April 14, 2026 marks the 10th anniversary of the declaration of a public health emergency in the province of B.C. following an unprecedented increase in drug-related harms.1 Then provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall “served notice under the Public Health Act to exercise emergency powers” after 76 deaths in January 2016, which at the time was the largest number of deaths in a single month since at least 2007.2
Since that date, at least 18,000 people have died from unregulated drugs in the province, and more than 50,000 from opioids and/or stimulants across Canada.3 4 This crisis is defined first by staggering and ongoing loss of life. People who use drugs and their families have borne its deepest harms: death, grief, ongoing suffering, and life-altering brain injury. Frontline workers who have dedicated their lives to this work also carry deep and lasting harms, including trauma, family disruption, inadequate mental health support, and the burden of working in flawed systems that leave them responding to preventable suffering without the needed tools and resources. Communities have been left to carry these effects, while public systems face significant strain through rising hospitalizations, emergency medical services calls, and pressure across health and social services.
Though this is a B.C. anniversary, the issue is national. Since B.C.’s declaration, Alberta declared a public health crisis in 2017, the Yukon declared a substance use health emergency in 2022, and numerous First Nations governments and councils declared related states of emergency (including but not limited to Carcross/Tagish First Nation, Dene Tha’ First Nation, Athabasca Tribal Council, Sipekne’katik First Nation, Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, and Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation). Ten years after B.C.’s declaration, the loss and grief continue in communities across the country, made worse by stigma, misinformation and politicization.
In B.C., declaring a public health emergency allowed for medical health officers to collect and analyze more detailed, real-time information on both fatal and non-fatal overdoses across the health system.5 Previously, limited information on overdoses was only reported if someone died. The declaration allowed medical health officers to collect information related to any overdose in the province where emergency personnel or health care workers respond, including location, the drugs used, and how they were taken. The expanded authority connected to the emergency declaration was conferred by the province’s Public Health Act. This is an important distinction between B.C.’s declaration and, for example, the Yukon’s, which was largely symbolic, lacking authority tied to specific legislation.
With the authority of the emergency declaration, then Health Minister Terry Lake issued ministerial order 488/2016 in December 2016, ordering Emergency Health Services and the regional health boards to provide overdose prevention services “in any place there is a need for these services, as determined by the level of overdose related morbidity and mortality.”6 Within weeks, approximately 20 overdose prevention sites opened across the province, with many more operational within a year.7 8 The speed of this response demonstrates what is possible when there is political will and decision makers act with real urgency. Despite this initial service expansion, the order was never enforced and largely depended on individual health authorities’ willingness to act proactively, leaving communities across the province without access to life-saving services.9
Beyond the specific authority it conferred, B.C.’s emergency declaration held symbolic weight. For many people, it was a meaningful recognition of their lived reality. It offered a sign that perhaps the province would act with the seriousness and urgency required in an emergency. In the ensuing months and years, the province increased investments into some frontline services, oversaw the rapid opening of overdose prevention sites, created the Overdose Emergency Response Centre, and initially moved to expand access to safer supply. Ten years on, the urgency of the declaration seems to have ebbed away, alongside the government’s willingness to put the authority it confers to use.
Charting the past ten years, it feels impossible to separate the personal from the political, the specific grief of individual losses from the collective, cumulative exhaustion of so much loss. This is compounded by witnessing the ongoing crush of a system that actively harms people, and the ways decisionmakers continue to prop it up. It is deeply wrong to have to argue that the people we love should be able to live, receive care and support, and have the things they need to be well.
In recent years, we have witnessed a regression: some opportunistic public figures have peddled mis- and disinformation, driving the rollback of evidence-based harm-reduction measures that save lives, prevent unnecessary harms, and support safer, healthier communities. Governments and policymakers have caved to stigma, othering people who use drugs and veering away from evidence-based approaches and life-saving interventions.
Alongside the pain, this past decade has also seen deep care and compassion, mutual support and reciprocity within communities, solidarity from unlikely corners and intertwined movements, and persistence in the face of immense hardship—and we must recognize and uplift those bright spots. We believe in a future where all people, no matter their relationship to substance use, can access safety, well-being, autonomy and community. It does not have to be like this. People create law and policy. People can change it.
To understand how this reality came to be, we must look at the systems and structures that create and uphold it.
- Our current drug laws create an unregulated, toxic drug supply. This drives preventable death and injury. Policing and criminalizing drug use and restricting services then increases risk, displacement, and preventable harm.
- Our system of prohibition is sustained by politics that reward punishment-first narratives and short-term fixes over evidence-based, life-saving action and systems-level shifts.
- The unregulated toxic drug supply means proven approaches that reduce death and harm are vital for community well-being: these include supervised consumption sites, drug checking, naloxone and safer supply. These supports and services are a necessary part of an approach to substance use that includes fact-based education, universal access to voluntary, non-profit evidence-based treatment, and ensuring all people have their basic needs met through safe housing, universal health care, income supports and more.
- Ultimately, stopping the harm, grief and loss of this public health crisis requires that we shift from control and punishment responses (including policing and forced treatment) to health and rights-based systems. We must protect and expand services, centre the leadership of people with lived and living experience, and ensure people have safe homes, access to care, and adequate income to meet their needs. Ultimately, we need to build a pathway from the harms of prohibition toward legal regulation for safety.
The Vision for B.C. Drug Policy maps a path to a future beyond prohibition, anchored in the guiding principles of autonomy, choice, and compassion. Co-created by a provincial working group of civil society organizations and people who use drugs, the Vision lays out four key areas for reform:
- Drug Regulation: The Vision advocates for responsible regulation of drugs to displace the toxic unregulated drug supply
- Decriminalization: Emphasizing the need to separate policing from substance use, the Vision aims to empower individuals to seek support without fear of criminal sanctions.
- Addressing Substantive Equality: Recognizing the intersectionality of drug-related issues, the Vision seeks to tackle root social problems perpetuating cycles of poverty, homelessness, family separation, and social exclusion.
- Detox, Recovery, and Treatment: Focusing on voluntary choices, the Vision calls for evidence-based programs and services to reduce the trauma and death associated with the current unregulated treatment landscape.
The powers conferred by the public health emergency declaration are still valid: our elected leaders must act to fulfill its spirit and intention. This includes enforcing the Ministerial Order for overdose prevention services “in any place there is a need.”
On this anniversary, we send our love, sorrow and rage to everyone who is mourning, who is angry, who is weary, who is trying. We remember and honour the people we have lost. We acknowledge the thousands of people living with grief who continue to work toward a better future, all while some who hold power manipulate the issue for political gain, cut funding and restrict evidence-based services, and politicize and criticize life-saving work. We call upon the province of B.C., alongside all provinces and territories, to act with the urgency a public health emergency requires.
Shifting from harmful policies toward a vision for the future grounded in autonomy, choice, and compassion is an act of love and care for all. We must hold to our vision for a better future and fight for it: that future is only possible if we act.
Events Marking 10 Years of B.C.’s Toxic Drug Public Health Emergency
Across Canada, communities will mark this anniversary. We’ve collected a handful of events below. If you’d like to share another with us, please email info@drugpolicy.ca
10 Years of the Toxic Drug Crisis
Hosted by Len Pierre Consulting, this webinar features Marnie Scow exploring Indigenous approaches to harm reduction through teachings rooted in relationship, responsibility, and community care.
Date: April 14th, 2026
Time: 12:00 – 1:30pm PT
Location: Online Webinar
Moment of Silence and Minute of Rage
Join The BC Coalition of Organizations By/For People Who Use Drugs in marking the 10 Year Anniversary of the Province of B.C.’s declaration of a public health emergency due to the toxic drug supply with a Provide-wide moment of silence and minute of rage.
Date: April 14th, 2026
Time: 2:00pm PT
Location: You can do this as an individual activity, in a small group, at a larger public event in your community or by joining us at the ‘In Sadness and Rage’ demonstration at the Provincial Legislature in Victoria.
In Sadness and Rage
Join Moms Stop the Harm, Doctors for Safer Drug Policy, PEERS, NANDU, SOLID and others for a rally to rage, grieve and remember.
Date: April 14th, 2026
Time: 1:00 – 3:30 pm PT
Location: Provincial Legislature Lawn, Bellville Street, Victoria, BC.
Naming a Crisis
This community arts project will feature the names and photos of people lost to drug-related harms in an audio and video installation as part of a community art show at the Victoria Arts Council space in the Bay Centre on lək̓ʷəŋən Traditional Territory.
Date: April 7 – 26, 2026
Time: 12:00 – 5:00pm, Tuesday-Sunday
Location: Victoria Arts Council space in the Bay Centre in Victoria, BC
A Service of Remembrance and Prayer
This Sunday, Amanda Jane Burrows and Moms Stop The Harm will be at the Christ Church Cathedral for a service of remembrance and prayer for the opioid crisis.
Date: April 12, 2026
Time: 12:00 – 4:00pm PT
Location: 690 Burrard St, Vancouver, BC
Community Action Team: Sunshine Coast
Join the Community Action Team: Sunshine Coast for a week of events – a chance to learn, support each other, and take real action.
Date: April 13 – 19, 2026
Location: Multiple events, click here for details.
Qathet Commmunity Action Team
Join the Qathet Community Action Team to commemorate this anniversary, remember those who have died, and acknowledge the ongoing impacts of this crisis in our community.
Date: April 14, 2026
Time: 11:00am – 3:00pm PT
Location: #101 – 4871 Joyce Ave, Powell River, BC
Prince George Community Action Team
The Prince George Community Action Team has organized a demonstration to acknowledge the 10-year anniversary of the Toxic Drug Crisis in BC.
Date: April 14, 2026
Time: 11:00am – 1:00pm PT
Location: Intersection of HWY 16 & 97 (By Mr. PG)
An Act Of Remembrance
Join ANKORS East Kootenay for An Act Of Remembrance to honour and remember those we have lost to the toxic drug supply. April 14th 2026 is the 10th year anniversary of the toxic drug crisis being declared a public health emergency in B.C.
Date: April 14, 2026
Time:
At 11am the Memorial will begin
Lunch is Served at 12:30
Open Mic Begins at 1:30
Film Screening of No Fixed Address: The White Cart Memorial begins at 2PM
Location: 2324 2nd St S, Cranbrook, BC
- https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2016hlth0026-000568
︎ - According to current data, 86 people died in January 2016. As data is collected and/or confirmed over time, it is normal for this information to change. ︎
- https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiY2EwYTk1YjctYTYwNy00MTViLTgwZmItYjFmN2Y1MzdlNjI3IiwidCI6IjZmZGI1MjAwLTNkMGQtNGE4YS1iMDM2LWQzNjg1ZTM1OWFkYyJ9 ︎
- https://health-infobase.canada.ca/substance-related-harms/opioids-stimulants/ ︎
- https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2016hlth0026-000568 ︎
- https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2016HLTH0094-002737 ︎
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34854162/ ︎
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30708237/ ︎
- Beyond provincial order 488/2016, there is a federal authority that provides for overdose prevention sites. In December 2017, Health Canada announced that it would authorize emergency “overdose prevention sites” for provinces and territories that request them, through a section 56 class exemption. This allows for the rapid establishment of overdose prevention sites as a shorter-term response to address urgent public health needs, without the comprehensive and burdensome application process for a supervised consumption site. https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/news/2017/12/statement_from_theministerofhealthregardingtheopioidcrisis.html https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/health-concerns/controlled-substances-precursor-chemicals/policy-regulations/policy-documents/subsection-56-1-class-exemption-urgent-public-health-needs-sites-provinces-territories.html ︎
The post 10 Years in Crisis: B.C.’s Decade-Long Public Health Emergency appeared first on Canadian Drug Policy Coalition.
