Want to prevent overdose deaths? Give people clean drugs

CKNW interviewed Mark Haden, a professor at UBC’s school of population and public health, about overdose deaths related to the opioid crisis in B.C.

Haden said clinics like Insite should provide users with pure opioids so they don’t need to buy more potent dugs off the street that are often laced with fentanyl.

“If you want people to function well in society and you see that as being the issue to get people employed back to work, there is nothing that heroin maintenance would offer that would stand in the way of that. People can be maintained on opioid drugs, and they are relatively inexpensive, they aren’t costly,” Haden said.