Public safety critic Elenore Sturko is still demanding a public inquiry into the trafficking of safe-supply drugs and the firing of provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry.
"Nothing has changed and it's blatantly obvious the provincial government is going to let this disgrace go on unabated," said Sturko, who is also the Conservative MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale.
"What's most concerning is that thousands and thousands of safe-supply pills are being delivered right into the hands of illegal drug traffickers."
This crisis was uncovered in early February when a leaked BC Ministry of Health presentation confirmed that some of the taxpayer-funded safe-supply of prescribed drugs that pharmacies provide drug addicts is being sold to drug traffickers to sell illegally.
The safe-supply is generally hydromorphone pills and fentanyl patches that are prescribed to addicts as an alternative to potentially unsafe street drugs.
"There's massive potential for misuse of the program as it is," said Sturko, a retired RCMP sergeant who went into politics as another way to help people.
"Some of the people who receive these safe-supply drugs sell all or part of their prescription to drug dealers for money so they can buy street drugs. It means pharmaceutical-grade drugs are being delivered right into the hands of traffickers and the people the safe-supply is supposed to be helping turn to street drugs that can further harm and kill them."
The safe-supply program under the NDP provincial government was introduced in 2020 as a way to help drug addicts.
However, addicts prescribed safe-supply drugs have the option of picking their drugs at the pharmacy to take away to supposedly use them in their own home.
Or, they can even get the prescription delivered.
Such unmonitored activity gives addicts the opportunity to sell the prescription pills or patches to illegal drug dealers.
Sturko and the opposition Conservatives are pushing that addicts should be required to come to the pharmacy to pick up the prescription and then take the dose supervised by a pharmacist.
In mid-February, the NDP announced the use of safe-supply drugs must be witnessed by a health care professional.
But, there was no announcement for a full public inquiry.
And provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry, an advocate of expanding the safe-supply program, has not been fired.
So far, that edict that safe-supply drug taking be witnessed by a health care professional applies only to new clients of the safe-supply program.
Existing clients can continue to pick up and walk away with their prescription or have it delivered, giving them the opportunity to sell all or part of their supply to illegal drug dealers.
Sturko and the doctors of Addiction Medicine Canada have asked when full implementation will come into effect to have all safe-supply doses witnessed.
Sturko said the BC Centre on Substance Use is waiting for the provincial government to make the decision and vice-versa.
"In the meantime, nothing is being done and more and more safe-supply opioids are ending up on the streets," said Sturko.
No one seems to know how much or how many safe-supply pills and patches end up being sold to illegal drug traffickers.
But the documents leaked in February stated: "A significant portion of the opioids being freely prescribed by doctors and pharmacists in BC are not being consumed by their intended recipients" and that "prescribed alternatives are being trafficked provincially, nationally and internationally."
A study released on March 21 links BC's safe-supply program and decriminalization of drugs to more overdoses and hospitalizations, but not more deaths.
Click here to read more about that study.
