BC Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau, joined by former Chief Coroner Lisa Lapointe and Mom's Stop the Harm advocate Leslie McBain, announced the party's policy proposals to combat the toxic drug crisis at the Green's campaign office in Victoria, B.C., on Sept. 24.CHAD HIPOLITO/The Canadian Press
The BC Green Party has unveiled its plan to address the province’s toxic drug crisis, pledging an expansion of prescribed alternatives for those at risk of overdose, regulation of B.C.’s treatment and recovery programs and early intervention for youth.
The three-point plan stands in contrast to ideas put forth by the incumbent BC NDP and surging B.C. Conservatives as drug use and associated disorder have become hot-button issues ahead of the Oct. 19 provincial election.
Both the New Democrats and Conservatives are promising an expansion of involuntary treatment; the former has also walked back its drug decriminalization pilot, while the latter has vowed to shutter every supervised consumption site in the province.
In announcing her party’s plan in Victoria on Tuesday, BC Green Leader Sonia Furstenau said that expert panels have repeatedly made similar recommendations over the years — “and yet political cowardice is costing too many lives by preventing action and investments in the evidence-based policies that will save people’s lives.”
Ms. Furstenau was joined by former chief coroner Lisa Lapointe and Leslie McBain, co-founder of advocacy group Moms Stop the Harm. Ms. Lapointe said that she was frustrated during her tenure by the lack of response from the governing NDP to recommendations from her former agency’s death-review panels, from provincial health officer Bonnie Henry and from the government’s own standing committee on health, and is now a Green supporter.
The Green Party would address deaths from toxic, illicit drugs by both expanding access to prescribed alternatives, an intervention commonly referred to as “safer supply,” and by developing a non-prescriber model, Ms. Furstenau said. Supporters of safer supply say a considerable barrier to expanding access has been that there are not enough physicians to prescribe these medications.
As well, the Green Party would also regulate treatment and recovery programs, establishing an evidence-based standard for these services, and create a centralized database to track treatment outcomes, service availability and adherence to these new standards, Ms. Furstenau said.
B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad was critical of the Green Party’s plan Tuesday at a news conference in Cranbrook, a small city in the southeastern corner of B.C. Mr. Rustad said Ms. Furstenau’s announcement shows that she also supports the plan of Dr. Henry – whom he has said he will fire if elected – to expand the prescribed-alternatives program.
The B.C. Conservatives plan to cancel this program, shutter the supervised consumption sites across the province and end the NDP’s scaled-back pilot project decriminalizing small amounts of certain illicit drugs. He added that, if elected, his government would focus on increasing treatment and recovery of those misusing substances in order to solve the province’s drug toxicity crisis.
At the same press conference, Mr. Rustad touted his party’s seven-point plan to stimulate investment in the mining sector, including by reviewing all provincial regulations and streamlining the approval process for new projects by creating a “one-stop” system for companies to get a single permit to begin operating.
Meanwhile, NDP Leader David Eby toured the north of the province on the fourth day of the election campaign, but did not announce any major new policy positions.
Ms. Furstenau said her party would also seek to prevent drug use through early intervention by improving drug education in schools and ensuring schools provide adequate mental-health supports.
Prescribed alternatives, which are intended to sever or lessen a person’s reliance on toxic, illicit drugs, have proved to be one of the most contentious responses to a public health crisis that has killed more than 15,000 people in B.C. since 2016.
Emerging evidence has shown that people at high risk of overdose from street drugs who are prescribed an alternative reduce their risk of overdose and death, increase access to health and social services and see improvements in physical and mental health.
However, critics note that such studies focus on the recipients and not the broader community, and say that unintended consequences are not being adequately considered. Patients who sell or give away their prescribed opioid medications, for example, could drive down their street price and increase their availability, potentially fuelling new cases of addiction.
Ms. Lapointe said there is a dearth of evidence to support the involuntary treatment being pushed by both the NDP and Conservatives, and noted the challenges in people being able to access family doctors, mental-health supports and detox.
“We need to be very careful before we jump off this involuntary-care cliff as the answer to this very complex public-health emergency,” she said. “What would really help people is having access to the care they need much further upstream.”