(LifeSiteNews) – The British Columbia government decided to stop a so-called “safe supply” free drugs program in light of a report revealing many of the hard drugs distributed via pharmacies were resold on the black market.
NDP Health Minister Josie Osborne said Wednesday that drug addicts who have been given prescriptions for opioids to take home, many of which were then sold, can only now use the drugs under a “witnessed model” as a health professional observes them.
The essential ban of allowing addicts to take home free drugs comes in light of a recent leaked Ministry of Health audit presentation that revealed that a large amount of so-called “safe supply” drugs have been falling into the wrong hands to be illegally sold.
As reported by LifeSiteNews last week, the Conservative Party of British Columbia, which serves as the official opposition, demanded that Premier David Eby of the New Democratic Party act swiftly in light of the leaked audit.
The leaked document, which the BC Conservative caucus was able to obtain, shows that both doctors and pharmacists prescribed 22,418,000 doses of addictive opioids to some 5,000 patients. This amounts to an average of 4,483 per person, well above normal.
The NDP government claims that the new “witnessed model” will lead to a drop in drugs being illegally diverted to be resold, notably hydromorphone.
Osborne admitted to reporters that they are aware drugs were being diverted to be resold in the black market, saying that “we’ve heard concerns about these medications being diverted and ending up in the wrong hands.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s loose drug initiatives were deemed such a disaster in British Columbia that the Eby government asked Trudeau to re-criminalize narcotic use in public spaces, a request that was granted.
According to British Columbia’s official data from 2023, the year the Trudeau government decriminalized hard drug use, the province saw “the largest number of drug-related deaths ever reported to the agency,” hitting a tragic total of 2,511.
The effects of decriminalizing hard drugs in various parts of Canada have been exposed by certain media outlets. Two documentaries, Aaron Gunn’s Canada is Dying and U.K. Telegraph journalist Steven Edginton’s mini-documentary Canada’s Woke Nightmare: A Warning to the West, detail the grim reality of the drug crisis, particularly in British Columbia.