Premier rejects call for non-prescribed safe supply as BC sets drug death record

Beverley Plane, the executive secretary of the Nanaimo Area Network of Drug Users, says that she lost three friends to toxic drugs last week and three others in December. Nanaimo recorded a record 112 unregulated drug deaths in 2023. Photo: Mick Sweetman / CHLY 101.7FM

B.C.’s Chief Coroner Lisa Lapointe announced on Wednesday that 2,511 people in the province died from unregulated drugs in 2023. A total of 112 people In Nanaimo died from unregulated drugs, a 43 per cent increase over the previous year.

Unregulated drugs are now the leading cause of death for people aged 10 to 59 in British Columbia, accounting for more deaths than homicides, suicides, accidents and natural disease combined.

“This week, I lost three people that were close to me,” said Beverley Plane executive secretary for the Nanaimo Area Network of Drug Users. “But last month, I also lost three people that I knew very closely and it's devastating. I've never seen it this bad. These were people I knew very well.”

Lapointe used her final press conference as chief coroner to repeat her call for the province to introduce a non-prescribed option for safer supply saying that the current prescription based program can’t be scaled up fast enough to meet the demand.

“Prescribed safer supply is simply not able to address the scale of the public health emergency in which we find ourselves,” she said. “Unless we are willing to act thoughtfully, carefully and with courage to provide a safer supply for the tens of thousands of people at risk in our province, we will continue to count the dead.”

Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Jennifer Whiteside told reporters Wednesday that increasing access to prescribed safe supply is what’s needed.

“In order to scale up the model that we have, it is really critical that we keep people connected to health care,” she told reporters. “We know that's what's necessary and that's what works.”

During a press conference on Thursday, Premier David Eby rejected the call for the province to provide a non prescribed option for safe supply.

“I do not believe that the distribution of incredibly toxic opioid drugs without the supervision of a medical professional in British Columbia is the way forward and the way out of the toxic drug crisis.,” he said “And we just disagree on that fundamental issue.”

Plane has tried to get on the prescribed safe supply program herself, and says that she is going to try again, but hasn’t been able to access it yet.

“It's actually really hard to get on the safe supply program.” she said. “And when you are policed so heavily that when you do that with a drug user, they're not going to be able to stay on the program and be as successful as if you were to give someone the freedom of being a human being and making their own choices.”

She said that allowing for more flexibility in the safe supply program, including a non-prescribed option, would help people who use drugs stay on it.

“A lot more people would be successful in quitting drugs if they had access to the safe supply program in a way that was convenient for them,” she said.

A recent study published in the British Medical Journal found that the prescribed safe supply program in British Columbia “reduced overdose related and all cause mortality” for people with a diagnosed opioid use disorder.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.