The arrival of yet another pharmacy in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside has renewed questions about British Columbia’s “safer supply” program from the Opposition BC Conservatives.
Flash Pharmacy and Medical Centre has been given approval to open at 66 West Hastings, and will be the sixth in a tight geographic area.
It comes less than a year after a leaked Ministry of Health document revealed more than 60 pharmacies in the neighbourhood were under investigation on allegations of “offering incentives to clients” in order to secure dispensing fees of up to $11,000, and that a “significant portion” of prescribed opioids were being diverted to the illicit market.
The document also alleged doctors, assisted living residences and organized criminals were participating in the schemes.
BC Conservative public safety critic Elenore Sturko said the province has yet to provide any update on the state of the investigation.
“As far as we can tell, those practices haven’t stopped. It is actually the fault of the government for setting up a system that allows for this kind of exploitation, and they haven’t taken any accountability for that,” she said.
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Downtown Eastside residents Global News spoke with on Tuesday alleged some pharmacies are, indeed, still offering cash kickbacks to secure individual patient’s prescriptions.
Given the unresolved questions about dispensing practices in the neighbourhood which has long been the epicenter of B.C.’s drug crisis, Sturko said approving yet another pharmacy in the area raises significant concerns.
“The sickest part for me is we’re taking about people who are very, very sick,” she said.
“They need help. They have come into the system because they need help but instead they’ve been both exploited and also given a currency, whether it’s actual currency or other items, to trade or the drugs themselves to be traded — this is fuelling the fentanyl trade; it is not helping people recover and the results have been disastrous.”
Global News has been seeking comment from Health Minister Josie Osborn for close to three weeks, but has been told on multiple occasions she is not available.
In February, the B.C. government overhauled the safer supply program, moving away from a model that let drug users take their pills home and replacing it with a “witness model” requiring patients to take their drugs under the watch of health-care workers.
Advocates for drug users contend that far from curbing B.C.’s safer supply program, the province should be expanding it.
Speaking at International Overdose Awareness Day on Monday, former B.C. chief coroner Lisa Lapointe said the program is essential to keep drug user alive until they are ready to undergo treatment.
“People who die can’t access treatment. People are dying every day, five or six,” Lapointe said.
“Providing pharmaceutical alternatives, a safer provision of drugs, is the way to keep people alive now so we can help them in their treatment journey. It’s not giving drugs to drug addicts, as some of our more unkind politicians have talked about. It’s saving lives.“
Sturko, however, contends there is no evidence the program is saving lives, arguing that the federal government’s recent move to cut funding to safer supply programs in B.C. proves they aren’t helping people.
On the contrary, she argued that pharmacies are exploiting and profiting from people who are sick with addiction, a practice she wants the province to stop.
“I think that it would save the taxpayer a lot of money if we concentrated on programs that did help people if they started collecting and gathering evidence on the outcomes of other types of treatment, stabilization, detox,” she said.
“We’re not just talking about how to better dispense drugs to eliminate the exploitation, but looking at the overall value of a program that in the last two reports that came out on this program it still was not characterized or classified as evidence-based.
The College of Pharmacists of B.C., meanwhile, says it has taken action against four Vancouver pharmacists in order to protect the public.
The allegations contained in the ministry document have yet to be proven.
–with files from Rumina Daya
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