Quote:
Originally Posted by Vin
Hope is a small, blue-collar depressed town with a lot smaller population than Vancouver. If a town only has one depressed person and he is an addict, overdoses and dies, then the drug death rate there is 100%.
I think the chief coroner is trying to say that harm reduction itself isn't sufficient, but there should be more treatment. Forced treatment including going cold turkey would be ideal, IMO.
However, our lazy government seem to be investing more on giving out free drugs or even decriminalize it, and these have certainly made the situation much much worse. The Stats testify to that.
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That's not how death rates work. Hope's death rate is the number of deaths, compared to the entire population. 11 people died from overdoses in town of 6,600, nearly triple the provincial average rate. Including the wider population in the Health Area, it's a rate of 123.7 deaths per 100,000 people, which is higher than the City of Vancouver, which includes the DTES, where the death rate was 86.4 per 100,000 in 2023.
A doctor who works in the area said harm reduction resources are scarce. "more detox and treatment services are needed in the area, particularly in the more than a dozen nearby Indigenous communities, as well as more safe supply prescribers and psychiatric support."
"Chief coroner Lisa Lapointe has urged the provincial government to follow the recommendations of an expert panel to expand safer supply, including non-medical models, alongside regulated treatment and recovery services in order to end the crisis. "(
CBC)