Vending machine drugs worth look

In a public-health crisis, the first priority should be to keep people from dying, so a proposal to use vending machines to distribute safe drugs deserves support and funding.

It’s a bold approach. We have experimented with programs that provide users with opioids, but those have been in a clinical setting, with participants carefully vetted and supervised. Those requirements have also meant the programs have been slow to launch, costly and limited in the number of people reached.

Dr. Mark Tyndall of B.C.’s Centre for Disease Control says providing hydromorphone, known under the brand name Dilaudid, through vending machines at places such as supervised-consumption sites, will save lives by allowing people to avoid the risk of illicit drugs that include fentanyl. The cost is negligible, about 32 cents a pill.

There are risks, but they are small. Some people might be encouraged to use more drugs if they are freely available. Some might resell the drugs they get — although that should mean the buyers would at least get less risky drugs.

The idea will trouble some people but they should be much more troubled by the fact more than 1,200 British Columbians died due to illicitdrug overdoses in the first 11 months of 2017, compared with 922 for all of 2016, and 510 in 2015. The numbers tell us what are we doing is not working.