Juno News - The opioid crisis needs to be dealt with

00:00:00.000 It was rather upsetting to read the news from the BC government that the opioid crisis during the

00:00:10.200 pandemic has only gotten worse. More people are dying than before earlier on in the year

00:00:16.980 during the pandemic. In British Columbia, January, February, you had about 75 people a month who were

00:00:22.800 dying tragically of overdose deaths. Now, May, June, July, the numbers are in 175 people a month

00:00:29.260 dying from overdose deaths. Dr. Bonnie Henry in BC, she mused that the idea was rather

00:00:35.100 disappointingly, tragically, ironically, whatever the term is, the social distancing measures are

00:00:40.320 actually being followed, meaning that people are not going to these injection sites and they are not

00:00:44.700 doing drugs with a friend or somebody else, so there's no one to watch over them if they end up

00:00:49.860 having an overdose. So they are doing drugs alone, they are dying alone. It is tragic. And I think we

00:00:56.380 all need to acknowledge that. This is not a political issue, whether it's a left-wing activist

00:01:00.880 working on the streets there dealing with these issues. President Donald Trump has said we got a

00:01:05.560 crisis on our hands. He's talking about what's going on in America. It has to be dealt with.

00:01:10.780 Here's the thing. We've got to start going in new directions, trying new things. Right now,

00:01:15.660 the leading mantra, and boy, it is a mantra. They stick to it like a talking point. Harm reduction,

00:01:21.100 harm reduction, more safe injection sites, more money for it, and now giving them free drugs.

00:01:28.160 The government acting as the dealer, as I discussed in a recent video, $1.5 million of taxpayer dollars

00:01:33.480 going to a pilot project to give opioids. Otherwise, the street drugs that these people would be getting

00:01:38.920 on the street, getting them from the government, and they're using them at these injection sites.

00:01:43.920 But a lot of people in medical communities are stepping forward saying, hold on a second,

00:01:47.800 we don't know if this is the path forward. A lot of doctors don't like this talk about

00:01:52.020 client-centered care and so forth. They say they're not clients, they're patients.

00:01:56.600 We have people who have a lot of issues going on. We need to help those people. We need to deal with

00:02:01.360 the underlying issues. That's what some psychologists, psychiatrists are saying, stepping forward.

00:02:05.880 Doctors saying it must be to help to get them off these drugs. The activists, they say, no,

00:02:11.600 we meet them where they're at. And what they mean by that is if somebody is not interested

00:02:15.900 in going through addiction services, they don't push them. They don't try and encourage them

00:02:19.940 to go there, lest the idea backfire. Okay, whatever you're taking, all of that,

00:02:24.840 we've got to be open to all different options. And here's another option that we have to explore.

00:02:29.900 We have to get tougher on the dealers. The majority of these overdose deaths in BC,

00:02:35.200 this report says, was fentanyl. This is not marijuana. This is not, you know, your mom and dad's

00:02:41.880 recreational drug from decades ago. Fentanyl is a drug, particularly car fentanyl, a variant of it

00:02:47.720 that can kill you from one single use. And when I say dealers, you know who I'm also talking about?

00:02:53.300 I'm talking about China and the shipments coming in from China, full of fentanyl,

00:02:59.500 laced with fentanyl that are killing Canadian citizens. We have to deal with these issues right

00:03:05.200 now. These numbers are only going to get worse. And the opioid crisis, it's a nonpartisan issue.

00:03:10.360 I think it's something that should concern all Canadians.

Juno News - August 28, 2020