B.C. coroner, police, politicians issue overdose alert after 11 deaths
VANCOUVER — An urgent warning has been sent out to illicit drug users in British Columbia after at least 11 people died in the province on Thursday alone, six of them in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
The warning from the BC coroners’ service on Friday came at the same time police, firefighters, the mayor and health officials in Vancouver joined forces to call on the provincial government to provide treatment on demand for drug users as the overdose death toll reaches staggering proportions.
“At least six persons died after using drugs in the Downtown Eastside in a span of only eight hours,” the service said in a news release, adding five more people died throughout the rest of the province.
Mayor Gregor Robertson said during a news conference that giving people the overdose-reversing drug naloxone isn’t good enough because they just go back onto the streets and use again when what they need is treatment to turn their lives around.