Nearly 1,500 people have died from illicit drug use in B.C. so far this year, including 251 in the Island Health region.
The Island saw 29 illicit drug deaths in August, down only slightly from 32 in July.
The B.C. Coroners Service reported 169 drug deaths across the province last month — roughly 5.5 deaths per day.
So far this year, 71 per cent of those dying from toxic drugs were between the ages 30 and 59, and 78 per cent were male, it says.
Chief coroner Lisa Lapointe said there is an urgent need for the government to develop a provincial framework for safer supply distribution.
The service says no deaths have been reported at supervised consumption or overdose prevention sites, and toxicology results showed no indication that prescribed safe supply has contributed to the deaths.
Lapointe referred to a report released in March by a death review panel that examined more than 6,000 overdose deaths from August 2017 through July 2021. It found the primary cause of illicit drug overdoses is a combination of an increasingly toxic supply and a current policy framework that forces users to go to illegal sources.
In June, Ottawa approved a three-year exception to federal drug laws, and beginning next year, B.C. will become the first province where people won’t be arrested or charged for possessing up to 2.5 grams of certain illicit drugs.
But Shane Calder, a drug policy advocate for the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition who works in Victoria, said without safe supply, the death toll won’t drop.
“People have this idea that if you take drugs off the street, everyone is safer,” he said. “[But] when you remove [the supply], the demand goes way up. Some people have it and some people don’t. People will buy whatever they can get their hands on.”
The result, he said, is more violence and overdoses.
“There is this wild west capitalism that is going on with the drug supply. People are selling a product that is unregulated and as such there are no consequences.”
