B.C.'s response to overdose deaths is nothing but criminally inadequate

[thujone]

Today (August 31) is International Overdose Awareness Day.

It’s an occasion that usually comes and goes without anyone ever knowing it occurred. But this year is different.

During the first six months of 2016, 371 people died of drug overdoses in British Columbia. That compares to 494 during the entire year of 2015. It puts B.C. on track for 742 drug-overdose deaths by the end of this year.

The government can’t ignore a number that is so far beyond historical precedent. (Before 2015, the all-time high for drug-overdose deaths in B.C. was set all the way back in 1998, when there were 400.) And so the government is trying to make a big deal about International Overdose Awareness Day 2016.

When I arrived at work this morning, my inbox contained press releases from the provincial government, Health Canada, and Vancouver Coastal Health, all emphasizing the unprecedented efforts they’ve taken to bring the number of deaths back under control.

There is going to be a lot of uncritical media coverage based on those press releases.

You’re going to read about Health Canada “moving quickly” to restrict the use of chemicals in the production of fentanyl, a toxic opioid that has poisoned North America’s heroin supply. Newspapers will quote representatives of the provincial government boasting about a special “Joint Task Force on Overdose Response” that was convened last month. From Vancouver Coastal Health, there’s a new study out today about drug impurities in the Downtown Eastside. The agency is using that paper to suggest B.C.’s government is a progressive organization that treats addiction as a health-care issue rather than one for law enforcement.

All of this is utter bullshit.

Here are a few other points to keep in mind as you read about everything the government claims it is doing in response to this problem.

...

http://www.straight.com/news/769366/bcs-response-overdose-deaths-nothing-criminally-inadequate

Opinion piece on the failures of HR in BC, contrast to the glorified popular image of Vancouver being progressive on this issue

 

[Crankinit]

A new study released on International Overdose Awareness Day (August 1) revealed that 90 percent of heroin tested in the Downtown Eastside contains fentanyl, a dangerous synthetic opioid responsible for many deaths in B.C.

Holy shit. No wonder there are so many OD's. I'm amazed it's not more, frankly.

But it makes sense, Canada has always been a major source of RC's and other synthetic drugs, although I don't know why.

 

[thujone]

the ports are controlled by organized crime so RC drugs produced in Asia arrive by the tonne on container ships and are quickly offloaded and moved inland by HA. from an article published last year:

“Although the number of seizures in the marine mode are low, relative to the air and land modes, the quantities seized in a given enforcement action are typically very high,” the report says.

CBSA seizures at Port Metro Vancouver over the past five years prove that point. Between 2010 and 2014 more than half a tonne of cocaine was discovered by CBSA searches of containers arriving at Port Metro Vancouver. Almost two tonnes of the party drug ketamine and more than 20,000 litres of liquid precursor chemicals used in the production of meth were also seized.

“Vancouver marine will continue to pose a high risk for the smuggling of precursor chemicals into Canada from China and India,” the CBSA report says.

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/metro-vancouver-docks-special-investigation-768024