Overdose deaths in Kamloops went up more than 60 per cent last month and BC’s Health Minister says a major contributor is less travel in and out of British Columbia.

Some city staff members in Kamloops have stated that people may be over consuming their drugs because of greater access to cash from the pandemic.

Speaking on the NL Morning News, Adrian Dix says there is a lot more to this issue. “I think that this is not simply an issue of people having cash and therefore being able to spend cash, it’s an issue of a poisoned drug supply. And in fact the lack of travel into British Columbia has led to, in some ways, even more desperate efforts and more marginal efforts to get access to drugs.”

“Sometimes I think we think of these issues in the context of well we have more money for groceries this week and we might buy more groceries. This is a different proposition entirely. So while having access to funds may be an element of this, there are many, many other elements including the impact even of this, even of COVID-19 on the poisoned drug supply that simply kills people.”

“The deaths largely have come from a poisoned drug supply. And so we’ve made some changes to assist people with that even since COVID-19 began. It should also be said that some of the services initially, especially that were being provided to support people and avoid death have been affected by COVID-19 itself and so that’s had some impact as well.”