The B.C. government is ignoring the voices of dozens of experts who are trying to find solutions to the toxic drug overdose in B.C., the Surrey Union of Drug Users (SUDU) says.
"The BC NDP rejecting that report immediately, is essentially just like, I think really highlights that they have blood on their hands, six people a day (are dying), and the government is ignoring solutions to save those lives," said Anmol Swaich.
Swaich, a SUDU community organizer and master's student in SFU's Faculty of Health Sciences, said B.C. public health officer is important and echoes what various experts have said before: that various different tactics need to be used to undercut the unregulated drug supply.
Henry wants the province to look into expanding access to what she calls "non-prescribed alternatives to unregulated drugs."
Such a system would essentially involve the public providing people who use drugs with products of known quality as an alternative to the illegal market. While B.C. already has a limited system of prescribed "safe supply," Henry's recommendation would expand government's role in making alternatives available.
Swaich said the report validates the model used by DULF (Drug User Liberation Front).
"We definitely need compassion clubs run by the community, sold at cost, that keep money in the community as opposed to going to the illicit market, because our medical system just cannot handle it," she said. "It cannot take on the 225,000 people who use illicit drugs who are at risk of drug poisoning."
Speaking Friday (July 12) at an unrelated event at Simon Fraser University's Burnaby campus, B.C. Premier .
"I have been clear with Dr. Henry, clear with the public in B.C. We are not moving to a model where there are no medical professionals directly involved when people are using harmful and toxic drugs. It's just non-negotiable."
Eby added that the government needs to balance the advice of public health officials with political realities.
"The BC NDP has shown that they'll do anything to avoid dealing with the actual root cause of the direct poisoning crisis, which is quite shameful," Swaich said. "In the space of what will go down as the worst public health emergency is essentially a mass death crisis with six people dying every single day in B.C."
Swaich said if four people in Surrey were drowning every week, the government likely would not be ignoring the experts that are telling us how to stop the deaths. But when it comes to the toxic drug crisis, Swaich said it seems the same logic is not applied in following the experts.
As B.C. is going into an election season with the provincial election in October and the federal next year, politicians are quick to offer their opinions without offering real solutions for the toxic drug crisis, Swaich said.
"For our premier and the government in power to suggest that non-medical models of compassion clubs that are regulated by the community are somehow worse than what currently exists, this is straight-up disinformation. It's completely misinforming the public when we know that that model would actually prevent money from going into the illicit market, which is a major source of violence," Swaich said.
The Surrey Union of Drug Users meets every Tuesday at 5 p.m. at the Surrey Libraries City Centre branch (10350 University Dr.). The meeting is open to people who are currently or formerly using unregulated drugs. Swaich said the group discusses issues that people are experiencing.
-With files from Wolf Depner
