Pubdate: Fri, 03 Feb 2017
Source: Abbotsford News (CN BC)
Copyright: 2017 Abbotsford News
Contact:  http://www.abbynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1155
Author: Tyler Olsen

CONDEMNING THE ADDICTED IS NO SOLUTION

As B.C. continues to cope with a stunning number of fatal opioid
overdoses, the province has significantly expanded the number of
places where people can use drugs, knowing help is nearby in case of
an overdose.

It's a stop-gap measure to try to save lives now, while (hopefully)
longer-term measures are put in place. Nevertheless, with dozens dying
every week, some have suggested a link between the presence of the
long-running supervised injection site, InSite in Vancouver, and the
current overdose epidemic.

This theory, it needs to be said loudly, flies in the face of all
available evidence.

There are legitimate arguments for and against supervised injection
sites, but one thing is clear: There have been more than 3,000 fatal
overdoses across the province in the years since InSite was
established, but not one has been at a supervised site.

Furthermore, there is no evidence that those InSite users are dying
elsewhere. The overdose rate in Vancouver is the highest in the
province, but that's unsurprising, since homeless men and women have
long congregated in the Hastings area to access both services and to
belong to a community of people.

But I doubt many of those suggesting InSite is to blame are aware of
just how prevalent fatal overdoses are outside of the Lower Mainland.

In the Northern Health Authority - far removed from East Hastings - 49
people died of illicit drug overdoses in 2016. In 2009, that number
was six. The Northeast health service area of the province - closer to
Edmonton than Vancouver - has the third-highest fatal overdose rate in
B.C.

Kamloops recorded 40 deaths last year, Kelowna had 48, Prince George
17 and Vernon 13.

You can read for yourself here.

Further afield, the United States has also seen a dramatic increase in
fatal overdoses.

InSite has nothing to do with this.

So what is the cause?

By this point, it's pretty clear that the prevalence of fentanyl and
synthetic opioids is driving the number of deaths.

But one must also look at why people are using such drugs in the first
place.

First of all, no one deserves the increasingly frequent outcome of
opioid use, no matter what first led them down their current path.

But it's also worth dispelling another myth: that all drug users have
independently chosen to use heroin and its even-more-deadly cousins.

Beyond all the age-old social causes that lead one to turn to heroin
and other drugs, research has consistently pointed to a more recent
development driving the continent-wide scourge: the over-prescription
of supposedly less-addictive painkillers, particularly OxyContin.

In 2007, the company that made OxyContin admitted in court that it had
told doctors and patients that its drug was less addictive. And some
doctors turned too quickly to painkillers.

"Prescription opiates have to be contributing to this because we
grossly overuse them in this country," Fraser Health medical health
officer Dr. Andrew Larder told an Abbotsford committee last year.

"There is a desperate need to deal with how physicians are prescribing
opiates and how physicians manage pain."

Last year, prescribing guidelines in British Columbia were revised to
do just that.

But we are, and will be, seeing the effects of opioid over-prescribing
for years to come. Condemning those who have become addicted -
including our neighbours, family members and co-workers - is no solution.
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MAP posted-by: Matt