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A city councilor from Edmonton said the city and province could help solve the current overdose crisis by distributing a softer form of opioid to drug addicts traveling to secure injection sites.
Naloxone kits, supervised injection sites and opioid treatment centers help save lives in the ongoing fight against the problem of opioids.
But Coun. Scott McKeen suggested going even further in the treatment by considering what is called alternative medical treatment for users of fentanyl and other opioids.
"I understand – it's controversial," McKeen said Wednesday at the city council's public and community services committee. "Giving drugs to drug addicts does not seem to make sense to some people, but that makes perfect sense to me, and I hope we'll get there."
McKeen urged the medical community to advocate more strongly for a substitutive treatment using drugs such as hydromorphone, a milder opioid typically prescribed for acute pain.
"I think there's really good research that corroborates this," McKeen said.
Drug addicts continue to die twice as fast as in 2016, said committee members, Chris Sikora, a medical officer of health at Alberta Health Services.
The latest report from Alberta Health indicated that 355 people across the province had died of an opioid overdose between January and June of this year.
"We are still twice as high as when we started this job two years ago," Sikora said.
The rate of opioid overdose deaths in Alberta continues to increase.
Marliss Taylor, director of the Streetworks program, a needle exchange program at Boyle Street Community Services, has given her full support to the idea of a medical replacement therapy.
Taylor said that there is an "urgent need" for a safe drug supply.
"The street market is toxic right now," she said. "We absolutely have to do more to get pharmaceutical grade drugs."
Regulating drugs would also help ensure a safe supply of opioids, but she acknowledged that such a move would "take a lot of courage".
Marliss Taylor, Program Manager at Boyle Street Community Services, said opioid regulation would save lives but take a lot of courage. (CBC)
"I think cannabis has arrived and left without the end of the world," she said. "People are dying here and I think we need to be more aggressive in what we are trying to do."
McKeen said that replacement therapy might be a better solution than naloxone, which, if administered in time, could reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.
"It seems a little silly that we are sending thousands of anti-venom kits and we have the opportunity to get rid of all the poisonous snakes, which are all these illicit drugs," he said. he declares.
The affect of naloxone
Sikora told the committee that naloxone is a lifejacket and that it is considered an essential option for hard drug users.
Since December 2017, more than 100,000 take-away kits have been distributed to pharmacies or other registered sites.
"Our take-away naloxone kits themselves – I'm going to use that phrase – have shattered," said Sikora.
Edmonton Fire Rescue Services are equipped with naloxone kits and, between January and October of this year, the crews administered the antidote 84 times.
New site
Edmonton has three supervised injection sites: one at the Royal Alex Hospital, Boyle Street Community Services and the George Spady Center.
Since April, the two community sites have received 19,716 visits from 835 different people. Taylor said the services had helped correct 228 overdoses.
A new center at Boyle McCauley Health Center is scheduled to open on November 5th.
Taylor said the demand was more than enough to justify the fourth site. She pointed out that the Streetworks program provides users with two million syringes per year, so that nearly 20,000 visits to secure injection sites are a "drop in the bucket".
Services at all three sites are available 24 hours a day.
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