The B.C. government does not know how many people are using unwitnessed safe supply drugs, three months after promising to end the practice to reduce diversion into the hands of organized crime.

The Ministry of Health confirmed it currently has no accurate way to know how many safe supply prescriptions are taken away from a pharmacy for use, called unwitnessed consumption, and therefore no way to chart progress on fulfilling its goal towards witnessed-only usage.

Instead, the government is scrambling to figure out a way to track the issue, almost four years after making the changes that allowed unwitnessed safe supply, and following a February declaration from the minister that practice would be ending.

“Since the witnessing is an instruction on a prescription (not a code), the ministry does not currently have the ability to track witnessed vs. unwitnessed doses centrally and in real time,” the ministry said in a statement.

“Presently, we rely on information provided by participating clinicians. As part of the implementation of the witnessed-only policy, the ministry is currently developing a system to track this information centrally during........

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