MINISTRY OF HEALTH CHANGES TO PRESCRIBED SAFER SUPPLY WILL DESTABILIZE AND HARM PEOPLE WHO USE DRUGS IN SURREY AND THROUGHOUT PROVINCE
SURREY, BC – The Surrey Union of Drug Users (SUDU) is appalled with BCNDP Minister of Health Josie Osborne’s February 19th announcement that take home doses of prescribed safer supply (PSS) drugs will be eliminated for new clients and phased out for current recipients. Discussions of the SUDU membership and Board of Directors on Monday, February 24th concluded that this policy change represents the further scapegoating of people who use drugs throughout BC in response to a continued moral panic surrounding PSS that remains unsubstantiated by hard data. We refuse to allow our lives to be the BCNDPs political football, and this decision signifies the Ministry of Health’s intention to allow overdose deaths and other toxic supply-related harms to continue.
BCs PSS program, while lifesaving for thousands, has never met the needs of people who use drugs in BC. While Dilaudid and Kadian were chosen for us by provincial bureaucrats and handed to prescribers who rarely understand the needs of our community, drug users have continued to demand effective prescribed and non-prescribed alternatives to the toxic drug supply, including heroin and fentanyl. These demands have been ignored while our friends have continued to die. In this context, diversion is one of the few ways of undercutting the poisoned drug supply under drug prohibition, and is therefore lifesaving. People have always shared their drugs, and people will always do what they can to meet their daily needs when the medical system fails them.
“Ending take home doses will do more harm than good. People are going to go into withdrawal, more health care system resources are going to be used. Giving dilaudid alongside methadone was like putting another band-aid on a band-aid, and they don’t want to get to the root of the problem.”
Billi Brintnell, SUDU Board of Directors
We have yet to be presented with reliable data suggesting that PSS has at all contributed to BCs crisis of drug toxicity deaths, which is unequivocally driven by the adulteration of the street drug supply with fentanyl anogloues, benzodiazepines, and tranquilizers. A recently leaked Ministry of Health slide deck prepared for the RCMP offers no such evidence - There are no sources, studies, surveys, or interviews cited which support claims of diversion. Contrary to these claims, there is a growing body of evidence which shows that PSS has significantly benefitted recipients, including by reducing risk of overdose. Requiring all PSS recipients in BC to transition to witnessed ingestion in this context is a disgusting political maneuver that will compromise the hardfought stability of nearly 500 people in the Fraser Health Region. We predict that these changes will result in a significant increase to rates of drug toxicity-related harm and hospitalizations.
SUDU members know that these changes to PSS will cause the mass destabilization of those who benefit from this program. As is the case with any OAT, take-home doses allow people who use drugs to hold down regular jobs, make their other appointments, connect with their friends and family, maintain stable housing, and begin to shift out of “survival mode” and towards wellness. In Surrey and elsewhere, PSS clients will be required to spend most of their time getting to and from their pharmacies across the region up to three or four times each day. Navigating witnessed dosing is a full-time job, and especially challenging for seniors, people with disabilities, and people who use drugs in service-deprived regions. Inevitably, there will be more missed doses, more OAT discontinuations, more cut-offs, and more death. We do not yet know, for example, if a parent who is accessing PSS will be reported to the MCFD if they are cut-off by their doctor because they cannot drive to their pharmacy three times each day. We also do not know if a recently incarcerated community member who is required to maintain contact with an OAT provider will violate their conditions if they are cut off of PSS. We are terrified for our allies in rural and northern regions throughout BC, for whom take home doses are the only way for PSS to practically operate. Whatever harms may come from this decision, they will impact already underserved communities most acutely.
“I can’t get over the fact that this will result in more surveillance for us. This is going to make mothers more vulnerable, because they're going to have to hide their use and their scripts. Mandating witnessed dosing creates more oppression for women and children, pushes people off of their scripts, and creates risk of overdose. Under this kind of surveillance, there’s no way she [a woman who is using drugs] will ask for other kinds of help.”
Sparkling Fast Rising River Women, Mona Woodward, SUDU Board of Directors
While the BCNDP is attempting to appear harsh on BCs often predatory pharmacy system, we believe that requiring witnessed dosing for all PSS recipients will be yet another cash cow for pharmacists. Under the proposed changes, pharmacists may be able to bill the Ministry of Health up to $900 in new daily dispensing fees per patient per month in addition to prescribing incentives and out of pocket clinic fees. It is well known that the pharmacy system is broken, and people who use drugs suffer for it. We didn’t build this system, the Ministry of Health did. What gives the public relations staff of the BCNDP Ministry of Health the right to trade our lives for political capital? There is no difference between the BCNDP and BC Conservatives in this regard.
“If the government of BC took all of the money that it is giving to pharmacies as a result of this new policy and spent it more wisely on providing what the people actually need - which is effective opioid replacements and housing, and not what they don’t want - they would benefit financially. There would be a huge decrease in crime, overdoses, corrections, the judicial system, police spending, EMS calls, and hospitalizations while people had money for other necessities of life. Safe supply creates stability, which saves everyone money. Can the government explain the logic behind its position? I doubt it, except for fearmongering.”
Dave Webb, SUDU Board of Directors
“Experiments with drug user lives have been at the forefront of BC’s management of the drug poisoning crisis - patchy and precarious programs that offer stability then crackdowns on access to opioids that have a fatal history. The BC NDP knows this, but pursues these decisions regardless - meaning they sanction the crisis and the deaths of people in our communities. The BC NDP can remember they abandoned all of us, before we abandoned them, as more unsanctioned action is taken by communities to save ourselves”
Tyson Singh Kelsall, PhD candidate, Simon Fraser University Faculty of Health Sciences
We do not expect the Ministry of Health to stop here. Groups of OAT patients like the BC Association of People on Methadone have fought for take home doses of methadone for years, encountering constant resistance from the province and regulatory bodies. In this context, Minister Osborne has inherited a bureaucracy that has already demonstrated its willingness to scapegoat drug users by closing OPS sites, pursuing involuntary care, defunding peer workers, rolling back decriminalization, arresting compassion club operators, and attempting to criminalize precariously housed people who use drugs. SUDU is not at all confident that restrictions on evidence-based PSS programming won’t trickle down to effect other people who use drugs and poor people living with mental illness. We consider people on methadone, suboxone, and various psychiatric medications to be vulnerable to being destabilized by similar policy changes.
The solutions to the drug toxicity crisis have been obvious to those who care to understand them. We condemn the BCNDPs latest attempt to appease the Canadian right wing at the expense of drug users' lives, and will continue to organize to protect our membership.
Media Contacts:
SUDU Board of Directors
Email: sudu@sudu.ca
Anmol Swaich, MSc
Executive Director
Surrey Union of Drug Users
Aaron Bailey, MSc
Community Organizer, Research & Policy Committee
Surrey Union of Drug Users
aaron.robert.bailey@gmail.com
