‘Life-saving and Life-changing’: BC’s Safe Supply Program Gets Major Expansion

published on September 16, 2020 by Moira Wyton in The Tyee

Bold changes and a dramatic expansion are coming to safe supply efforts in B.C. in response to an increasingly toxic drug supply and the deadly overdose crisis.

Eligibility for safe supply — prescribed untainted drugs or alternatives — will expand to nearly all people who access the street drug supply, even intermittently, under a policy directive from the B.C. Centre on Substance Use being finalized with the province.

And registered nurses and registered psychiatric nurses will soon be able to prescribe controlled substances under a public health order from provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry.

Previously, only doctors and some pharmacists were allowed to prescribe safer alternatives to illicit drugs…