Federal government must act on fentanyl crisis: senator
Ex-police chief calls for measures to restrict access to precursors
The federal government said Thursday it is “deeply concerned” and is taking “very seriously” B.C.’s plea for sweeping measures to deal with the public health crisis involving fentanyl overdoses.
“Our government is deeply concerned about the growing number of overdoses and deaths caused by opioids, and is committed to addressing this complex issue,” Health Minister Jane Philpott told Postmedia in a prepared statement.
Statistics from the coroner’s service in B.C. show there were 371 illicit drug overdose deaths in the first six months of this year, a 74 per cent increase over the same period in 2015.
Philpott’s officials listed, among other actions, support for Conservative Sen. Vern White’s bill, passed in the upper chamber in June, to restrict access to substances used to illicitly make the deadly opioid.
Philpott added that the government is also considering a far quicker route than legislation, since MPs are on their summer break and therefore unable to even consider the Senate bill that would place the substances under the Controlled Drug and Substances Act. She has “asked officials to consider regulatory options, due to the immediacy of this crisis and to determine the most expedient path forward.”
But White, the former chief of the Ottawa police, expressed frustration that the new Liberal government is still pondering whether the government can and should act via regulation.
White said that option is clearly available and complained that senior bureaucrats at Health Canada under both Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and Stephen Harper’s Tories have dragged their feet while people continue to die.
“Health Canada could do this right now,” he said.
“The bureaucracy has been sitting on their hands. When B.C. said (in April) that this is a state of emergency, they should have gone to the minister and said, ‘We should regulate these ingredients.’
“And then we pass this bill (in the Senate last month) and they still don’t go to the minister and say, ‘We should regulate these ingredients.’ ”
White said the U.S. government in 2006 was able within days to restrict access to precursor drugs that are easy to obtain in Canada through Chinese retailers operating on the Internet.
Federal officials, responding to Premier Christy Clark’s call for help Wednesday, said they are “actively” considering her request for legislation to restrict access to pill presses and tableting machines.
Ottawa will also consider Clark’s request for tougher Criminal Code measures against those who produce and distribute the oftendeadly opioid.
Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, meanwhile, said through a spokesperson that the government “takes the concerns raised by the premier and the B.C. health minister with respect to the dangers of fentanyl very seriously.”
Philpott’s office noted that it has already taken several measures to deal with the public health crisis, such as allowing Vancouver’s Dr. Peter Centre to operate a supervised consumption site and providing greater access to Naloxone, an emergency treatment for opioid overdoses.
White questioned the utility of the B.C. government’s call for tougher border measures to pre- vent fentanyl from getting into the country.
Canada is a net exporter, he said, because it is so easy to obtain the precursor drugs over the Internet and make the products at home.
“I was in the U.S. and have met dozens of Congressmen, and their biggest complaint is that we are a supplier of illegal fentanyl.”