Pubdate: Wed, 21 Dec 2016
Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC)
Copyright: 2016 Times Colonist
Contact:  http://www.timescolonist.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/481
Page: A10

FIRST, LET'S STOP OVERDOSE DEATHS

We need to get at the roots of drug abuse, find out what factors lead
people to take illicit drugs, and figure out what support they need to
get off drugs and stay clean. We need to get the message out there
that drugs are not the solution to problems. We need to step up
efforts to apprehend and prosecute manufacturers and distributors of
illicit drugs. But first, we need to stop people from dying. And to do
that, we must do things that might seem counter-intuitive to many of
us, such as providing safe-consumption sites or perhaps free, clean
heroin to people who are addicted. We must stop regarding people who
are addicted to drugs as criminals or some lower form of life, and see
them for who they really are: victims of a terrible illness who need
help, not condemnation.

In the first 11 months of this year, 755 people died from drug
overdoses in B.C., an increase of more than 70 per cent. In November,
128 deaths from drug overdoses were reported in B.C., double the
monthly average in 2015. The toll shows no sign of abating - 13 deaths
were reported in one day last week.

About 60 per cent of these illicit-drug deaths involved the powerful
opioid fentanyl, and that proportion is rising.

"We are quite fearful that the drug supply is increasingly toxic, it's
increasingly unpredictable and it's very, very difficult to manage
those who overdose. And for those who are attempting to use drugs
safely, it's almost impossible," B.C. chief coroner Lisa Lapointe said
Monday.

The use of illicit drugs has always been fraught with danger, as they
come with no guarantees of content or quality. Fentanyl, though, takes
that danger to a new and terrifying level. It is easily manufactured,
and so powerful that it can be shipped in envelopes and small packages.

The war on drugs - the U.S.-led effort involving prohibition, military
intervention and enforcement - has not been effective. The profit
potential is huge, so there will be no lack of people willing to be
involved in the drug trade.

The key, then, is to destroy the market. That can be done, some people
say, by supplying heroin by prescription, putting dealers out of
business and vastly reducing the criminal aspect of drug use.

Providing safe-consumption sites, so that help is available if
overdoses occur, sounds like enabling. But people will take the drugs
anyway - in a much more risky environment. Rehabilitation should be
the goal, but a dead person cannot be rehabilitated.

Drug addiction is complicated. Every person so afflicted has a
different story. For some, the problems start before they are born.
Some have mental illnesses that have gone untreated. Others suffer
neglect and abuse, the depths of which many of us could not
comprehend. Injuries leave many with chronic pain. Some lead lives
utterly devoid of hope. Drugs offer temporary relief.

There are better ways to deal with the suffering, but they take time
and considerable resources. Much work needs to be done to alleviate
conditions that lead to drug use, conditions such as poverty, abuse,
and physical and mental illnesses. Prevention is seldom a popular
political move - its results are not immediate and they are hard to
measure - but in the long term, it is far less costly.

We should not abandon the war on drugs, but we should add new weapons
to its arsenal: more treatment that is accompanied by ongoing support,
housing, job training, counselling and prevention. We need to address
the poverty and discrimination that leave people without hope.

But first, we need to stop people from dying.
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MAP posted-by: Matt