Significant amount of prescribed opioid doses “are not being consumed by their intended recipients,” police learn from Health Ministry
A police briefing showing the extent of safe-supply opioid drug diversion in B.C. should result in a public inquiry and a new public health officer, says B.C. Conservatives public safety critic Elenore Sturko.
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On Wednesday, Sturko leaked details of a recent Ministry of Health and College of Pharmacists of British Columbia’s audit of its safe-supply dispensing program that started in 2020.
It showed that from 2022 to 2024 there were 22,418,000 doses of opioids prescribed to around 5,000 clients in B.C.
The report on pharmacare in B.C. says a significant portion of those prescribed doses of mostly hydromorphone and oxycodone “are not being consumed by their intended recipients.”
“Prescribed alternatives are trafficking provincially, nationally and internationally,” the PowerPoint presentation states.
B.C. Health Minister Josie Osborne has confirmed the internal briefing’s authenticity, saying the leak was disappointing and that the continuing investigation could potentially be compromised.
“I want to acknowledge that we know that this is happening. These allegations are here. There’s absolutely no denial of it. There’s no diminishing of it, and there should be no acceptance of it. That’s why we’re taking the actions that we are,” Osborne said, adding the leaked document was a briefing delivered to police.
The allegations are that more than 60 pharmacies have offered incentives to patients to use their services, worth around $11,000 a year in dispensing fees, and that some community housing staff request their tenants go to specific pharmacies.
The police briefing shows photos of B.C.-dispensed drugs found during car searches, but does not have any more information on the statement that B.C. prescribed drugs had been found overseas.
B.C.’s safe supply program was launched in March 2020 as a response to the opioid overdose crisis, declared in 2016. It allows people with opioid use disorder to receive prescribed drugs to be used on site or taken away for later use.
Sturko, a former RCMP officer, said she began raising concerns about the program in the spring of 2023 after she heard anecdotes about prescribed opioids being trafficked.
She says the program is a failure in public policy and that provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry should be dismissed because she “denied and downplayed” problems as they emerging in program.
The internal document also emerged as Canada faces the threat of a trade war with the United States in part over drugs.
Sturko said that B.C. needed to change its drug policy in light of U.S. President Donald Trump’s policy linking drug trafficking of fentanyl and other opioids to possible trade sanctions against Canada.
Recently-appointed lieutenant-governor Wendy Lisogar-Cocchia could launch a public inquiry into the safe-supply program but it would need to be advocated by the B.C. NDP government.
In December 2024, the College of Pharmacists of B.C. suspended pharmacist Geoffrey Kyle Soo Chan for six months after he dispensed more than 28,000 doses of naloxone to one person. In B.C. some pharmacists can prescribe doses of safe-supply drugs for hydromorphone, oxycodone, morphine sulphate and dextroamphetamine.
With files from Canadian Press