Safer supply too weak for most street-drug users, says Island Health doctor (Times Colonist)

. . . Dr. Randal Mason, regional medical director for the health authority’s Addiction Medicine and Substance Use program, said there’s a “huge gap” between the potency of the hydromorphone tablets prescribed as part of B.C.’s safer-supply program and the toxic fentanyl people are buying on the streets.

Mason said hydromorphone can help an intermittent opioid user or someone with a lower opioid tolerance, but for those with a “high degree of dependence and tolerance,” options such as fentanyl and diacetylmorphine — heroin — need to be considered.

If not for the high cost, many drug users he’s talked to “would certainly use heroin” over illicit opioids because the effects last longer . . .

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