A recent death in a Regina remand centre has shone a light on a lack of opioid-related care for those going through withdrawal.
CBC reported on March 27 that Breanna Kannick, “died at the remand centre in August 2015 while withdrawing from the hydromorphone she was addicted to.”
There is now an investigation into her death and hopefully we will soon have a strategy for dealing with opioid addiction and withdrawal in our prison systems.
We do have a strategy in place for overdoses at the Humboldt-Lanigan RCMP detachment. Staff sergeant Adare Guest reported at a recent RCMP town hall meeting that Naloxone kits, which are given to those who have overdoses on opioids, are standard issue for all Saskatchewan RCMP.
This is a proactive approach, since there have been no reported deaths from opioid overdoses in rural Saskatchewan. However, there have been reported deaths in urban centres, most recently at the beginning of March.
Rural detachments are now prepared.
In 2016, it was reported that 51 people died as a result of opioid overdoses.
How are we reacting to these senseless deaths?
I was happy to have Leonard L. coming into my office a year ago to discuss a new Narcotics Anonymous group that he was starting in town (reported in the Humboldt Journal on March 15, 2017).
Unfortunately his health has not allowed him to keep the group running, but I admired his willingness to come forward and say rural Saskatchewan has a drug addiction problem.
We need these kinds of approaches going forward, as new and more harmful drugs are entering Canada and Saskatchewan.
What about other drugs and addictions?
Having harm reduction strategies work.
Look at Vancouver’s safe injection site, Insite, the first of its kind in North America according to a Ken MacQueen Globe and Mail article. It opened in 2003 to controversy, especially from the federal Conservatives, however, as noted in the 2015 article, Insite had 600 injections a day at the site, with no overdoses recorded since the centre opened.
Another benefit is that no one who uses the site will transmit HIV or hepatitis through the sharing of needles.
“Ideology and the stigma of HIV and drug use are blinding governments, including Canada’s, to the building on the substantial advances in anti-viral therapies that have reduced HIV in B.C. to the level of a chronic disease,” stated the article.
Considering federal pushback, says MacQueen, numerous studies have been done on the site, “concluding that the facility and other harm-reduction strategies like free needle exchanges have slashed HIV infections and overdose death rates, and have increased the number of people seeking treatment without contributing to an increase in crime.”
According to the Saskatchewan government’s 2016 HIV annual report, Saskatchewan HIV rates have hit an all-time high, with 2,200 cases reported since 1985. Injection drug use was the cause of transmission in 60 per cent of those cases.
With Vancouver’s Insite offer help for those with drug addiction, would this work in Saskatchewan, and in other places in Canada?
Maybe but this is a sign that more needs to be done if we ever want to see rates fall, let alone keep rates from rising.
