Overdose deaths record a drop, but crisis continues

• Drug deaths on Vancouver Island in July: 14 • Total drug deaths in B.C. so far this year: 876

At least 14 people died from illicit drug overdoses on Vancouver Island in July, according to the B.C. Coroners Service.

This is a decrease from June, in which 23 people died, but still places the Island and Victoria among the top regions for overdose deaths. From January to July, 138 people on the Island died.

Lisa Lapointe, the province’s chief coroner, said the numbers are further evidence that the overdose crisis cannot be easily solved.

“We are starting to understand this is a long-term problem,” Lapointe said. “This is a much broader issue than fentanyl alone. What this [crisis] has showed us is that there are many, many people turning to drugs. The big question is why?”

Lapointe said her office has hired several coroners to work on its overdose investigation team. The extraordinary number of deaths has led to a backlog of coroners reports as aggregate reports are also put together in an effort to discover any trends or indicators among the deaths, she said.

Thursday’s report revealed the powerful opioid fentanyl was present in more than four out of five overdose deaths between January and July of this year. Fentanyl was found in four per cent of overdose deaths in 2012 and 67 per cent in 2016.

Lapointe said the introduction of fentanyl into the stream of street drugs has made them exponentially more dangerous.

She is hesitant, however, to refer to deaths involving fentanyl-tainted drugs as poisonings.

“We use the term overdose because it’s well understood. It doesn’t mean that someone took too much of something; the substance they used overwhelmed their bodies,” she said.

There were 91 overdose deaths in B.C. in July, down from a high of 147 in April.

Lapointe said there was a similar trend last summer. “Then we got to November and December and it was absolutely disastrous,” she said.

With 876 known overdose deaths in the first seven months of this year, the province is likely to soon surpass the 2016 death toll of 978.

“The numbers continue to be tragically and unacceptably high,” said B.C. Addictions Minister Judy Darcy, who has spent the past six weeks touring front-line service providers around the province.

“I see them and think of the people I’ve met living with addictions, the families and people working on the front lines. I see their faces.”

Darcy said the greatest request for help from the province has been more accessible treatment and affordable housing.

“Our goal is: Ask for help once, get help fast,” she said. “Right now that is not happening. There is a lack of treatment and housing. How do you recovery without those?”

She said some of her ministry’s plans will be revealed in today’s throne speech and Monday’s budget.

Her major task is to develop a better system to delivery support for people with addictions and mental-health issues. She plans to involve as many levels and areas of government, as well as business and community groups as she can to build this.

“They say it takes a village to raise a child,” Darcy said. “Well, it will take a whole province to find a solution for this crisis.”

Hours after the latest stats on overdoses were released, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau closed the door on decriminalizing illicit drugs to combat the national crisis.

Trudeau said decriminalization is not the approach his government will take to deal with the problem.

“We are making headway on this and indeed the crisis continues and indeed spreads across the country, but we are not looking at legalizing any other drugs than marijuana for the time being,” Trudeau told a news conference at the end of a federal Liberal caucus meeting in Kelowna on Thursday.

Darcy said criminalizing people for having limited amounts of drugs for their own use instead of providing treatment puts them at risk of dying.

“I think we need to have this conversation in this country,” she said. “Sometimes governments need to be pushed.”