Federal Government Investing More Into New Projects to Battle Opioid Crisis

The Federal Health Minister announced today (Wednesday) the government plans to do more when it comes to the opioid crisis.

They plan to bring in new projects which include:

• Supporting a pilot project that would provide a safer pharmaceutical alternative, such as hydromorphone, to illegal drugs.
• Authorizing supervised consumption sites to offer drug checking services.
• Supporting innovative harm reduction pilot projects to provide drug checking services.
• Working with provinces and territories to establish a streamlined protocol for temporary overdose prevention sites should the province or territory indicate urgent public health need.

The new funding announced in budget 2017, sees $100 million over

5 years, with $22.7 million going to strengthen these programs and supports new federal initiatives.

The government said it would commit $1.5 million to the Vancouver Dr. Peter Centre to train more doctors so they can open more supervised injection sites.

Prince George – Peace River Conservative MP Bob Zimmer doesn’t believe the government should be investing into injection sites.

“In giving someone, that’s addicted to a certain drug, giving more doesn’t seem to be the right way to go. I know some would argue that’s the case, but I certainly wouldn’t be arguing in that favour.”

The government also says they will support a pilot project to help more people get access to safer alternative drugs, such as methadone, which is what Zimmer would like to see the government invest more on.

“If there’s a way to wean people off drugs, cause you have to see drugs as a bad thing for people. I think to enable them to do more of taking a bad thing isn’t a good thing. for us I think, in our perspective, is that it would be better to wean them off a bad drug and if it takes something that’s a little less harmful to wean them off I think we would be more supportive of that.”

Zimmer added he hopes to see more funding provided to the north and to more rural communities in BC to help those hard to reach.

Back in 2016, 2,800 apparent opioid-related deaths were reported in Cananda and that number is expected to exceed 3,000 this year.