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‘Life-saving and Life-changing’: BC’s Safe Supply Program Gets Major Expansion (Dr. Scott MacDonald, Crosstown Clinic, PHC)

Guy Felicella cried when he heard of the safe supply changes. ‘It’s a credit to people’s resilience to keep pushing, it’s life-saving and life-changing.’ (Photo credit: The Tyee news)

Bold changes and a dramatic expansion are coming to safe supply efforts in B.C. in response to an increasingly toxic drug supply and the deadly overdose crisis.

Eligibility for safe supply — prescribed untainted drugs or alternatives — will expand to nearly all people who access the street drug supply, even intermittently, under a policy directive from the B.C. Centre on Substance Use being finalized with the province.

“If people have access to a pharmaceutical or opioid, then they don’t need to turn to the street and the illicit market,” said Dr. Scott MacDonald, medical lead at the Crosstown Clinic, in an interview. “Safe supply is safe, it’s clinically effective, it’s cost effective… and it reduces property crime and violent crime.

Click here for the full story on The Tyee News.

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