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 B.C.'s coroners' service on Friday came at the same time police, firefighters, politicians and health officials in Vancouver joined forces to call on the provincial government to provide treatment on demand for drug users as the 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 coroners' service said in a news release Friday. Five more people died throughout the rest of the province, the service said.
Vancouver Police Chief Adam Palmer said his department counted nine overdose fatalities on Thursday night alone, but there's nowhere for drug users to turn when they ask for help in quitting their addiction.
Palmer said that while the city led the way in 2003 by opening North America's first supervised-injection site, treatment options are not available, and if they're found wait lists are too long.
Mayor Gregor Robertson said repeatedly giving some people the overdose-reversing drug naloxone isn't good enough because what they need is treatment to turn their lives around.
Robertson said treatment for addicts has been woefully inadequate and the city and its emergency workers can't continue to indefinitely react to the crisis.
He said figures show there are about 1,300 people using illicit opioids every day in the city who are at immediate risk and "playing roulette" with fentanyl every day.
The coroners' service says from January to the end of October, 622 people died of illicit overdose deaths in the province and most of those deaths were related to the opioid fentanyl.
