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Victoria asking province for safer drug supply to lessen overdose risks

Some Victoria councillors are calling on the province to provide a safer drug supply to drug users at risk of overdose.
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The Pandora Supervised Consumption Service Centre facility has 10 consumption booths at which users can inject illicit drugs.

Some Victoria councillors are calling on the province to provide a safer drug supply to drug users at risk of overdose.

In a motion to be debated by councillors Thursday, councillors Sarah Potts, Jeremy Loveday, Marianne Alto and Ben Isitt note that it has been two years since B.C. declared a public health emergency due to increased overdoses, yet the number of overdose deaths continues to rise “due to an unpredictable and highly toxic drug supply.”

They are recommending the province ensure that people at risk of overdose have access to safer alternatives.

An estimated 42,000 people “inject toxic substances” in B.C. and “it is not possible for the treatment system to rapidly increase services to manage this number of people as ‘patients’ within a medical treatment model,” says the resolution.

B.C. had more than 1,400 illicit drug overdose deaths in 2018 of which about 80 per cent were linked to the opioid fentanyl in the illicit drug supply.

The province has responded with harm- reduction measures such as opening safe- consumption sites, wider distribution of the opioid antidote naloxon and easier access to substitution therapies such as methadone and suboxone.

Neither Potts nor Loveday, the lead councillors on the motion, returned calls for comment.

Coun. Geoff Young called the provision of safer drugs “a logical extension” of safe-consumption sites, but said it’s a step that should be considered only if it is accompanied by a drastic increase in treatment facilities.

Otherwise, Young said, the move could result in more people being at risk “that we’ve seen through the de facto tolerance of street-level trafficking and the provision of safe-consumption sites.”

“The thing that has to change is not the public attitude to supplying drugs, it’s the attitudes of the health authorities and the funding governments to recognize the resources that have to be put into this issue if people are actually going to be treated,” Young said.

The four councillors proposing the resolution recommend it be forwarded to the province and to the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities, the Union of B.C. Municipalities as well as local governments for support.

bcleverley@timescolonist.com