CHARBONNEAU – Safer Supply program should be expanded but not to non-prescriptions
IN A PERFECT WORLD, giving people a safe alternative to deadly drugs would be a no-brainer. If clean water was offered to people who only had dirty water to drink, who would object?
Apparently BC Coroners had a perfect world in mind when they recommended an expansion of the Safer Supply program to include non-prescription distribution.
The program’s goal is simple. By prescribing regulated medications, health care providers can eliminate or reduce a patient’s reliance on toxic street drugs, thereby reducing overdoses and death.
The coroners’ recommendation is logical because British Columbians are dying from toxic drugs. It’s a crisis. About six people die in B.C. each day and more than 13,000 people have died since 2016.
B.C.’s Minister of Mental Health flatly rejects the coroners’ recommendation. “Non-prescription models for the delivery of pharmaceutical alternatives are not under consideration,” said B.C. Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Jennifer Whiteside.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world. The minister’s rejection of the coroners’ recommendation may not be logical but considering the failure to scale up the existing Safer Supply program, and under the current political climate, it’s real world politics.
Despite the furor raised over B.C.’s Safer Supply program, it treats a relatively small number.
About 225,000 people use illicit substances in B.C. About 100,000 have been diagnosed with an opioid-use disorder. Of those, 25,000 receive treatment such as with methadone or Suboxone. Only 4,500 have access to prescriptions under the safer-supply program. Yes, 4.5 per cent of those diagnosed with an opioid-use disorder get prescriptions through safer supply.
Of course, the facts don’t prevent politicians from making exaggerated claims. Federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre alleges that drugs from these programs are “flooding the streets.”
Some flood. The problem with the safer-supply drug program is not that it’s flooding the streets with drugs; the problem is that the program is just a trickle. To scale up the program, more resources need to be applied.
The healthcare workers who provide safer supply prescriptions say there are many barriers to the program, including the resource-intensive nature of one-to-one prescribing, the limitations of currently available medications, and the fear that these medications may be diverted.
Prescribed drugs are limited to mostly hydromorphone which is often sold by users rather than used. For clients who are living in poverty, the sale of prescribed drugs is tempting. And hydromorphone is not what they crave: they need the more powerful fentanyl.
Powdered fentanyl is offered by some programs in Vancouver but it is not covered by the province’s drug plans and therefore expensive. Powdered fentanyl is a more flexible formula because it can be smoked, snorted or injected.
The BC United critic for mental health and addictions says the Safer Supply program should be expanded. Elenore Sturko, a former RCMP officer, said her party supports providing drug users with pharmaceutical alternatives to deadly street drugs as a short-term measure.
What’s preventing expansion of the Safer Supply program is a matter of political will, says Sturko, noting how quickly and broadly COVID-19 vaccines were distributed.
“I do not believe for a second that with the medically available and pharmaceutically available alternatives to illicit drugs that do exist … that we could not scale them up,” said Sturko.
“I just think it’s a lack of leadership and lack of will.”
David Charbonneau is a retired TRU electronics instructor who hosts a blog at http://www.eyeviewkamloops.wordpress.com.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
Absurdly, the author attempts to make an equivalence between fentanyl and water – surely we want people to have clean water, so they should also have clean fentanyl.
I shouldn’t have to point out to a former university instructor that water is a necessity; we die without it. Fentanyl on the other hand is not a necessity, and we die with it.
Next.
LikeLike
Drug use is ultimately symptomatic of the alienation, discontent, dissatisfaction, dysfunction and utter loneliness people experience in our society.
The doctors didn’t help and likely will not help and the politicians have generally pandered to philosophies rather than breadth of thinking.
LikeLike
The writer seems to ignore that whether they are legal or not, the drugs of choice of habitual users will cause early death. The body can’t handle ingestion of these foreign substances day after day. Constant use of fentanyl or other opioids cause people’s teeth to fall out, their skin to blister and their organs to fail, resulting in death.
If we really wanted to stop this epidemic of drug use we would offer immediate rehabilitation to anyone requesting it and require rehabilitation for anyone convicted of drug-related crimes or for those who have been the subject of emergency callouts for overdose three times or more.
Our society can’t sustain when a small segment that contributes nothing continues to cost society more and more with no positive, long-term result.
We need to put our dollars into rehab, not drugs, imo. So far, our government’s record on providing rehab services is abysmal.
LikeLike
The NDP was supporting a drug distribution network called the Drug User Liberation Front. That means we were supporting a drug trafficking operation.
The government admitted that was happening just two weeks ago when it terminated a $200,000 contract with the Drug User Liberation Front.
The aptly named front was buying up cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine on the dark web, sending it for vetting at labs at two provincial universities, then selling the product to members of a “compassion club” from a storefront on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Police raided this operation recently and arrested people.
Advocates for this kind of thing are wallowing in the deep end of mental illness. You need to give your head a shake. This is nothing short of insanity. Safe supply has turned into a taxpayer funded drug bender. There will be consequences, and I look forward to the pendulum swinging back the other way like a wrecking ball.
In the DTES, I’m Denny Law.
LikeLike
A group of specialist addiction treatment doctors in Canada recently wrote an open letter warning that safe supply is causing harm.
In the letter, the 17 signatories refer to the program as “Unsupervised Free Government Funded Hydromorphone,” and argue that it is “causing further 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.”
“As a result of this practice, we are witnessing new patients suffering from opioid addiction, and additional unnecessary overdoses and death,” they write.
The authors argue that drug users receive their safer supply drugs, then turn around on the streets and sell them. The money from so-called “diversion,” they argue, is “commonly used to purchase more potent opioids such as fentanyl,” since that remains the drug of choice.
“There is widespread evidence that this is occurring,” they write. They further argue that diverted hydromorphone is “creating more children with addiction in our Junior High and High Schools,” and that addictions doctors are seeing evidence of diversion and childhood addiction in their practices.
If you think a drug addict is actually dosing free pills that are less potent than the drugs they’re addicted to, especially when there is no requirement to be supervised as you dose, I have a 25% utility increase to sell you.
To say nothing of the dangerous impacts safe supply sites have on the surrounding neighbourhood.
Safe supply zealots will soon have their balloons popped.
Harm reduction can work. But the current progrom in Canada is a reaper disguised in a cheap angel costume. If you set out to design an approach that provides the worst possible outcomes to both addicts and the community, look to the BC example.
In Kamloops, I’m Denny Law.
LikeLike
225,000 people in BC using drugs…let’s say $ 50,000 each (likely more) for the drugs and the bureaucracy the math is startling.
LikeLike