If terrorists slipped into the country and killed 500 people over a nine-month period, every law-enforcement agency in the country and every level of government would be marshalling the resources needed to stop the killings.
The threat of terrorism in Canada, while not to be taken lightly, is largely theoretical. The threat from the powerful opioid fentanyl, however, is real and immediate.
In B.C. alone, 555 people died of illicit-drug overdoses in the first nine months of this year, with 107 of those deaths occurring on Vancouver Island. Fentanyl is blamed for a majority of the drug deaths.
It is a crisis that calls for action, but that is not to say governments are blind. Far from it.
In April, Perry Kendall, B.C.’s provincial health officer, declared drug overdoses a public-health emergency. In June, chief coroner Lisa Lapointe said drug overdoses have become the leading cause of unnatural deaths in the province, outpacing car crashes.
The B.C. government has created a task force and announced $10 million to fight opioid addiction. Naloxone, a medication that counteracts the effects of an opioid overdose, has been made more widely available. Island Health has plans to open more treatment beds. The RCMP in B.C. supports harm-reduction efforts.
It’s a war with many fronts, and more must be done. The opioid is cheap and easy to manufacture; tiny amounts of raw fentanyl smuggled in from China can be used to make thousands of pills.
While education, enforcement and treatment are important, the first priority is harm-reduction — preventing deaths. That’s where supervised-consumption sites come in.
Politicians, bureaucrats, advocacy groups and users agree that such sites are the most critical intervention to prevent illicit-drug overdoses. There isn’t one in Victoria, although Island Health is preparing applications to the federal government for two sites.
The federal government should speed up the approval process and repeal legislation passed by the Conservatives that makes it difficult to implement harm-reduction sites.
Why don’t people just avoid drugs? It’s not that easy.
“I’ve seen a lot, and heard a lot of what gets people into addiction in the first place,” says Nanaimo physician Patricia Mark. “And nobody wakes up in the morning and says: ‘I think I’ll be a drug addict. Nobody.’ ”
More treatment beds are needed, but beds are not enough — there must be more supports and services, before treatment and after. Many people struggling with addictions are homeless or live in substandard circumstances — offering them treatment and putting them back into their old environments will almost guarantee relapse.
More resources are needed for enforcement, not cops on the street nabbing users, but more customs officers with more resources preventing fentanyl from being smuggled across borders.
There have been calls for stiffer punishment for dealers — and we’re not opposed to that— but what deters criminals is the certainty of being caught, not longer jail terms.
But while we try to stop the flow of poison, we must care for its victims.
Above all, compassion is needed. Most people struggling with the illness of addiction cannot simply will themselves to stop. Regardless of how they got there, they need treatment and support.
And we should not judge who needs help — every human life is worth saving.
