The Mayor of Kamloops says it is time to look at the root cause of the overdose crisis that killed 48 people in Kamloops last year.

Ken Christian was asked if it is time to decriminalize drugs to combat deadly overdoses.

“I think ultimately that’s the answer,” he said. “We’re going to see how that’s working with cannabis.”

“Right now we have people that are so addicted that they’re causing us a whole other sequence of social ills – crimes of opportunity, prostitution, a lot of vandalism and those kinds of things that we are spending inordinate amounts of money to combat. Maybe we need to look deeper at the root cause, and see if there’s a better way.”

Christian says if people were dying at this rate by any other cause we would have fixed it long ago.

He’s also reached to the mayors of Prince George and Kelowna.

“It’s about opioid antagonist therapy which they have started down in Kelowna.” Christian added. “I’m wondering if that’s the kind of thing we need to look at in Kamloops and Prince George.”

“Also, hydromorphone therapy and whether or not we need to take a page out of some of the Eiropean countries and say, okay we’re not winning the war on drugs and opioids are killing.

Christian has asked city staff to take a deep dive into where and when people are dying of overdoses in the city to see if a trend can be found.