B.C.'s toxic drug crisis has changed a lot since 2017 — but the government's policies have not, say advocates

Advocates say the lack of progress on a safe supply of drugs in B.C. — and a fixation on treating addiction instead — is in keeping with the B.C. NDP's approach since they came into power in 2017, and hindering any efforts to stop the deaths.

The province makes no mention of safe supply in its 2022/23 budget, focusing only on the ruling NDP's expansion of addiction treatment in response to the toxic drug crisis that claimed thousands of lives last year.

"Our government is tackling [the poisoned drug crisis] head on with the largest investment in mental health and addictions services in B.C.'s history," said Finance Minister Selina Robinson in her budget presentation on Tuesday.

She also said the province has applied for a federal exemption to decriminalize possession of drugs, which has not yet been granted, and invested in providing safe supply to deal with B.C.'s death toll from the toxic drug supply, which has been the worst in the country.

The main plank of the province's approach continues to be addiction treatment however, with Robinson touting "hundreds" of new beds being built province-wide for those experiencing drug addiction.

Mark Tyndall, professor at the University of British Columbia and founder of safe supply advocacy project MySafeSociety, says the policies enacted by the NDP in the last five years have done little to curb overdose deaths.

"We're in a totally different situation where people are buying drugs that are very toxic and unpredictable and killing them," he told CBC News.

"Waiting until the NDP government, or any government, builds a functional addiction system is way too little, way too late for most people."

Karen Ward, drug policy advisor with the City of Vancouver, says the province's current safe supply program does not reach enough people, and that proposed decriminalization will not come fast enough for those currently at risk of overdose.

"We must replace the supply entirely because it's not going to get better on its own," she said.

"If we're going to condemn people in the future to this, to thousands of deaths a year, because we don't want to change the policy, we don't want to actually try."

Continuity in policy since 2017

Tuesday's budget includes $10 million of funding across three years for the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, headed by Sheila Malcolmson, to build more complex care housing for those experiencing drug addiction.

The incremental funding approach is remarkably similar to programs announced in years past, including by Judy Darcy, Malcolmson's predecessor and B.C.'s first addictions minister.

But to date, no major funding has ever been devoted to regulating or safely supplying the vast majority of illicit drugs in B.C. Instead, many small-scale safe supply programs are often funded by the federal government.

B.C.'s chief coroner has also said that most people who die of an overdose in the province are actually not addicted at all.

"The government is not responding to what the community's asking for or what a lot of public health people are asking for," Tyndall said. 

"The playbook they're using is the same old playbook — that we need to try and get people off drugs."

Toxic drug supply worsening

Ever since a public health emergency was declared in 2016 due to a spike in fentanyl-related overdoses, the death toll from poisoned drugs has reached new heights.

Nearly 9,000 people have died of an overdose since, with more than 2,000 in 2021 alone.

The trajectory of the crisis has not been uniform; after two years of increasing deaths as a potent fentanyl supply flooded the illicit market, there was a slight dip in deaths in 2019, something Ward attributes to a more predictable supply of drugs by that point.

But after the first outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020, and subsequent lockdowns, deaths immediately started to spike.

"The restrictions meant that people ... weren't able to get together so people [weren't] able to watch each other and take care of each other," Ward said.

Border restrictions also meant illicit drug manufacturers started to produce drugs domestically and "amateurishly," said Ward, meaning supply quickly became toxic as more adulterants were added.

Data shows that benzodiazepines, which can be dangerous if mixed with opioids like fentanyl, was detected in more drug samples across B.C. at the start of the pandemic. 

"The advice that [the government] is getting … it might as well be from, like, 2015, for goodness sakes," Ward said.

"They're not recognizing that they live in history, that we all live in history, and this is evolving … an evolving emergency is not getting better. It's just getting different."