour of sensational headlines.”

“Opposition parties seem fixated on a ‘war on drugs’ approach, despite historical evidence of its failure to address underlying issues,” she said in a statement. “If we are to have a ‘war’ on anything, it should be on poverty and homelessness … The ‘war on drugs’ has never succeeded, it only exacerbates the problem.”

An Ongoing Crisis

Dr. Henry’s report comes two months after the federal government approved B.C.’s request to once again make public drug use illegal.

B.C. was the first province in Canada to decriminalize drug use as part of a three-year pilot project with Health Canada. The federal agency issued an exemption to its drug laws in January 2023, decriminalizing possession of up to 2.5 grams of certain illegal drugs, including heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine.

The province was not even halfway into the three-year pilot project when it asked Ottawa to recriminalize open drug use in public places such as hospitals and playgrounds. The move came after a public outcry that the project was making the drug problem worse.

The federal government approved the recriminalization request on May 7.

B.C. has been grappling with a drug overdose crisis for more than eight years. Last year’s decriminalization pilot project was supposed to help address the issue with a focus on safer supply drugs.

Chief coroner Lisa Lapointe said in a report earlier this year that an average of 6.4 lives are lost each day to overdose in B.C. with the rate of death in January coming in at approximately 42 per 100,000 residents. Seven out of every 10 fatal overdose victims were men between the ages of 30 and 59, she said.

No area of the province is immune to the ongoing toxic-drug crisis, the report said, adding that the areas hardest hit continue to be Vancouver, Surrey, and Nanaimo.