A spokesperson with the BC Coroners Service says the reduction in the number of overdose deaths from about 1,500 to just under 1,000 last year is a good sign.

However, Andy Watson says there were about 24,000 non fatal overdoses in 2019 alone – about two and a half times what it was at the start of the crisis in early 2016.

He says that’s why the Coroners Service and other partners are renewing a call for safer access to drugs.

“If we look at the non fatal incidents, it shows that things like naloxone and access to supervised consumption sites, and to treatment options like injectable opioid agonist therapy, and access to suboxone are working collectively to save lives,” Watson said.

“But we still have an issue of people using substances, and its a health condition.”

New data from the Coroners Service showed that more than four out of every five deaths last year had fentanyl detected in a post-mortem testing.

“People that are surviving from these overdose events, what are the longer term health impacts and whats our society going to look like in ten years with the number of people who have obviously survived an overdose event, but what’s the longer term impact on their brain and their long term health going to be,” noted Watson.

“Those are questions that we are asking today.”

However, like Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, Watson says the reduction in the number overdose deaths last year is encouraging