As part of Overdose Awareness Week , KPIX is presenting a series of special reports on the opioid crisis through the lens of another West Coast city. Much like San Francisco, Vancouver has been fighting to save lives amid the explosion of fentanyl for about a decade. Both cities have seen overdose numbers soar over the past ten years.
But as KPIX showed in the first part of our special report , Vancouver has tried some strategies that San Francisco and the United States, largely, have not. However, the results of those efforts have Canadians divided. "Weeks went on and it became more and more of a stronger flavor," explained Jeffrey Brocklesby, a drug user in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
"Then, lo and behold, all you got is fentanyl and no heroin. And everybody's f----d.".
It may have started a few years earlier in Vancouver, but it is the same story as San Francisco: an overdose crisis that arrived with fentanyl and drags on, now with plenty of other drugs mixed in. The response in Vancouver has been different. In 2016, British Columbia declared a health emergency.
expanded from one official safe use site to dozens, and started offering users the option of a regulated drug supply. "We've seen the risks that come from unregulated drugs, and we know people use them," explained Dr. Mark Lysyshyn with Vancouver Coastal Health .
"So we legalized them, and we made regulated versions and then people don't immediately die when they consume them." Lysyshyn says the goal has been to.