Office of the Premier
The Province continues to enhance B.C.’s response to the toxic-drug crisis.
Budget 2024 builds on the historic $1-billion investment in Budget 2023. Since 2017, government has made new investments in mental-health and substance-use supports of more than $2.6 billion through 2024-25. Budget 2024 includes $215 million to continue mental-health and addiction services and additional funding in the capital plan to support treatment and recovery beds, including the work toward expanding the Red Fish healing model and Road to Recovery model.
Visit the BC Centre for Disease Control’s (BCCDC) website for more data on the drug poisoning response:
http://www.bccdc.ca/health-professionals/data-reports/substance-use-harm-reduction-dashboard
Take Home Naloxone Program: https://towardtheheart.com/thn-in-bc-infograph
Data on prescribed safe supply is available from the BCCDC:
http://www.bccdc.ca/resource-gallery/Documents/Statistics%20and%20Research/Statistics%20and%20Reports/Overdose/2022.02.22_BCCDC%20Infographic_RMG.PDF
Recent actions:
The Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions is working urgently to expand access to mental-health and addictions care, including increasing early intervention and prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery services, complex-care housing, and more.
Early intervention and prevention:
Foundry centres
Foundry is a provincewide network of integrated youth centres and virtual supports, offering free and confidential counselling, primary-care, sexual-health and substance-use services to young people aged 12-24 and their families.
There are 16 Foundry centres open throughout the province in Vancouver-Granville, North Shore (North Vancouver), Campbell River, Ridge Meadows, Abbotsford, Kelowna, Prince George, Victoria, Penticton, Terrace, Comox Valley, Langley, Richmond, Cariboo-Chilcotin (Williams Lake), Sea to Sky (Squamish) and Port Hardy.
An additional 19 Foundry centres are in development in Burns Lake, East Kootenay (Cranbrook), Surrey, Fort St. John, Sunshine Coast, Tri-Cities, Kamloops, Vernon, qathet (Powell River), Burnaby, Chilliwack, Port Alberni, Nanaimo, Quesnel, Sooke-West Shore, South Surrey, Vancouver, Vanderhoof and West Kootenay.
In 2022-23, Foundry centres supported 14,987 young people throughout B.C. for a total of 65,185 visits. In addition, Foundry Virtual supported 2,580 young people in 2022-23.
Integrated child and youth teams
Integrated Child and Youth (ICY) Teams help to fill gaps in mental-health and substance-use care, bringing together multidisciplinary teams and removing roadblocks to deliver better care. On the ground, these teams help families navigate services and provide mental-health and substance-use supports for children and youth.
The Province committed $55 million to implement teams in 20 school districts by 2024, to be fully operational by 2025.
ICY Teams are operating in these school districts: Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows; Comox Valley; Richmond; Coast Mountains (Terrace and Hazelton); and Okanagan-Similkameen (Oliver, Keremeos).
Seven more school district communities have ICY Teams in development: Mission; Fraser-Cascade (Hope, Agassiz-Harrison); Kootenay-Columbia (Castlegar-Trail); Nanaimo-Ladysmith; Okanagan-Shuswap (Salmon Arm); Pacific Rim (Port Alberni); and qathet (Powell River). Eight more ICY team communities are set to be announced.
Treatment and recovery
The B.C. government has prioritized making new treatment and recovery beds available to those who need them, with 599 new publicly funded adult and youth (72 youth beds) substance-use beds opened since 2017. More are more planned. There are now 3,601 publicly funded adult and youth (170 youth publicly funded youth beds) substance-use treatment beds across the province.
Government is also rolling out Road to Recovery, a new model of seamless care to support people through their entire recovery journey from detox to treatment to aftercare.
Substance-use services for young people
There is nothing more important than keeping young people safe, and that starts with education on the dangers of toxic drugs.
To complement bed-based services, the Province made a historic investment in 33 new and expanded youth substance use services starting in 2021-22. These provide a range of supports to meet the unique needs of each youth served, including wrapround supports, school and community-based prevention and early intervention resources, community-based youth substance use treatment and recovery services, and crisis intervention services.
A youth-focused campaign on the illicit poisoned-drug supply was launched in December 2023 that provides information about drug use, as well as resources to help parents have frank, non-judgmental conversations with their kids about drug use and its dangers. Having these early conversations is key to preventing problematic substance use before it starts.
Urgent and Primary Care Centres
Mental-health and addiction supports can be found at Urgent and Primary Care Centres in 32 locations throughout B.C., where clinicians are available 365 days a year for same-day access. Primary Care Networks build a team of professionals around patients and their needs, and improve access to early interventions for people experiencing mild to moderate mental-health and addictions challenges, and to more specialized supports when needed.
There are 77 Primary Care Networks in B.C., with a targeted total of 99 by the end of (fiscal year) 2024-25.
Opioid Agonist Treatment
Opioid Agonist Treatment is the preferred initial treatment option for people with opioid addiction. The number of people dispensed opioid agonist treatment in December 2023 was 24,232. The number of clinicians prescribing any form of opioid agonist treatment increased from 773 in June 2017 to 2,007 in December 2023. Access has also been significantly expanded through Rapid Access to Addictions Care Clinics in all health regions, so more people can access the care they need, where and when they need it.
Prescribers
To increase the number of clinicians who can prescribe medications for opioid-use disorder, particularly in rural and remote parts of the province, registered nurses (RNs) and registered psychiatric nurses (RPNs) can now complete training to begin prescribing opioid agonist treatment.
In November 2021, the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU) launched training to enable RN and RPN prescribers to offer OAT. As of March 2024, 280 RNs and RPNs from all health authorities have enrolled and 173 have completed their training. In December 2023, 594 patients received an OAT prescription from an RN or RPN prescribers.
Harm reduction
Prescribed alternatives
B.C. is the first jurisdiction to offer a provincewide prescribed alternatives program.
People have been accessing prescribed safer supply since March 2020, when the Province introduced the first phase of the program. In the month of December 2023, 4,212 people were dispensed opioid prescribed alternatives. The number of clinicians prescribing opioid prescribed alternatives in December 2023 was 658.
Overdose prevention and supervised consumption services
Government is expanding access to overdose prevention services that offer observed inhalation services in communities hardest hit by the drug-poisoning crisis.
The number of overdose prevention services sites has significantly increased − from one site in 2016 to 50 as of December 2023, including 22 sites offering inhalation services.
In the month of January 2024, there were 77,850 visits to overdose prevention services and supervised consumption sites, of which 47,699 visits were for inhalation overdose prevention and supervised consumption services.
Drug-checking services
There are a number of drug-checking services throughout the province to help people learn what is detected in the substances they are taking to reduce the risk of drug poisoning and connect them to supportive services.
Throughout British Columbia, 119 locations have opened where people can drop off a drug sample for analysis. Fifty-seven of these offers immediate point-of-care testing with a Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectrometer on some days of the week. The expansion of sample collection sites reduces rural inequities and improve access to drug-checking services for more British Columbians.
There are 23 FTIR spectrometers for drug checking operating in B.C.: Fraser Health (four); Interior Health (seven); Northern Health (two); Island Health (six); Vancouver Coastal Health (four). In addition, there are three Fourier Transform Infrared instruments owned by the BC Centre on Substance Use.
Lifeguard app
The free app helps save lives by automatically connecting people who use drugs to first responders if the user becomes unresponsive. As of Dec. 31, 2023, the app had been used more than 130,500 times by approximately 30,000 app users. To date, no drug-poisoning deaths have been reported through the app. Lifeguard also provides drug alerts. The free app helps save lives by automatically connecting people who use drugs to first responders if the user becomes unresponsive.
Take-home naloxone kits
As of January 2024, more than 2.2 million kits have been shipped and 159,310 have been reported as used to reverse a drug poisoning. The kits are available at more than 2,252 locations, including 877 community pharmacies in B.C.
Indigenous-led solutions
First-Nation-run treatment and healing centres
Ten First Nations treatment and healing centres operate throughout B.C., six are being renovated and two new facilities are being planned: one in the Vancouver Coastal region and the other in the Fraser Salish region.
These facilities are supported by $20 million from the Government of B.C., matched by $20 million each from the federal government and the First Nations Health Authority to support the renovation and replacement of First Nation-run treatment centres throughout B.C.
The Province is providing additional one-time funding of $35 million to the First Nations Health Authority to support the completion of the eight community-based First Nations treatment centre projects.
Provincial drug-poisoning emergency response for First Nations communities
The ministry continues to support Indigenous-led approaches to prevention and harm reduction, as well as culturally safe substance-use care and treatment services.
As part of the $586 million across the spectrum of services and supports for people struggling with addiction, Budget 2023 invested $171.1 million over three years for Indigenous-led recovery and aftercare services and supports, founded on the strengths of culture, language and identity to build resiliency and overcome unresolved trauma.
The Province continues previous investments of $37.62 million over three years to support Indigenous-led approaches to prevention and harm reduction as well as culturally safe substance-use care and treatment services, which includes, $24 million to support the First Nations Health Authorities with the drug-poisoning emergency response.
The Province has supported culture-based mental-health and wellness capacity for BC Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres in the amount of $375,000 each annually.
Complex-care housing
Complex-care housing provides people with very complex mental-health and addiction challenges a cohesive system of supports that address the health, housing, cultural and social needs of the individual. The service model aims to support people through transitions, such as aging out of government care, entering, or leaving the criminal justice system, or after they have been engaged in facility or hospital-based care.
Since January 2022, the Province has announced complex-care housing services in Abbotsford, Bella Coola, Chilliwack, Cranbrook, Kamloops, Kelowna, Langley, Maple Ridge, Nanaimo, North Shore, Powell River, Prince George, Richmond, Sunshine Coast, Surrey, Terrace, Vancouver, and Victoria.
As of Feb. 1, 2024, services are in place for as many as 423 people.
Safer communities action plan
As part of the Safer Communities Action Plan, the Province is expanding mental-health crisis-response teams into more communities so people in crisis can get more supports from health-care workers and community members.
Peer Assisted Care Teams
Peer Assisted Care Teams (PACTs) bring together trained peers and mental-health professionals, such as social workers and counsellors, offer trauma-informed and culturally-safe support to offer a civilian-based approach to mental-health and addiction crises. PACTs offer support for individuals aged 13 and older, addressing a wide range of distresses from thoughts of self-harm or suicide to addiction, loss of reality, social isolation and more.
There are PACTs in Victoria, the North Shore and New Westminster. They responded to nearly 4,000 calls in 2023.
Teams in the Comox Valley, Prince George and Kamloops are expected to launch in spring 2024.
Mobile Integrated Crisis Response Teams
Mobile Integrated Crisis Response (MICR) Teams, also known as “car programs,” unite mental-health professionals with police officers to deliver an immediate, empathetic response to mental-health and substance-use emergencies across communities.
MICR Teams provide a compassionate alternative to the criminal justice system for those in crisis, while freeing police resources to focus on crime and repeat offending.
There are 16 MICR Teams in operation in: Burnaby; Chilliwack; Coquitlam/Port Coquitlam; Abbotsford; Vernon; Penticton; Vancouver; North Shore; Richmond; Surrey; Kamloops; Kelowna; Prince George; Fort St. John; Victoria; and Nanaimo.
In addition, teams in Squamish, the Westshore and Prince Rupert are expected to launch in spring 2024.
Decriminalization
B.C. is the first province to receive a three-year exemption from the federal government to remove criminal penalties for people who possess small amounts of illicit drugs for personal use.
Decriminalizing people who use drugs reduces the fear and shame that keep people silent, and leads so many to hide their drug use and avoid treatment and support. Reducing the stigma of drug use is a vital part of B.C.'s work to build a comprehensive system of mental-health and substance-use care. Decriminalization became effective Jan. 31, 2023. The Province continues to work with a broad cross-section of partners to implement and monitor this policy.
