The suspected drug deaths of eight people in Greater Victoria last December brought to our doorstep an alarming new trend. It鈥檚 believed at least one of these fatalities was caused by street cocktails that included the painkiller fentanyl.
The past few years have seen a growing trade in prescription narcotics such as oxycontin and fentanyl. And experts in the field believed, until recently, that the most prominent source of these drugs was either overprescribing by physicians or black-market imports from China.
Careless storage in patients鈥� homes, resulting in pilferage by family members, was also thought to play a part.
Now, however, a potential new entry point has come to light. It appears hospitals and long-term care facilities sometimes lose or misplace narcotics.
By law, Health sa国际传媒 must be notified of any such incidents. And between 2012 and 2015, hospitals in sa国际传媒 reported about 7,000 missing doses of drugs such as oxycontin and fentanyl.
Not all of these were necessarily smuggled out. It鈥檚 likely some were mislaid. But if even half found their way onto the street, the potential for harm is evident.
Moreover, it appears the problem is growing. The number of narcotics doses lost by hospitals in sa国际传媒 tripled between 2012 and 2014.
It鈥檚 impossible to say whether the deaths in Victoria were due, in part, to this worrisome trend. However, it appears unlikely.
Most of the incidents reported to Health sa国际传媒 were from small mainland hospitals. The Mission hospital alone accounted for more than half the provincial total in one year.
And Island Health reports that narcotic losses from facilities on Vancouver Island are minuscule. The health authority maintains a team of security officers to watch over the handling of these drugs.
Hospital pharmacists are required to conduct regular counts of all narcotics on site, with a running balance maintained throughout the year. And random audits are carried out.
Concerns that oxycontin has become a street drug have also led to major changes. The drug itself has been redesigned by the manufacturer to a slow-release format, making it much less attractive to street users.
And Island Health has clamped down on over-prescribing, reducing oxycontin usage by about 50 per cent.
In short, while narcotics stolen from hospitals represent a threat that requires attention, they are, at worst, a limited contributor to drug abuse. Even so, efforts to reduce the street trade in prescription medications have, in one sense, backfired.
Several New England states in the U.S. report sharp rises in heroin-related deaths. It鈥檚 believed 鈥渢raditional鈥� illicit drugs are making a comeback due to the shortage of oxycontin.
What this perverse outcome shows is that drug addiction cannot be fought successfully by cracking down on any one product. Others simply take its place.
The City of Victoria has asked Health sa国际传媒 if the federal government would support supervised injection sites.
These might be free-standing, but more likely adjuncts to existing community facilities.
Vancouver鈥檚 Insite clinic, where drug users have access to safe narcotics instead of street concoctions, has proved its worth. The number of regular clients who go on to enter detox programs has doubled since the facility opened.
This is, by far, the best way to reduce the spate of overdose deaths we saw last December. It is not a perfect solution.
But we do not live in a perfect world.
Sad as it is, a small number of people will always be vulnerable to the lure of intoxicating drugs. Trying to change this fact is a war we cannot win.
The most practical solution is harm-reduction, and supervised injection sites offer that promise.
We hope, with a new federal administration in Ottawa, Victoria can make that case.
