B.C.’s human rights commissioner is calling for a need to place evidence-based recommendations above stigma when it comes to navigating the province’s toxic drug crisis.
Kasari Govender, in a position statement released Nov. 13, makes the case that the government’s failure to address the toxic drug crisis with evidence-based actions is largely due to stigma. It also adds the government is instead focusing on criminal justice responses and involuntary care.
“When public policy on substance use and treatment of people who use drugs is based on stigma and morality, rather than evidence and respect for fundamental human dignity, harmful policies result,” Govender said.
Govender said unregulated drug toxicity is now the leading cause of death in B.C. for people aged 19 to 59.
The B.C. Coroner Service’s latest data shows there have been 1,384 unregulated drug deaths between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30 of this year – equal to a little more than five deaths per day in the province.
The toxic drug crisis was first made official in B.C. more than nine years ago.
On April 14, 2016, B.C. became the first jurisdiction in Canada to declare a public health emergency over increasing overdoses. Overdose deaths had reached 474 in 2015, a 30-per-cent increase from the year before, and the government said more people were dying every month.
In the year the public health emergency was first declared, there were 997 deaths reported to the B.C. Coroners Service. It jumped to 1,495 in 2017, then to 1,566 in 2018. In 2019, it dropped to 992.
But in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it jumped back up to 1,776.
From 2021 to 2024, there were more than 2,000 deaths each year.
In the nine years since it was declared, there have been nearly 18,000 deaths.
“As we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic, any other health problems with massive fatalities would be treated with the utmost urgency, yet the toxic drug crisis continues to kill many people across the province every day for over a decade with little reprieve,” Govender said in her statement.
The release from the human rights commissioner adds that the toxic drug crisis affects hundreds of thousands of people in B.C. The release adds that an estimated 225,000 people use illicit drugs.
“We don’t criminalize smokers who develop lung cancer, nor diabetics whose diets increase risk of renal disease, because we understand that people have rights to make choices about their lives based on a number of complex and personal factors and still receive comprehensive care and support for health issues flowing from those decisions,” Govender said.
The crisis affects both people who are unhoused and those who have stable housing.
So far in 2025, nearly 48 per cent of overdose deaths have occurred in private residences, compared to the nearly 21 per cent outside, two per cent in a public building, and 0.7 per cent in public washrooms.
The toxic drug crisis also affects both casual or infrequent drug users and those who may have substance-use disorder. Those who use drugs are also at risk due to the increasing toxicity of the drug supply over the last decade.
Govender adds that a supply is contaminated with fentanyl, benzodiazepines and “other dangerous substances that are unpredictable, difficult for care providers to manage and do not always respond to life-saving efforts such as naloxone.”
She said the province was making progress through the introduction of prescribed alternatives and decriminalization of personal possession of small amounts of drugs, but that started getting rolled back in 2024, following pushback.
Health Canada first granted B.C. a three-year exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to decriminalize people who use drugs. It came into effect Jan. 31, 2023.
In February 2025, Health Minister Josie Osborne announced changes to the province’s safe supply program first introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic as a response to the opioid crisis.
That development came after B.C. Conservatives said a Ministry of Health presentation confirmed the “worst-case scenario” about pharmaceutical alternatives to opioids being “trafficked provincially, nationally and internationally,” as per the report.
Osborne said the changes to safe supply came after consulting with health officers, but not with B.C.’s top doctor, Bonnie Henry.