Thoughts on BC Politics and More

What happens when a barely-independent watchdog loses its biggest advocate, leaving a leadership-vacuum to be filled by a hyper-partisan, control-freak provincial government? We’re about to find out at the BC Coroners Service, as Chief Coroner Lisa Lapointe gets set to retire in February. Her departure will give the BC NDP government the opportunity to neuter a Coroners Service that has been a vocal critic of its policies and inaction ... CLICK HERE for the full commentary

The controversy around giving drug users prescribed alternative drugs like hydromorphone amped up when a B.C. Coroners Service death review panel recommended opening the program up to those without prescriptions. A Victoria hospitalist is warning that if the province opens up access to a greater variety of highly addictive and potent opioids without a prescription or supervision, new addictions will occur “on a massive scale.” Dr. Mark Mallet was reacting to a call by chief coroner Lisa Lapointe this month for prescription-free access to a wider array of quality controlled opioids and stimulants to reduce illicit drug overdose deaths ... CLICK HERE for the full story

Opinion: Support for free and easy access to illicit drugs has waned in the past year, driven by complaints about open public use of drugs Chief Coroner Lisa Lapointe was explaining her call for prescription-free access to a safer supply of drugs at a news conference this week, when she discovered the New Democrats had already rejected her recommendation. First question from a reporter: What did Lapointe think of the letter from Jennifer Whiteside, the minister of mental health and addictions, announcing that she could not support waiving the requirement for prescriptions to access safe supply ... CLICK HERE for the full story

Yesterday brought us more news on the Fentanyl front.   In a story from the Victoria Times Colonist, it was said that ... "B.C. Health Minister Terry Lake lies awake at night worrying and wondering why the federal government is allowing other countries to smuggle deadly fentanyl into our country. “ There’s a headline in the Kamloops paper today ,” Lake said in an interview last Friday. “ A young man at a wedding using cocaine and he died. And this is a story we’ve heard again and again and again. That is not addiction. This is poisoning .” I took a few minutes, this morning to head to my trusty research tool, Google, to check a few facts regarding Fentanyl, and came up with two things I wanted to share" BC Coroners Service: " Illicit Drug Overdose Deaths in BC" There were 555 apparent illicit drug overdose deaths from Jan to Sep 2016. This is a 60.9% increase over the number of death occurring during the same period in 2015 (345). Individual...