Frustrated health minister urges action from Ottawa on fentanyl crisis
KAMLOOPS — BC Health Minister Terry Lake is expressing frustration at the focus of a national conference on opioid addiction that wrapped up in Ottawa over the weekend.
Lake says the meeting dealt largely with long term measures such as prescribing practices.
He notes those measures are important, but federal leaders don’t seem to understand the urgency of the situation in BC, where 622 people have died due to overdoses so far this year.
“Fentanyl is coming into the market, and actually causing such a huge impact to families across the province. So my message was, we need to do more to stem the flow of fentanyl coming in to particularly British Columbia, but it will get to the rest of Canada soon,” explained Lake.