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Activists with the Drug User Liberation Front march in a protest demanding the legalization and regulation of drugs in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Activists with the Drug User Liberation Front march in a protest demanding the legalization and regulation of drugs in Vancouver, British Columbia. Photograph: Jesse Winter
Activists with the Drug User Liberation Front march in a protest demanding the legalization and regulation of drugs in Vancouver, British Columbia. Photograph: Jesse Winter

'So much sadness': more British Columbians dying from overdoses than Covid

This article is more than 3 years old

Morgan Goodridge was one of 900 British Columbians to die of an overdose this year, more than four times the number killed by coronavirus

Kathleen Radu thought her son was getting better.

After three stints in private drug treatment programs, Morgan Goodridge was stable again. His prescription drug-replacement treatments seemed to be working. He had just bought his first car, and hadn’t used street drugs in five months.

But on 15 June, less than a week after his 26th birthday, he relapsed, and by the next morning he was dead, one of more than 900 British Columbians killed by an overdose so far this year – a toll more than four times higher than the province’s deaths from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Kathleen Radu with her son Morgan Goodridge. Photograph: Family Handout

“Morgan would still be here if he’d had access to a safe supply of heroin,” Radu says, echoing a growing number of drug policy experts, users and advocates who argue that dramatically expanding access to pharmaceutical-grade heroin is the only meaningful way to save lives.

At a press conference this week announcing the latest deaths, those calls grew louder. Flanked by the province’s top doctor and its chief coroner, longtime harm reduction advocate Guy Felicella pleaded for the government to create a legal, regulated safe supply of heroin, and possibly even powdered fentanyl in controlled doses.

“With the [fentanyl] concentration levels here in BC, we have this contaminated drug market that can kill you in one hit. That’s why we need a regulated drug market,” Felicella, who works as a peer clinical adviser for the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU), told the Guardian.

British Columbia – and its provincial health officer Dr Bonnie Henry – have earned international acclaim for the province’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the overdose crisis, a much longer-running public health emergency, has received only a fraction of the resources thrown into fighting the virus.

Experts say the deaths are driven by extreme concentrations of fentanyl and other contaminants in the illicit drug supply, alongside social isolation, both of which have been made worse by the pandemic. In June, when a group of drug users in Vancouver attempted to distribute 200 doses of clean, tested heroin for free as an emergency measure, they found that nearly every dose they tested contained fentanyl and other dangerous additives.

Worrying spikes in fatalities are being seen across Canada.

An overdose naloxone kit. Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images

Ontario’s coroner reported a 25% spike in overdose deaths between March and May during the same period last year. Preliminary figures released by the Saskatchewan government show that by early August that province may have already broken its all-time yearly total for overdose deaths, with 179 lives lost. In Alberta, total reported overdose deaths between January and March were down but accidental fentanyl poisonings specifically rose to 127 from 105.

Radu says her son Morgan struggled as much with the stigma of substance use as he did with its addictive grip.

“Morgan struggled with the fact that he had to go get his Suboxone [an opioid replacement therapy supplied by a pharmacy] every single day,” said Radu. The process was a constant reminder that he was seen as different than other people who required prescription medication.

In March, the province rolled out new guidelines allowing doctors to prescribe some take-home pharmaceutical alternatives to street drugs. The measures – the first of their kind in Canada – were dubbed a “safer supply” and were at first hailed as a breakthrough in the province that pioneered the community-led overdose prevention site model that has since been expanded across Canada and the US.

But after six months, many drug users, advocates and experts say the “safer supply” guidelines do not go far enough – and remain inaccessible to many users.

Volunteers with the Drug User Liberation Front hand out free doses of clean, tested cocaine and opium in Vancouver, British Columbia. Photograph: Jesse Winter

The BC government says it is trying to do better. The ministry of mental health and addictions said access to the program has more than doubled since it launched, “but there are more people we need to reach”.

Meanwhile there have also been growing calls to decriminalize illicit drugs – including from Canada’s association of chiefs of police and John Horgan, the BC premier.

So far, the federal government maintains it is not considering decriminalization, however in August the federal prosecution service issued new guidelines preventing the prosecution of drug possession charges in all but the most serious of cases, where public safety or children are at risk.

This week, Henry said the province is working to expand the medications available under the existing safer supply guidelines to include injectable hydromorphone and “other opioids that people need”.

In Vancouver, there is already a small diacetylmorphine program at the Crosstown Clinic that currently provides the injectable-heroin replacement to 86 patients and could be a model for wider access.

“There is some buy-in now,” Felicella said.

For Radu, it feels like the conversation around drug use has changed in the past few months, like a dam has finally burst.

“I feel so much sadness for Morgan,” Radu said, “I wish he’d had even one more month just to see the change and the impact that’s happening with this.”

But Radu and others are still frustrated that politicians have failed to act for years.

While the federal government has doled out more than C$62.8bn (£36.2bn) in emergency economic relief for Covid-19, Radu says she can’t understand why an overdose epidemic that’s killed more than 15,000 Canadians since 2016 hasn’t prompted a similar response.

“Why are people not outraged?” Radu asks. “This can happen to anyone. It’s too late for my son, but it’s not too late for all those other families, and especially for those moms who don’t ever have to get that phone call.”

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