Red Mosquito

In BC we have seen a sharp spike in opioid overdose deaths. Up 93% with 170 deaths in May alone. This compares with 167 total deaths from Covid. The opioid crisis has been exasperated by a flood of federal Covid relief dollars that were distributed without oversight. Providing the addicted opioid users with an additional $2,000/month with much of it going to drug use. That coincided with a closing of borders making the supply of safer fentanyl laced opioids harder to get.
Since the beginning of the year opioid deaths have hit 540.

Larry Kudlow said there is no second wave so that settles it.

“There is no emergency. There is no second wave. I don’t know where that got started on Wall Street,” Kudlow told “Fox & Friends.”

It's true that what is going on now is not a "second wave"

verb_to_trust wrote:It's true that what is going on now is not a "second wave"

Right. This is what it looks like when you fucked up the first wave.

tragabigzanda wrote:Sorry to hear surf. Opioids have wreaked havoc on my hometown. Have literally lost track of how many classmates have died or gone to jail. Fucking sad stuff.

It's just strange that our federal government has had a big role in killing more people via opioid overdose than Covid has had. I think it just reinforces that government without oversight is its own type of pandemic.

surfndestroy wrote:In BC we have seen a sharp spike in opioid overdose deaths. Up 93% with 170 deaths in May alone. This compares with 167 total deaths from Covid. The opioid crisis has been exasperated by a flood of federal Covid relief dollars that were distributed without oversight. Providing the addicted opioid users with an additional $2,000/month with much of it going to drug use. That coincided with a closing of borders making the supply of safer fentanyl laced opioids harder to get.
Since the beginning of the year opioid deaths have hit 540.

Wouldn't the number of Covid deaths be much, much higher if there wasn't a lockdown, though? Isn't the fact that there were "only" 167 deaths in B.C. proof that the lockdown and social distancing measures were effective? I'm not saying there aren't negative consequences. The opioid crisis is a huge issue. But what are you suggesting should have been done differently? What kind of oversight should have been done for the Emergency Benefit? Drug tests? Would you have been in favour of keeping the border to the U.S. open? Or closing it but making an exception for the flow of fentanyl?

should people who use drugs be treated like 2nd class citizens and not receive the same payout as others?

Are we not men?

We are Devo!

ha!

96583UP wrote:should people who use drugs be treated like 2nd class citizens and not receive the same payout as others?

The majority of them were already on social assistance and receiving payments from provincial government. They were ineligible for the federal aid but due to the promoted lack of oversight (workers were told to approve every application even if applicant was known to be ineligible) they were able to apply and receive payments on top of their existing social assistance. The additional payments were used on additional drugs in many cases, leading to a spike in both opioid overdoses and opioid overdose deaths.

Farmer John wrote:

surfndestroy wrote:In BC we have seen a sharp spike in opioid overdose deaths. Up 93% with 170 deaths in May alone. This compares with 167 total deaths from Covid. The opioid crisis has been exasperated by a flood of federal Covid relief dollars that were distributed without oversight. Providing the addicted opioid users with an additional $2,000/month with much of it going to drug use. That coincided with a closing of borders making the supply of safer fentanyl laced opioids harder to get.
Since the beginning of the year opioid deaths have hit 540.

Wouldn't the number of Covid deaths be much, much higher if there wasn't a lockdown, though? Isn't the fact that there were "only" 167 deaths in B.C. proof that the lockdown and social distancing measures were effective? I'm not saying there aren't negative consequences. The opioid crisis is a huge issue. But what are you suggesting should have been done differently? What kind of oversight should have been done for the Emergency Benefit? Drug tests? Would you have been in favour of keeping the border to the U.S. open? Or closing it but making an exception for the flow of fentanyl?

There needed to be oversight on the federal dollars being handed out. There additionally needed to be quicker action (or any action really) by federal government to address the mess they made on Vancouver's East Side. The results of the overpayments showed up on the streets, hospitals and morgues within weeks of the first payment made. It has been worst every month since and the payments are still being made to ineligible applicants.

I don't think that addresses FJ's questions though. Should they have denied additional payments to people already on provincial social assistance? Would that not have caught people in the dragnet who are not on drugs but who need additional help because of the pandemic? Surely you're not suggesting drug testing as a requirement...

My kids are having an end-of-year water balloon fight with two other kids in the neighborhood. The texts went like this:

Mom 1: I've got some watermelon and popsicles that the kids can have.
Mrs. B: Thank you, but we'll feed our own kids just to be safe.
Mom 2: I'll make popcorn!

Mickey wrote:I don't think that addresses FJ's questions though. Should they have denied additional payments to people already on provincial social assistance? Would that not have caught people in the dragnet who are not on drugs but who need additional help because of the pandemic? Surely you're not suggesting drug testing as a requirement...

The program was not designed to give money to people already on social assistance. It was to provide income to people who lost their jobs due to Covid. So yes, payments to people on social assistance should have been denied, as the program was designed to and the spending bill passed to do.
I would never suggest drug testing.
A $40+ Billion dollar program needs oversight. Our federal government was up front that no applicant would be denied regardless of what the spending bill and intent of the bill was. The federal government then failed to act on the mess they were very actively making.
The program was needed for impacted workers. It was not needed for those already on social assistance.

I'm asking this in good faith, for the record, I'm not trying to own you. It just seems like this might fit into the category of unintended and unavoidable consequences. But perhaps I'm not following here: is *everyone* on social assistance necessarily unemployed?

Mickey wrote:I'm asking this in good faith, for the record, I'm not trying to own you. It just seems like this might fit into the category of unintended and unavoidable consequences. But perhaps I'm not following here: is *everyone* on social assistance necessarily unemployed?

Yes, in Canada social assistance is the US equivalent of welfare. For those who don't qualify for unemployment insurance or whose time on unemployment insurance had been fully used.
The federal government was a little too upfront about all claims will be processed regardless of eligibility. They said the need to disburse money was greater than the need for oversight. BC has a couple extra hundred dead people who's families may disagree with that assessment.
I know it was unintended but it was most likely avoidable. The hot spot in Vancouver for opioid overdoses is well known and easily identifiable by postal code. After the results of processing all claims (higher overdose and overdose death rates), regardless of validity was being reported I believe the federal government should have immediately started assessing claims from identified postal code areas.
From speaking to social workers in my friend group they have also said a big issue is people who had never used or had opioids in the past started doing them to deal with boredom, stress, isolation and other reasons related to Covid.

surfndestroy wrote:

Mickey wrote:I'm asking this in good faith, for the record, I'm not trying to own you. It just seems like this might fit into the category of unintended and unavoidable consequences. But perhaps I'm not following here: is *everyone* on social assistance necessarily unemployed?

Yes, in Canada social assistance is the US equivalent of welfare. For those who don't qualify for unemployment insurance or whose time on unemployment insurance had been fully used.
The federal government was a little too upfront about all claims will be processed regardless of eligibility. They said the need to disburse money was greater than the need for oversight. BC has a couple extra hundred dead people who's families may disagree with that assessment.
I know it was unintended but it was most likely avoidable. The hot spot in Vancouver for opioid overdoses is well known and easily identifiable by postal code. After the results of processing all claims (higher overdose and overdose death rates), regardless of validity was being reported I believe the federal government should have immediately started assessing claims from identified postal code areas.
From speaking to social workers in my friend group they have also said a big issue is people who had never used or had opioids in the past started doing them to deal with boredom, stress, isolation and other reasons related to Covid.

Fair. Not being familiar with the situation, it sounds a little bit different from the states, where you can be on unemployment or other forms of welfare (we don't have "welfare" as a blanket program) with a part-time or unstable job. So here it makes sense to distribute the checks to everyone rather than try to sort through that paperwork in a country of 330 million. I'm still sympathetic to that argument (about immediate need) and I think heightened scrutiny via zip code might leave the govt open to discrimination charges, but perhaps there's a way to do it ethically.

The second point, there's just no getting around unless you're talking about building a society where work isn't the primary means of self-identification, reducing economic precarity, and creating stronger forms of community. But that would lead us into talking about some of the root causes of the opiod crisis more generally.

I do want to point out, though--and again, not trying to pick a fight, just curious how you square this: earlier in this thread you argued that high-risk people are responsible for themselves and shouldn't expect other people to wear masks for their benefit (specifically in the context of wearing one while running on crowded city sidewalks). Does personal responsibility for addiction not play a role here too? If we, say, adopted your postal code plan, would this not penalize other people who live in that postal code, some of whom might need their checks asap?

Lest this appear as some kind of gotcha, my real point here is this: isn't there a larger question about the extent to which we can allow drug addiction--which to some extent is unavoidable--to guide how we implement social programs? Isn't there a danger that by invoking it, you've opened a pathway for chipping away at universal social programs until they've become means-tested? In order words, are the engineers of social programs responsible for people (drug addicts) who are in some significant way not responsible for themselves, even if we acknowledge that addiction can be genetic or that it can be brought on by social and economic conditions outside the addict's control?