Current funding not enough to combat deadly overdose crisis

Systemic change is needed, writes Jordan Westfall.

Solutions to B.C.’s overdose epidemic start with the provincial government acting on what it knows to be true: criminalization and current public policies are contributing to every death.

Government policies that regulate illicit drugs have failed. They often leave people in an endless cycle of incarceration, heightened risk of overdose and, all too often, an early death.

B.C.’s street drug markets are contaminated. The well is poisoned. People in British Columbia are dying every single day of a preventable cause of death.

British Columbia, and Canada, have to learn deep lessons from this trauma. This overdose epidemic is a systemic issue and no amount of treatment beds will change this fact.

In an opinion piece in The Vancouver Sun earlier this month, Judy Darcy, the minister of mental health and addictions, said the overdose death toll of three or four a day represented “the worst public health crisis to hit our province in decades.”

But her government’s funding support doesn’t match her rhetoric. Comparing her ministry’s budget to that of the Ministry of Health shows how severe the funding deficit is. The annual budget of the Ministry of Health, headed by Adrian Dix, is $17 billion. Darcy’s budget is $9.9 million, or just 0.058 per cent of the Ministry of Health budget. She needs to acknowledge that this isn’t nearly enough to make an impact on the overdose epidemic.

Her statement late last year that the province is doing “everything possible” to stem the tide of death rings hollow given such a microscopic level of funding.

Moreover, focusing government resources on abstinence-based treatment will not solve this overdose epidemic. People who use drugs are not the problem here. Access to treatment is important, but the underlying issue isn’t a lack of treatment beds. The problem is a contaminated drug supply and government not doing nearly enough as people die.

The United States has also addressed the overdose epidemic with billion-dollar investments into abstinence-based treatments while ignoring drug supply contamination. Overdose deaths have continued to skyrocket; in 2016, illicit and prescription drugs killed 64,000 people there.

The path forward to ending this epidemic is through systemic change. People who use drugs do not need fixing, we need a government that respects our human rights and fixes the systemic issues that contribute to our deaths.

One ministry alone cannot solve a systemic issue. B.C.’s office of the attorney general is responsible for administering justice, but has said little about what it can do to reduce overdose deaths. Attorney General David Eby has to be honest with the public about police crackdowns on fentanyl dealers.

We have an illicit drug supply that is toxic, but arresting fentanyl dealers will do nothing to change this reality.

Instead it makes the drug market even more turbulent and unpredictable, sending people who use drugs to new dealers with equally deadly consequences.

Minister Darcy must be prepared to have brave conversations with the public about solutions.

She has said that “an unprecedented crisis demands unprecedented action.” Consider then that under Health Canada’s “Access to Drugs in Exceptional Circumstances” Act, safer prescription heroin can be imported into British Columbia for anyone using street opioids.

More funding is needed immediately, especially for community-based, grassroots drug user groups that provide critical, life-saving overdose prevention services across the province.

Crucially, the province should direct its police forces not to arrest people for drug possession because we have a century of evidence that a law enforcement approach to drug use has contributed to overdose epidemics throughout the War on Drugs.

Treatment is important, but the underlying issue isn’t a lack of treatment beds.