As Overdoses Surge, a Canadian Province Is Giving Out Drugs

VANCOUVER—The Canadian province of British Columbia is responding to a surge in overdose fatalities with a novel method: It is supplying out opioids.

The province’s controversial plan goes further more than the methadone procedure programs that are typical in the U.S. and Canada. Medical doctors in the province will now be in a position to prescribe more robust drugs like hydromorphone, an opioid that is 5 periods additional strong than morphine Dexedrine, a stimulant for cocaine and methamphetamine users and tablets of fentanyl, a powerful artificial opioid.

Overall health officials and advocates say drugs received from pharmacies and clinics are safer options to avenue drugs, which increasingly are laced with deadly amounts of opioids and tranquilizers.

The plan is the most recent attempt by health and fitness authorities in British Columbia to get a devastating overdose epidemic less than control. It also marks the most recent flare-up in a extensive-simmering discussion around irrespective of whether supplying users entry to so-referred to as safer drugs will help or harms them.

Practically a hundred,000 individuals in Canada and the U.S. died from overdoses past calendar year, as the results of the Covid-19 pandemic amplified the fatal effects of a toxic drug provide.