FIRST READING: Recriminalizing drugs might have something to do with B.C.’s falling overdose rate

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This month, B.C. Chief Coroner Dr. Jatinder Baidwan reported that in the month of April, 119 people died of what the province officially classifies as “suspected unregulated drug toxicity.”

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The prior April — when B.C. was still subject to decriminalization — the death toll was 174. Across the two Aprils, the rate of fatal overdoses went down by 31 per cent.

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March also showed a dropoff in fatal overdoses as compared to the decriminalization era, although not as sharply. A total of 135 people died, compared to 143.

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But the falling trend lines are almost the exact opposite of what was seen upon decriminalization’s introduction.

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In 2023, the first year of the decriminalization pilot project, overdose deaths surged to 2,511 – 10 per cent higher than the 2,272 tracked the year prior.

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Even in a province that had been posting some of the world’s highest rates of fatal drug overdoses for nearly a decade, this was an unprecedented high.

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A report by the BC Coroner blamed the surge on “unregulated fentanyl,” didn’t mention the new decriminalization regime and said the province’s various harm reduction programs were working fine.

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This included the then policy of safer supply, a B.C. program of handing out free recreational opioids to addicts in the belief that it would steer them away from the black market.

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“There is no indication that prescribed safer supply is contributing to unregulated drug deaths,” read the statement.

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The counterargument to the view that decriminalization led to higher levels of fatal drug overdoses is that similar trends were witnessed in Canada’s other nine provinces, none of whom followed the B.C. lead on decriminalization.

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Almost everywhere in Canada, drug overdoses hit all-time highs in 2023, and have been in sharp decline ever since.

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This includes Alberta, a province that not only eschewed decriminalization, but was already several years into a program emphasizing treatment and recovery as opposed to the B.C. doctrine of making illicit drug use safer and destigmatized. The year 2023 also came in as Alberta’s deadliest year for drug overdoses, with 1,867 deaths recorded.

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So if B.C. is seeing a dropoff in overdose deaths that is tracking with the end of decriminalization, it’s not all that different from trends seen everywhere else. Last year, for instance, Canadian drug overdose deaths plunged by 23 per cent, almost exactly in line with the 22 per cent charted in B.C.

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But even these numbers suggest that at its best, decriminalization did nothing to curb fatal overdoses at the precise moment they were becoming worse than ever.

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And at its worst, it helped ensure that B.C. would be hit harder by these trendlines than anywhere else.

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Even if drug overdose rates were bad everywhere in 2023, no other province could come close to the death rates being racked up in the land of decriminalization.

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That year, B.C.’s fatal overdoses would come in at 40.3 deaths per 100,000 population, well beyond the 26.1 deaths per 100,000 recorded in Alberta, that year’s second deadliest province.

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The B.C. government’s official webpage on decriminalization used to be a sprawling declaration about stigma and the “health-focused approach to substance use.”

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Now, it’s just a three-line obituary to the time when a Canadian province officially sanctioned open-air illicit drug use.

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“In 2023, the province launched the pilot program to decriminalize people who use drugs. It was intended to make it easier for people struggling with addiction to come forward for help. The exemption expired on Jan. 31, 2026 and will not be renewed,” it reads.

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First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

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