The fentanyl crisis in B.C. is getting worse.
That sentence was true four years ago. It was true last week. And if the federal Liberals continue to avoid making eye contact with logic, it will be true next year.
Earlier this week, federal Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor suggested combating the crisis with safer opioid alternatives. She also broached the possibility of treating opioid addiction with heroin.
But Taylor maintained there are no plans to decriminalize hard drugs like heroin.
Her statement begs an obvious question: How much worse do things have to get before there is a plan?
In 2010 there were 211 overdose deaths attributed to illicit drugs. So far this year, there have been 1,103. That includes the deaths of 16 children aged 13 to 18.
The reason, of course, is fentanyl, which is 16 times more prevalent in overdose deaths than it was five years ago.
There are many logistical pitfalls on the road to legalization. But much like government liquor stores are an improvement on bootleggers and the lottery is better than the numbers racket, legal heroin would be better and safer than the concoctions currently sold on the street.
The most recent report from the B.C. Coroners Service reads like a statistical chronicle of tragedy, but there’s a single line that offers some hope: “There were no deaths at supervised consumption or drug overdose prevention sites.”
One of those sites is the Crosstown Clinic in Vancouver, which offers addicts heroin in a clinical setting. In all of Canada, it’s the only clinic of its kind.
The day that’s not true anymore is the day this crisis stops getting worse.
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