The City Gripped in an Opiod Crisis

Approximately 5,000 active drug users reside in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a 10-block corridor that runs through the heart of the city along Hastings Street.

Walking the half-mile stretch is profoundly shocking. Bodies lie scattered on the tree-lined streets, some scarcely breathing. Discarded needles are everywhere, and the detritus from makeshift encampments – tents, cardboard, sleeping bags – clutter alleys and verges. The scream of sirens is unrelenting.

The crisis is being fuelled by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 50 times stronger than heroin. Manufactured in numerous illicit labs in Canada’s wilderness, fentanyl is now so common in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside that you can literally pick it up off the street.

Vancouver once topped the charts of the world’s “most desirable places to live”. Its reputation is that of a city which provides the perfect balance – a metropolis “perched on the edge of nature” combining “outdoor recreation and a great cultural diversity”, as one local website puts it.

But a landmark experiment to decriminalise the possession of certain drugs in public – including fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines, and ecstasy – has allowed an opioid crisis to take hold that surpasses even the epidemic in the United States.

In April, David Eby, British Columbia’s premier announced that halfway into the three-year trial, the province would recriminalise drug use in public spaces.

To read the published story visit: How decriminalisation made Vancouver the fentanyl capital of the world