Legalize heroin to lessen overdose deaths: doctor

A forensic psychologist working with the Canadian prison system is calling for “radically different” approaches to B.C.’s overdose crisis, including expanded access to prescription heroin.

Dr. Bruce Monkhouse, an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta and the University of Victoria, said with the illicit-drug supply overwhelmingly tainted by fentanyl and carfentanil, and with both inmates and clients at his private practice at heightened risk of overdose death, the federal government needs to consider legalizing heroin — just as it plans to do with cannabis.

“My argument is we’ve got to get it out of the criminal justice system and we’ve got to move the discussion and treat it like Portugal, Switzerland … as a public health and education issue,” Monkhouse

said after speaking Tuesday at a Downtown Vancouver conference presented by Calian Health.

“By legalizing it, by controlling it, by having it prescribed, we can do quality control, and we’re going to have less overdose deaths.”

Monkhouse said his opinion is guided by 25 years of working with federal and provincial offenders at correctional facilities, as well as at his private practice.

From working daily with people with substance-use disorder, he has concluded now is the time for “radically different” approaches to addiction amid B.C.’s ongoing public-health emergency.

In 2016, 931 people died of an illicit drug overdose in B.C.

In the first three months of 2017, there were 347 deaths. The B.C. Coroners Service did not have data available on overdose deaths in the correctional system, which would take “a few days” to collect.

Monkhouse said the key to swaying public opinion on prescription heroin “so that it becomes a medicine” will be comprehensive education campaigns that focus on demonstrating addiction is a “chronic medical and mental-health” issue.

“We keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results — and we’re not getting them,” he said.