Editor:
Earlier this month marked the six-year anniversary of the official declaration of a public health crisis in B.C. due to what was an alarming rise in overdose deaths from poisoned drugs.
Sadly, the crisis has only worsened.
B.C. has lost more than 3,000 people to COVID since March 2020. In this same period, though, at least 33 per cent more British Columbians died from the toxic drugs that have prevailed in the illicit market under pandemic conditions.
In the face of the threat of COVID, we rallied together, amassed required resources and cooperated to avoid the greater tragedies. Somehow, though, the greater threat which continues to kill scores of our relatives, friends and colleagues every month, has not moved us to follow the single, practical step called for by the BC Coroner – to provide safe legal alternatives to the poisonous illegal drugs used by thousands of people in B.C.
The so-called “safer supply” offered on the Coast is not what these fellow souls are asking for – what would make it possible for them to cease relying on the increasingly extreme mix of toxic chemicals on the illegal market. That would be a safe, pharmaceutical alternative to what criminals provide – principally fentanyl.
Despite laws and policies having been changed for months now to allow such provisions (at least four forms of pharmaceutical fentanyl are currently legal for any doctor to prescribe in B.C.), we resist caring enough about these other human beings to just give them what they need to feel normal, to face another day.
We demand that the health care system listen to the coroner and start allowing safe fentanyl prescriptions to be given to those whose lives depend on this substance to function.
Once we show this compassion, and people who use drugs begin to believe that the rest of us care enough to listen, and allow them to be where they are, we can address underlying factors and find long-term solutions.
But first, let’s just find the humanity within ourselves to care enough to stop the needless deaths accruing day after day after day.
We did it with COVID. We can do it with the overdose crisis.
Brian Mackenzie, Gibsons
i2ipeersupport.ca
