Opioid overdoses a national crisis: Singh
New NDP leader supports harm-reduction model
The response to Canada’s opioid overdose problem should be elevated as a national issue with a significant harm reduction approach, new NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said during his first visit to Vancouver as party head Friday.
“Thousands of people are dying in our country as a result of this crisis and it needs to be named a national crisis first,” said Singh, speaking after taking a tour of Chinatown.
Singh’s first official visit to the city after winning the federal NDP leadership Oct. 1 came a day after the City of Vancouver released the latest grim statistics on the overdose crisis — 275 suspected overdose deaths to the end of Oct. 9 — and a week after it was revealed that possible overdose deaths across B.C. surpassed all of 2016 at the end of August with 1,013.
Singh said he supports the decriminalization of personal possession of drugs, and favours the Portuguese model of harm reduction, which leans heavily on treating addiction as a health and social justice issue with most resources directed at treatment, mental health services, and rehabilitation rather than criminalizing addicts.
“They (Portugal) found a dramatic decrease in deaths and less addiction,” Singh said. “That should be the focus if we really want to address the opioid crisis, and really want to reduce the significant and terrible deaths,” he said. Vancouver East NDP MP Jenny Kwan escorted her new leader on the Chinatown tour to visit historic buildings, and introduce him to the changing neighbourhood’s history as Singh begins his campaign to build support ahead of the 2019 federal election.
Singh, a former Ontario MPP, ran as something of an outsider in the NDP leadership (his competitors were all sitting MPs) and said that for now he is comfortable holding the job without attempting to take a seat in Parliament.
Singh said Jack Layton, who
They (Portugal) found a dramatic decrease in deaths and less addiction. That should be the focus if we really want to address the opioid crisis.
died in 2011, was elected to head the party while he was still a Toronto city councillor and went on to become the NDP’s most successful leader by taking time to create a national following rather than immediately running in a byelection.
“I want to spend time connecting with Canadians, hearing their issues and proposing our values and our vision,” he said.