B.C. now requires supervised consumption of prescribed alternatives

As of Tuesday, B.C. now requires patients in its Prescribed Alternatives Program to consume their medication under the supervision of a pharmacist or other regulated health professionals.

Prescribed Alternatives is a harm-reduction measure that the province introduced in March of 2020, aimed at reducing overdose deaths by replacing illicit drugs with regulated substances like opioids and stimulants. It says requiring supervised consumption will reduce the resale or sharing of prescribed drugs on the street.

The changes follow a leak of documents in February that said that about 60 pharmacies were involved in the illegal diversion of drugs from the safe supply program.

That month, harm reduction and recovery expert Guy Felicella said diversion is not nearly as widespread as politicians would have British Columbians believe. He says the ministry is focused on the wrong issue.

“If the program needs tweaking, then we tweak it. It’s a very valuable tool for a lot of people. And one thing is: it’s not causing death,” Felicella explained, pointing instead to the toxicity in the unregulated drug supply.

While he’s pleased that the program hasn’t been cancelled outright, Felicella says the witnessed-consumption model is as good as an end to the program for some drug users.

He argues the change will put unfair requirements on people who have already successfully transitioned from using unregulated drugs to prescribed medications, and likely perturb anyone thinking of making the switch.

“How are you going to make it to a pharmacy seven days a week?”

Speaking with The Leader Spirit on Tuesday, Felicella says he’s still not bothered by the way the change will affect those who had nothing to do with alleged diversions.

“I’m fine with the changes that are made for people diverting the substances, I’m not fine with the changes that are made for the people that aren’t,” said Felicella.

“If we remove people that are already stabilized on the substances, where will they go or turning to buying street substances, which is highly toxic.”

The program has faced growing political scrutiny since the investigation into diversion began. In a statement to The Leader Spirit, the Ministry of Health says it knows prescribed alternatives work.

“They keep people alive by separating them from the poisoned drug supply. At the same time, there are some bad actors taking advantage of this program.”

Acting as critic for mental health and addictions, Conservative MLA Claire Rattee, a recovered addict herself, says the new supervision requirement is a step in the right direction, and she thinks providing alternatives to street drugs was a bad idea to begin with.

“If this program existed before I went to treatment, I know myself well enough to know that the likelihood is I would still be homeless in the Downtown Eastside doing drugs, if not dead.”

While there’s debate over the effectiveness of the Prescribed Alternatives Program, the last report from the B.C. Coroners Service showed an eight per cent drop year over year in deaths from unregulated drug toxicity in October.

—With files from The Canadian Press