Finally, an enlightened strategy on drug overdose deaths
KAMLOOPS — The last barriers to drug harm-reduction sites are falling, thanks to a drug-overdose crisis and some enlightened action by provincial and federal governments.
The federal Liberals announced Monday a new bill will eliminate 26 pre-conditions for “consumption” sites. Those pre-conditions have been so strict that for many years there was only one supervised-injection site — Insite in Vancouver — in all of Canada.
Ottawa’s decision to take action comes hard on the heels of the B.C. government’s decision to set up overdose-prevention sites in Vancouver, Surrey and Victoria, with supervised consumption sites in Kamloops and Kelowna early next year.
This flurry of activity — which would never have happened under a federal Conservative government that strongly resisted the kind of progressive action we’re seeing now — comes in the wake of the fentanyl overdose epidemic that has been leading the headlines for the past few months.