XPost: can.politics, bc.politics, Van.general
XPost: bx.general., alt.true-crime, alt.drugs.hard
From: gregpcarr@yahoo.ca

The intersection of Main Street and East Hastings Street in the
Downtown Eastside in Vancouver. An approved pilot project that will
allow health officials to distribute hydromorphone pills to people at
high risk of overdose will start with around 200 people in Vancouver
and Victoria, but a primary goal is to scale it up as soon as
possible. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/bc-pilot-project-to-distribute-clean-opioids-to-people-at-high-risk-of-overdose/article37392053/
RAFAL GERSZAK/THE GLOBE AND MAIL

ANDREA WOO
VANCOUVER
PUBLISHED 10 HOURS AGO
UPDATED DECEMBER 19, 2017
Ottawa has approved a pilot project that will allow health officials
in B.C. to distribute clean opioids to drug users to use as they
please, marking one of the province's most radical efforts to address
a fentanyl-saturated drug supply that has killed more than 1,000
people this year.

Details are still being finalized, but Mark Tyndall, executive
director of the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC), said the idea
is that people at high risk of overdose, once registered, will be able
to pick up hydromorphone pills at either supportive housing units or
supervised consumption facilities, two or three times a day, and self-administer them. Most would likely choose to crush, cook and
inject them.

Participants would likely be required to consume the drug on-site
initially, but after a short evaluation process be able to take home
their doses – perhaps a day's worth at a time, Dr. Tyndall said.

The pilot will start with around 200 people in Vancouver and Victoria,
but a primary goal is to scale it up as soon as possible.

Dr. Tyndall said he does not believe participants will give away or
sell their dose, as they are opioid-dependent and need it for
themselves. However, he noted that drug diversion wouldn't necessarily
be a problem if it did occur.

"In the case that someone did divert their drugs, then at least the
persons who received them would not be overdosing," he said. "Everyone
must remember that it is very easy to buy drugs on the street right
now so there is no way that diversion would make things worse."

This is different from supervised injectable opioid assisted
treatment, an intensive treatment option currently available on a
small scale to a limited amount of people in B.C., Ontario and soon
Alberta. Injectable therapy requires a patient to visit a clinic two
or three times a day to inject under supervision, does not allow for
take-home doses and can cost up to $25,000 per person per year.

In comparison, an 8-milligram hydromorphone pill costs 32 cents – or
$700 for two pills three times a day, for a year.

Dr. Tyndall emphasized that this low-barrier initiative is not a
clinical response, but a public-health response amid an unprecedented
crisis. Its aim is not to treat addiction, but to stop overdose deaths
due to toxic street drugs.

"We need a public health approach that really focuses on how we're
going to bring overdose deaths down," he said. =================================================================
Yeah and what happens when the hydromorphone junkies drive a car or
decide to rob someone to buy cocaine?


"How we're going to treat and prevent addiction is a whole other
problem, and we're not going to solve that in the next year. But I
think we can solve the overdose epidemic in the next year."

The pilot is expected to begin in April and run for three years
initially.

The idea was one of many floated last June at the BC Overdose Action
Exchange, which brought together public-health leaders, policy makers
and people with lived experience to identify new overdose prevention strategies. The BCCDC submitted a proposal to Health Canada's
Substance Use and Addictions Program (SUAP), which recently approved
it.

The SUAP, which provides about $26-million annually to fund innovative
programs related to problematic substance use, will contribute
$1-million toward the pilot. The program continues to review a
"significant number of proposals," according to Health Canada.

The BCCDC will work with various community partners to develop
operational and evaluation protocols. It is also in discussions with
Alberta's opioid emergency response commission about a possible pilot
in either Calgary or Edmonton.

On Monday, the Public Health Agency of Canada released new data that
show Canada is on pace to lose more than 4,000 people to
opioid-related overdoses this year.

In hard-hit B.C., more than 1,200 people died of illicit drug
overdoses from January through October and fentanyl was a factor in
about 1,000 of those deaths.


PLAY VIDEO
2:01
Health Minister says there’s no easy solution to opioid crisis
(THE CANADIAN PRESS)

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