There are two major factors in the overdose epidemic that continues to ravage our province: fentanyl and shame. Fentanyl is exponentially more toxic than heroin. It’s nearly impossible to detect in pills and powders. Still, it represents the simpler aspect of the problem.
Greater vigilance by our border guards and increased restrictions around those who can buy a pill press would likely help keep large quantities of fentanyl off the street.
The more lingering, complex problem is the issue of shame.
Surrey Mayor Linda Hepner – in a stern rebuke to both humanity and logic – recently resisted a safe-infection site being set up in her city. Her supporters seem to blame supervised injection sites for exacerbating drug addiction, all the while clucking their tongues at drug users for failing to heed Nancy Reagan’s famous “Just say no” credo.
It’s true safe injection sites don’t work for everyone, but shallow aphorisms have likely never helped anyone struggling with addiction.
What injection sites do offer is a chance for a habitual drug user to get medical treatment. By denying them that chance, we’re pretending both the problem and its solution don’t exist.
Nurses and doctors at Lions Gate Hospital are currently supplying naloxone kits to anyone who fears they may be at risk of an overdose. We applaud their forward-thinking efforts. We just wish there were take-home kits for intolerance.
Naloxone, like safe-injection sites, will save lives. They provide a medical solution to a medical problem instead of wasting time on the moral blame game.
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