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Analysis: Overdose drug deaths bring politicians together again

Drug deaths continue in a city, province with a history of overdoses
janephilpott
Health Minister Jane Philpott discusses the overdose drug epidemic with Dean Wilson, a recovering drug user and longtime advocate of supervised drug injection sites and other harm reduction measures. Photo Dan Toulgoet

This déjà vu all over again nonsense has got to stop.

Online readers will have seen my piece earlier this month where I shared an anecdote about how 16 years ago I wrote about problem hotels in the Downtown Eastside — and that 16 years later, the city has launched yet another effort to clean up the rodent-infested, crime-ridden fire hazards that are supposed to serve as accommodation for low-income people.

I should have titled the story, Groundhog Day, Part One.

Groundhog Day, Part Two, occurred last Thursday, when I was standing in the Downtown Eastside and listening to politicians talk about what they’re going to do about the overdose drug epidemic in Vancouver and throughout the province.

That news conference brought me back to the 1990s, when the streets and hotels of Vancouver became final resting spots for hundreds of people who died from drug overdoses; more than 1,200 people overdosed and died in Vancouver between 1992 and 2000. Here we are closing in on 2017 and hundreds more continue to die in B.C., despite talk by politicians to reverse the trend in deaths.

Evidence of the epidemic was highlighted again Monday, when Vancouver police and health officials issued a warning to drug users after learning that 11 people overdosed that day. None died but officials believe the overdoses were linked to the deadly synthetic narcotic, fentanyl, which is 50 to 100 times more toxic than other opioids.

The B.C. Coroners Service says 555 people in B.C. died of a drug overdose between January and September of this year. In Vancouver, the death toll was 110 for that time period. Fentanyl was detected in 61 per cent of total deaths in the province.

Yes, fentanyl.

It was not a drug talked about in the 1990s.

It was all about pure heroin back then.

Politicians responded to the crisis, including then-mayor Philip Owen who led the charge for what became the much celebrated four pillars drug strategy — enforcement, prevention, treatment and harm reduction.

The province and the feds jumped on board, and Vancouver became the first city in Canada to open a supervised drug injection site in 2003. That initiative came under the federal Liberals and has been viewed by doctors, nurses, scientists, drug activists, police chiefs and politicians as a success, with no one dying of an overdose in the injection rooms.

Back then is when politicians from city hall and senior governments worked together. Heck, they even put together a document called The Vancouver Agreement, which was aimed at improving lives of Downtown Eastside residents, including drug users.

That shift in drug policy, which saw more needle exchanges, treatment programs and drug outreach services available, seemed to have worked on some level, with overdose drug deaths decreasing to 589 between Jan. 1, 2003 to Sept. 3, 2013 in Vancouver. (Think about that number -- 589 over a decade. B.C. almost recorded the same number of deaths -- 555 -- in the first nine months of this year.)

Then along came the anti-Insite, anti-harm reduction Harper government and the deadly fentanyl. Harper and his health ministers are gone and have been replaced with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a pro-injection site health minister in Jane Philpott, who was at last Thursday’s news conference at a fire hall near Main and Hastings.

She was there with provincial Health Minister Terry Lake. City manager Sadhu Johnston was there, too. So was provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall, Fire Chief John McKearney, VPD Supt. Michelle Davey, Coun. Andrea Reimer, former NDP MP Libby Davies and Dean Wilson, a recovering drug user and longtime advocate of harm reduction measures such as injection sites.

From what I heard, all appear to be working towards the same goal that politicians and advocates worked towards in the 1990s — to curb overdose drug deaths, open more injection sites, get people into treatment and housing and educate people about the dangers of drug use. 

That wasn’t evident under Harper, who fought in the courts to close the Insite drug injection site, and never dispatched any of his health ministers to Vancouver to hold a roundtable with city and provincial officials about what to do about drug use and drug deaths.

Some of those I spoke to after the news conference said it was a refreshing change to see all three levels of government working together again. How that talk will translate to action and reduce the number of overdose deaths in Vancouver and across the province is a work in progress. Lake and Philpott are together again this week in Ottawa, joined by Premier Christy Clark and B.C. mothers who lost their children to overdoses.

But unlike the Harper years, it appears fentanyl is the problem today, not politics.

And no one seems to have a handle on how to destroy the dangerous narcotic, or get it off the streets, before it destroys more people in a city and province synonymous with drug deaths.

Note: Since I wrote this piece, the B.C. Coroners Service issued an update on the number of drug deaths in the province. The death toll reached 622 as October came to a close. That's about two people dying each day. The rate of death is especially alarming when compared to the 397 people who died over the same period last year.

mhowell@vancourier.com

@Howellings