B.C.’s Chief Coroner Lisa Lapointe announced on Wednesday that 2,511 people in the province died from unregulated drugs in 2023, including 112 people in Nanaimo.
Unregulated drugs are now the leading cause of death for people aged 10 to 59 in British Columbia, accounting for more deaths than homicides, suicides, accidents and natural disease combined.
“This week, I lost three people that were close to me,” said Beverley Plane is the executive secretary for the Nanaimo Area Network of Drug Users. “But last month, I also lost three people that I knew very closely and it’s devastating.”
Lapointe repeated her call for the province to introduce a non-prescribed option for safer supply saying that the current prescription-based program can’t be scaled up fast enough to meet the demand.
During a press conference on Thursday, Premier David Eby rejected the call for the province to provide a non-prescribed option for safe supply.
