a Policy decision.

its a big deal that the New Data Added to the Unregulated Drug Poisoning Emergency Dashboard on April 12 is of the number of clients dispensed prescribed alternatives to the unregulated supply, by substance class (opioid, stimulant, benzo), by month from March 2020 to the present, because this information is new. My first reaction was confusion: how did I miss this? I only encountered it by chance, looking for something else on the BCCDC’s site. I checked the release date – only a week earlier. I scrolled through their tweets to find the only one about this, posted on Friday afternoon. How is it possible that I had done a better job communicating this crucial information than the entire well-resourced staff of the province’s public health agency? Unless, of course, the government didnt want the release of the data to be effectively communicated.

yes, this is the dashboard the Auditor General’s report referred to in the chapter on the implementation on the prescribed safer supply program – but the data included is only a fraction of what the ministries have. And the government has held back this information for at least 18 months, throughout which 3673 people died.

Internal data not made public
There is an internal prescribed safer supply dashboard available to staff and partners of the
ministries (e.g., regional health authority epidemiologists) with statistics for prescribed safer
supply prescribers and prescribed safer supply clients. New clients per month, total clients per
month, and total prescribers per month are listed in aggregate or by health authority, drug class,
sex, and age group (if applicable).
The ministries had intended the dashboard to be public by September 2022, but this hadn’t
occurred during the audit period. (p41)

B.C.’s Toxic Drug Crisis: Implementation of Harm Reduction Programs. Auditor General of British Columbia March 2024 (PDF)

Again, this dashboard was available internally “to staff and partners of the ministries” (the ministries of health and mental health and addiction) for at least 18 months, since September 2022. it was probably among the deliverables from this allocation from the first budget of the BCNDP majority government

Ten months later, the Vancouver Sun published in its Opinion section a column by Daphne Bramham who claimed therein

In February 2022 according to the just-released data, 3665 people were dispensed prescribed alternatives to the unregulated drug supply.

And that’s when the manufactured backlash intensified dramatically. You bet your ass it first focused on civic elections in B.C., because the purpose of power is always more power. was safe supply flooding the streets or was it inaccessible to those in need?

the government created a fact vacuum that was quickly filled with bullshit. they knew what they were doing. the public health people at the BC Centre for Disease Control, the five regional health authorities and any “research partners” obeyed the instruction to keep the dashboard for internal use only. the ethical option was to leak that data. Leaks save lives.

meanwhile,

@CoreyRanger and I continued hassling government for this information. Then they changed the “Escalated Drug Poisoning Response Actions” factsheet issued along with the Minister’s statement on the Coroner’s update (the “totally heartbroken about killing you” thing), they added a sentence and the new sentence was, “in [month year], approximately X people were prescribed safer supply opioid medications.”

Did you know that the government replaces the Factsheet every month and there’s no archive because B.C. is the transparentest

We tried our best but the thing is, the government releasing data has a very different impact from individuals tracking it down via disappearing statements making a graph and posting it on twitter.

Doing the best you can with what you have is what you do. That’s what we did.

Unless you’re the government, in which case you sabotage your own program for three years in every way possible no matter how many people die, anything to prevent systemic change.

They had no intention of stopping the deaths. It was a facade. They guaranteed failure by withholding the data, creating a vacuum for disinformation, a backlash. They murdered thousands of people with these decisions, they knew that as they made them. They’re murderers.

And all the people responsible for public health in these ministries and health agencies and all the researchers producing evidence to advise them? the government made every person who had access to this dashboard complicit in their act of murder. every one of you.

these actions have irredeemably corrupted all the public institutions involved and everyone they employed, destroying whatever remained of their legitimacy in the eyes of the public. you all knew what was happening: you had a choice. you did nothing. you watched people die.

That’s what you’re paid for. That’s what the

@bccsu is for. That’s what you’re doing at the table. You got a grant for it. you’re providing a cover for murder.

And this is incontrovertible proof that all of you throughout the hierarchy from the premier’s office and this government that made this decision, to the health system administrators, the regional epidemiologists and research infrastructure who silently obeyed

you knew.

The government withheld this data and DECIDED to make sure this dehumanizing nightmare would happen by creating a fact void that was dutifully filled with lies, lies that FLOODED THE STREETS, in order to sabotage safe supply, their own program. They watched.

In September 2022 according to the just-released data, 4524 people were dispensed prescribed alternatives to the unregulated drug supply.

What if this data had been effectively released?

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