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FIRST READING: Recriminalizing drugs might have something to do with B.C.'s falling overdose rate

The introduction of decriminalization, on the other hand, directly precipitated one of the world's worst spikes in overdose deaths

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FIRST READING: Recriminalizing drugs might have something to do with B.C.'s falling overdose rate Back to video

When B.C. Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry was asked last week why the province’s overdose deaths were suddenly in steep decline, she answered that “multiple factors” were responsible.

Fewer teens were doing drugs. There was greater public awareness of what a drug overdose looked like. And there was “expanded access to health and social supports,” according to a report in the Times Colonist. Henry also cited the availability of the anti-overdose medication Naloxone, despite the fact that it has been distributed free since 2017.

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The one factor Henry didn’t seem to mention was how the falloff in drug deaths had tracked pretty closely with the end of a program she had enthusiastically supported, and whose cancellation she had publicly mourned.

That would be drug decriminalization, an experimental three-year policy whose introduction just happened to correspond with a surge in fatal overdoses unmatched in Canadian history. And whose........

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