British Columbia has a drug crisis. We all know this.
In 2023, British Columbia’s overdose-related death toll reached an all-time high of 2,511 deceased, with around 86 per cent of deaths attributed to fentanyl - meaning an average of seven people died each day, six of them a result of fentanyl use.
The drug crisis was announced in 2016 and is worsening each year. It’s unclear whether decriminalization is responsible for the increase in overdoses and deaths, but it’s evident that it’s not working in reducing them.
Initially, the BC government was to uphold four values or “pillars”: harm reduction, prevention, treatment and enforcement. Nevertheless, they’ve only been concerned with the harm reduction and enforcement portions, while affording negligible funding to the other two.
Unsupervised substance abuse is the reason for the increase in deaths. Because of the government’s lack of funding of treatment centres and supervised injection sites, people have a higher chance of overdosing as they have no choice but to risk their lives alone, without supervision.
Decriminalization is a part of one whole: it works to reduce social stigma, but it can’t solve the entire issue on its own. Our fellow citizens struggling with substance abuse want to get better but lack the resources to do so. We need to fix this.
Together, we can urge the BC premier and government to provide more funding for rehabilitation/supervised detox centres and to focus on all four of the original values. Send letters, write articles, do anything you can to raise awareness.
Tell our leaders to stop putting all their faith into a single part of one whole.
Tristan Somers is a graduating Brooks Secondary School student.
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