In 2020 and 2021, a deadly health crisis caused an aggregate loss of 450,000 years of life in Canada — five times the years of life stolen by COVID.
However, deaths kept rising every year and, in 2016, the province declared a public health emergency. Five years later, deaths had more than doubled again. So despite noble intentions and a substantial resource investment, British Columbia’s overdose death rate is now as high as the worst affected parts of the United States.
Everyone working in this field wants to improve life chances and save people from premature death, but Canada needs a new approach because we are clearly not winning this battle with the tactics adopted to date. The policies in places like B.C. could actually be fuelling the drug addiction crisis, not mitigating it..
We should not be defeatist. Not everyone with an opioid addiction will end up overdosing, and not everyone with a chronic addiction is destined to stay addicted. Recovery is possible and policies should provide viable pathways for drug users to enter treatment and pursue recovery. Pressuring addicted individuals to undergo treatment is controversial, but positive incentives alone may not be working.
Canada needs a more ambitious national strategy that gives due emphasis to recovery, and that provinces can adapt to suit their local needs, with robust measures that allow us to compare approaches and see what is really working. British Columbia remains the epicentre of this drug addiction crisis. Unfortunately, it is no longer where pioneering policy is making any meaningful difference. No one wants a return to a 1980s-style crackdown, but we must be prepared to move beyond policies that have not delivered the turnaround we have all been promised repeatedly for over 20 years.
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