Coronavirus prompts Canada to roll out safe drugs for street users

Canada’s Pacific province of British Columbia was already battling an opioid epidemic when the new coronavirus hit, compounding the threat to drug users, many of whom are homeless and particularly vulnerable during the pandemic.

In March, the Canadian government urged provinces to lower barriers to prescription medications - allowing doctors to provide prescriptions for controlled substances by phone and pharmacists to deliver them - to better help citizens to practice physical distancing and self-isolation.

B.C. is the first province to apply those guidelines to support people who use street drugs. Healthcare providers are ramping up the supply of prescription drug replacements for those who live with addictions to drugs like heroin, and even dispensing some of them via unique vending machines.

“We’ve taken these exemptions and we’re running with them at break-neck speed,” said Judy Darcy, provincial Minister of Mental Health and Addictions. The goal is to “bring down the number of people who are dying of overdose,” she said.

The Downtown Eastside is where the majority of Vancouver’s homeless population resides. In 2019, the city had 2,223 homeless residents, about a third of whom live with opioid or methamphetamine addictions.

By providing a safe supply of legal drug alternatives, the province hopes to lower a sudden spike in drug overdose deaths that coincided with the coronavirus outbreak in Vancouver.

Overdose deaths in the city had been declining over the past year with implementation of safe consumption sites and availability of naloxone overdose reversal kits.

But between March 23 and 29, police in Vancouver responded to eight suspected overdose deaths, the most in a single week since August 2019. The following week, they attended eight more.

Cheyenne Johnson, co-interim executive director at the B.C. Centre on Substance Use, said the region’s illicit drug supply was already tainted. The coronavirus closure of the border with the United States has exacerbated the problem by stymying illegal drug supply routes, prompting dealers to increasingly make or cut their wares with dangerous ingredients.

“As the effects of the pandemic continue to unfold, the illicit drug supply is likely to become significantly more adulterated and toxic,” Johnson said.