The authors of a recently published paper examining the effect of COVID-19 on other people using drugs (PWUD) say that the strong accumulation of overdose deaths throughout the pandemic requires two key systemic changes.
They say decriminalization of non-public drug use and access to a pharmaceutical-grade drug source are necessary to help save the growing number of deaths caused by the increasingly poisonous and illegal source.
“The damage related to the criminalization and imprisonment of drug users, as well as the damages associated with our illicit drug supply, have become even worse COVID,” said Tommy Brothers, a doctor based in Halifax.
An article on the overdose epidemic, published through the Canadian Public Health Agency on September 30, discusses the effect of the worsening pandemic on PWUD.
Since the start of COVID-19, provinces and territories have experienced the “highest number” of opioid-related injuries and deaths.
Since 2016, more than 16,000 Canadians have died of opioid-related overdoses in Canada.
The first 3 months of 2020 were characterized by 1,018 deaths and 1,067 hospitalizations for opioid-related poisoning.
Matthew Bonn is one of the co-authors of the recently published paper in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, a peer-reviewed clinical journal.
Bonn says the article’s goal is to read about PWUD’s simultaneous public fitness emergencies with the pandemic and to provoke a national verbal exchange on state-of-the-art evidence-based responses to the overdose crisis.
“The appearance of the paper is a syndemic. Syndemia is multiple physical and social disorders that interact to make it worse. So it literally focuses not only on fitness disorders, but on many social disorders that aggravate and accelerate disease progression,” bonn said.
It adds that demanding situations, such as national shortages of affordable housing, are an example of the simultaneous social demands and fitness situations facing PWUD on a basis.
Brothers says the sad truth of the overdose crisis being developed is that there are evidence-based responses that can reduce mortality rates, but those responses are not being implemented temporarily.
“Arguments that other people with a lived history of substance use and advocates like the Canadian Drug Users Association have not been easy for years are even more timely now,” Brothers says.
These feelings echo through Dr. Mark Tyndall, some others in the article.
“Criminalization only institutionalizes stigma. So we’re just saying that what those other people are doing in society is wrong, it’s illegal, they’re going to be punished,” said Tyndall, a professor of medicine at UBC’s Population School.
“As long as we think that way, we’re not going to deal with stigma and we’re not going to replace the way we treat people. So I think decriminalization goes hand in hand with a regulated drug source.