Is British Columbia ready for compassion clubs where users can purchase legal and regulated heroin?
It’s a progressive policy the BC Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU) is urgently recommending in a new report written by public-health and addiction-medicine experts.
The report comes in response to the on-going fentanyl crisis that experts argue is both killing people and supporting organized crime.
The concept is similar to the compassion clubs that provided access to medical cannabis while it was prohibited, selling co-op members otherwise illegal drugs.
Heroin would be restricted to members who have been assessed by a health-care provider as having an opioid addiction and connected to treatment as part of a program involving overdose-prevention training and rigorous evaluation.
“One of the big benefits of this model is that there’s just a massive chasm between where people buy their drugs and public health and treatment services and that’s the gap that so far in the opioid response has been very, very difficult to bridge with people using at home alone and dying of fentanyl overdoses,” said Dr. Evan Wood, executive director with BCCSU.
According to the B.C. Coroners Service, an average of four people a day die of illicit-drug overdoses, more than suicides, homicides and vehicle deaths combined.
Fentanyl was detected in 86% of the 1,489 deaths recorded in B.C. from illicit-drug overdose deaths in 2018.
The report also recommends directing revenue from the heroin compassion clubs to drug treatment and recovery centres.
