Win! Victoria’s new Peer Assisted Crisis Team to start work this summer: Feds decriminalize opioids

In 2017 people in GVAT held their first listening campaign. Our member organizations told us the opioid epidemic was a shared priority for their members. We hosted a groundbreaking forum at the Shambhala Meditation Center bringing concerned citizens, those with lived experience and decision makers together to discuss the importance of eliminating the stigma associated with opioid addiction. The Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and many local decision makers made a common commitment to work together to reduce stigma as a root cause of many deaths. 

Victoria’s Peer Assisted Crisis Team is partially modeled on the long-established CAHOOTS program in Eugene, Oregon

GVAT members could see the emergency was often the result of stigmatized addiction and was a mental health care issue. Using first responders trained to deal with crime was often not the best option for anyone. Members of the Mental Health and Addiction Research Team met with a team in Eugene, Oregon to learn about its success in developing community support for a successful alternative for crises involving mental illness, homelessness, and addiction. They also studied some Canadian examples. 

Then we began bringing major stakeholders together, building a consensus around the desirability of providing alternative responses. GVAT participated in the South Island Mental Health and Substance Use Navigation project. We also participated in the development of a community wide stakeholder round table to design a tailor-made approach for the region: The Peer Assisted Crisis Team (PACT) initiative. Jonny Morris, CEO of the BC Division of the Canadian Mental Health Association which is running the round table as a pilot project, credits GVAT for its key role in building stakeholder engagement and ensuring accountability for future sustained funding. GVAT continues to participate.

More context on the PACT initiative is available in the 2021 Capital Daily article  Victoria creates pilot project to send crisis teams in place of police to some mental health calls. The May 2022 Capital Daily article 'The wrong tool for the job': Victoria police have a fraught history with mental health calls. What's the alternative? reports that PACT teams will be operating later this summer.

Unintentional drug overdoses are a major public health crisis in Canada. The epidemic of opioid related overdoses and deaths was declared a public health emergency in British Columbia in April 2015. 

At the epidemic’s center is the replacement of prescribed pills and imported heroin with extremely potent synthetic opioids, primarily  fentanyl and carfentanil. The province made Naloxone widely available but In many cases, both the stigma surrounding  addiction and the criminalization of users means people are too often alone when they use and, when they overdose or their regular dose is poisoned, they do not have access to help.

Recently, when the Federal government announced that possession of small amounts of opioids will no longer be regarded as a crime, we saw some of the fruits of GVAT’s early work with a widespread consensus in this community in favour of the decriminalization of possession of small amounts of opioids.