Victoria, B.C. | April 26, 2024 — The Hurt Discount Nurses Affiliation is profoundly annoyed and disenchanted to listen to the British Columbia provincial authorities’s announcement that they’ve sought permission from the Federal authorities to recriminalize all people who find themselves prone to dying from the unregulated drug disaster who lack entry to housing or 24/7 safer use areas of their communities.
“The B.C. authorities’s actions at the moment will put individuals who use medication and individuals who depend on public area at additional threat of hurt and dying,” says Corey Ranger of the Hurt Discount Nurses Affiliation. “All of us need and deserve communities the place all folks, whether or not they use medication or not, can entry security and well-being. By imposing these restrictions on the decriminalization pilot with out providing actual options like increasing overdose prevention companies and entry to housing, the province has declared some lives unworthy of saving.”
The BC Supreme Court docket injunction to stop Invoice 34, the Limiting Public Consumption of Unlawful Substances Act, from coming into drive discovered that the province’s proposed restrictions on decriminalization would result in irreparable hurt. The Hurt Discount Nurses Affiliation has beforehand reached out to the Province with a suggestion to collaborate to deal with considerations with out inflicting additional hurt, via a variety of authorized and coverage modifications that will higher defend the lives of individuals at present prone to overdose and improve public security.
“Fairly than concentrate on options applicable to the eight-year emergency we’re in and 1000’s of lives misplaced, the Province has chosen to do an end-run round that court docket choice,” says DJ Larkin, co-counsel for HRNA and government director of the Canadian Drug Coverage Coalition.
“This pushes individuals who use medication out of sight, to covert and remoted use. Mixed with a poisonous and unpredictable drug provide, that could be a recipe for preventable drug poisoning dying. We don’t need folks to die hidden in alleyways,” says Ranger. “We don’t need any extra households to must grieve their family members. We wish efficient options. And we all know that criminalization is not any resolution. It is a step again.”
HRNA members say B.C.’s actions directing healthcare staff in hospitals to observe insurance policies that “prohibit drug possession, use and buying of illicit medication,” will additional impede nurses’ capacity to ethically present compassionate and life-saving care to individuals who use medication.
“Ideas of fairness, autonomy and justice are embedded inside nursing regulatory skilled follow necessities,” says Michelle Danda of HRNA. “These coverage directives will additional marginalize and stigmatize individuals who use medication and create division between nurses and sufferers versus a group to help care. We want nurses to unite round compassionate, evidence-informed care.”
“To maintain everybody safer – together with nurses and all healthcare staff – we want widespread entry to safer use areas, together with inhalation companies,” says Ranger. “We will obtain security with out resorting to punitive measures.”
HRNA has outlined quite a few actions the Province might take that will assist, not hurt, together with:
Fast scaling-up of supervised consumption websites wherever they’re wanted
Exploring choices to responsibly regulate the drug provide for security
Scaling up entry to regulated, evidence-based voluntary non-profit therapy
Investing closely in inexpensive housing and poverty discount
Greater than a century of prohibition has demonstrated that enforcement has not decreased drug availability or use, is extraordinarily costly, and is clearly linked to an elevated threat of overdose and cycles of homelessness.
“The decriminalization pilot has its drawbacks, and finally doesn’t tackle the unregulated poisonous drug provide that continues to drive this disaster,” says Larkin. “Even so, it is a vital a part of a broader shift. To be efficient in lowering hurt and supporting wholesome communities, it have to be accompanied by further actions. Blaming the decriminalization pilot for systemic problems with rising homelessness and visual poverty scapegoats these already struggling. Once we see public drug use, it’s as a result of folks shouldn’t have housing, companies or protected locations to go – and since folks need to keep alive, not die alone and out of sight.”
Immediately’s announcement is a direct circumvention of the Invoice 34 injunction and poses the exact same threat for irreparable hurt.
-30-
Hyperlinks and Sources:
B.C. Supreme Court docket Ruling on Injunction Utility
Invoice 34 – Limiting Public Consumption of Unlawful Substances Act
April 16, 2024 HRNA Press Launch
December 30, 2023 HRNA Press Launch
Media Contact:
[email protected]
