Former British Columbia chief coroner Lisa Lapointe has emerged from retirement to throw her weight behind a B.C. Green Party campaign pledge to expand the safer supply of opioids and other drugs to deal with the province’s deadly overdose crisis.
Greens Leader Sonia Furstenau says other party leaders have indulged in “dehumanizing rhetoric” against drug users that she says is unacceptable.
Furstenau says a broader system of prescribed safer supply of drugs, including fentanyl, is needed, as well as a “demedicalized model” to reduce stigma and barriers in the current system.
The Greens are also pledging an evidence-based standard for treatment and recovery, with Lapointe saying there’s a lack of evidence that compulsory drug treatment plans pushed by other parties will work.
Lapointe, who joined Fursteanu at a Victoria news conference, retired earlier this year after 13 years on the job and in the midst of the toxic drug crisis that has killed more than 15,000 people since a health emergency was declared in 2016.
Before her retirement, Lapointe lamented that the emergency never received a “a co-ordinated response commensurate with the size of [the]crisis.”
In her final months as chief coroner, a review panel recommended providing controlled drugs without prescriptions, but the idea was almost immediately rejected by the provincial government.
Saturday marks the official start of the B.C. election period, as writs will start being issued ahead of voting day on Oct. 19.
Both the governing New Democrats and the B.C. Conservatives have campaigned on promises to bring in a form of involuntary treatment, if elected, but Lapointe said at a news conference in Victoria with Green Leader Sonia Furstenau, that there’s little evidence to support the idea.
“We need to be very careful before we jump off this involuntary care cliff as the answer to this very complex public health emergency. We know people die after treatment. We know that involuntary care has very little evidence to support its effectiveness. What would really help people is having access to the care they need much further upstream,” she said.
Lapointe said people can’t access family doctors or mental health supports and are stuck on long waiting lists for any sort of treatment they want to attend.
“If people can’t access the voluntary care that they’re trying to access, how can we then incarcerate them involuntarily when there’s no evidence that that would be successful?” she said.
“We are just setting ourselves up for a disaster, and more and more and more people will suffer the effects of substance use disorder, and more people will die, more families will be harmed.”
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, NDP Leader David Eby disputed Lapointe’s comments that involuntary care does not often work and would lead to more people dying.
“What we’re talking about is people who have serious mental health issues and addictions and brain injuries, and how we care for that population of people to make sure that they have a minimum standard of dignity and quality of life and to make sure the broader community is safe as well,” he said at a campaign event in Terrace, in B.C’s northwest.
Eby said the goal is to ensure better care for people. “And I’m not going to back down,” he told an outdoor news conference.
Figures from the B.C. Coroners Service say more than 15,000 people have died in the province from overdoses since a public health emergency was declared in April 2016.
A report on care options for people with severe addictions released by the NDP government as it announced its plans for involuntary care earlier this month says, “There is insufficient high-quality evidence regarding the effectiveness of involuntary care” for people with substance use disorder.
Furstenau said other party leaders have indulged in unacceptable “dehumanizing rhetoric” against drug users.
She said a broader system of prescribed safer supply of drugs, including fentanyl, is needed, as well as a “demedicalized model” to reduce stigma and barriers in the current system.
She said a Green government would regulate treatment and recovery programs and gather data to track outcomes and availability.
“We have hundreds of millions of public dollars going to treatment and recovery programs that are not required to provide data. They’re not required to provide evidence that their programs work,” she said.
“So, with urgency, we need the province to take on the responsibility of regulating treatment and addiction programs.”
The Greens are also promising drug education in schools and enhanced mental health support.
All three leaders are scheduled to debate each other two days before advance polling opens.
A consortium of broadcasters announced the Oct. 8 debate will air from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. PT on all major television and radio news networks and be moderated by Angus Reid Institute president Shachi Kurl.
Election day is Oct. 19.