Yukon has joined B.C. in declaring a substance use emergency. What does that mean?
CBC
Perry Kendall, British Columbia's former provincial health officer, watched as the number of illicit drug deaths continued to rise, unabated, in the province in the spring of 2016.
Three people died on average everyday in B.C. from illicit drugs at the time — an indication, Kendall said, that what his office was doing to try to curb the number of deaths wasn't working.
He decided to call a public health emergency, on April 14, 2016.
"Despite the fact that we were doing a lot of preventative work, the numbers just kept going up," Kendall told CBC.
The Yukon government followed suit, almost six years later, calling a substance use health emergency last month following a dramatic increase of deaths that mirrored what Kendall had seen in B.C.
Eight people in Yukon died from illicit drug use between Jan. 3 and 24, according to the most recent news release from the territory's chief coroner. Toxicology results are still pending for one other case, but preliminary evidence suggests illicit drugs were a factor.
Kendall said B.C.'s emergency declaration brought local and national attention to what was happening in that province, allowing for more federal support to trickle down to more health-care services.
It also justified new spending or policy changes by the provincial government to address the crisis.
"I think [an emergency declaration] gives you more political power because it says we recognize it is an emergency and we want to mobilize the resources we can," he said.
The other immediate change, Kendall said, was more flexibility with how the province collected data on where and when people would overdose. That helped officials redirect services to parts of the province that were most in need, he continued.
"We were able to develop 'heat maps,'" Kendall said. "You get weekly data … of where they responded to an overdose call, what time of day it was.
"Without the data, you really can't plan and you can't … determine whether [people are] accessing these services."
Before the declaration, Kendall said, British Columbians outside of Vancouver didn't have much access to supervised consumption sites and other services to manage addictions.
That started to change after the emergency declaration, when more federally sanctioned opioid prevention sites popped up across the province that December. One study found that these sites slightly increased the number of B.C. users who sought out a supervised consumption site or another addiction treatment over time.