B.C.'s public health officer Bonnie Henry wants the province to look into expanding access to what she calls "non-prescribed alternatives to unregulated drugs."
Such a system would essentially involve the public providing people who use drugs with products of known quality as an alternative to the illegal market. While B.C. already has a limited system of prescribed 'safe supply,' Henry's recommendation would expand government's role in making alternatives available.
"We are not talking about just handing out free drugs," Henry told reporters Thursday morning. "What we are talking about is supporting people who are using drugs — who are at risk of death every day — in a way that connects them to services, helps them live a more healthy, fulfilling life."
This report is not the first time Henry has proposed the idea of expanding drug access in criticizing prohibition. It happened most recently when she spoke to the House of Common's all-party health committee.
"We saw that with alcohol prohibition, we’ve seen it with cannabis," Henry said in late May. "I think legalization and regulation minimizes harms.”
Premier David Eby immediately responded to Henry's recommendation with a flat no. While Henry's proposal might sound OK at what Eby called a "population health level," it would not make sense at a "reality-based, real-world level," he said.
Henry's report did not recommend a specific delivery model. She herself acknowledged she does not know what such a specific model might look like.
"I don't have all the answers or else we would have put it in the report and say, 'do this,'" she said. "But I do have a whole lot of people who have some really good ideas and my job is to bring those ideas together to try and find a way to think through how we can do it. I do think there are practical ways that we can do it."
Any such model would start out small and unfold in a controlled environment that would monitor for unintended consequences, she added.
"We can work to put in place a safeguard and an alternative option to help separate people from this toxic, unregulated drug supply, and I envision a future in which people who use drugs are not at the mercy of an unregulated supply and system that puts their lives at significant risk," she said. "This requires an urgent shift toward enabling sufficient access to alternatives to meaningfully reduce drug poisonings and deaths."
Henry's report acknowledges drug use of any kind bears risks, but argues that expanded access to drugs of known quality reduces risks stemming from contaminated drugs, which have become more harmful and dangerous over the years.
Henry's report blamed the current system of prohibition for limiting measures to control the quality of drugs, noting that poisoned drugs have claimed more than 14,000 lives since 2016.
"For some, a safer alternative to unregulated drugs could have been the right support," she said. "We owe it to those affected, to those lost, and those who love and miss them to explore what might be possible to help save lives and reduce harms from unregulated drugs."
Henry said any future access expansion would not replace the current system of prescribed safe supply, nor would it be the only measure B.C. needs to take. It would instead be part of a suite of measures helping people on their road to recovery.
Henry's report will likely renew various calls from her critics, but she sounded undeterred.
"So this is my best advice about where we need to go now," she said. "I am trying to be pragmatic about it. It's certainly up to government to decide and I have full respect for government.
"If people don't appreciate the work that we are doing, then it is fully their right to replace me with somebody who they are more aligned with and that is part of the job that I do as well.
"But I stand by this report."
