BC’s Deadliest Year for Overdoses and a ‘Shameful,’ ‘Unconscionable’ Response

published on February 11, 2021 by Moira Wyton in The Tyee

Almost five years after the overdose crisis was declared a public health emergency, at least 1,716 British Columbians lost their lives in 2020 without access to a regulated, safe alternative to poisoned illicit drugs.

That surpasses the 1,549 people who died in 2018, up until now the deadliest year, and is a 74-per-cent increase from last year’s 984 deaths.

About five people died on average day in the province.

“Thousands of years of life and potential are gone,” said chief coroner Lisa Lapointe as she presented a report on the deaths today. “We must turn this terrible trajectory around.”

Since March, the provincial government has blamed the surge in fatalities on pandemic disruptions to harm reduction services and an increasingly toxic supply of illicit drugs due to border closures and domestic production…