New study backs B.C. harm reduction measures<\/p>\n
Published 3:53 pm Friday, June 26, 2026<\/p>\n
A new study has found that take-home naloxone helped to prevent 78 per cent of potential fatal overdoses from 2019 to 2024.<\/p>\n
The report looks at widespread take-home naloxone use and how it averted the majority of potential opioid poisoning deaths in B.C. during that time period. Naloxone is a fast-acting medication that\u2019s used to temporarily reverse the effects of opioid overdoses.<\/p>\n
The take-home naloxone program <\/a>was established in 2012 by the B.C. Centre for Disease Control to provide naloxone kits for people at risk of experiencing or witnessing an overdose. Toward the Heart, the B.C. Centre for Disease Control\u2019s harm reduction services says there are 2,400 distribution sites across B.C. participating in the program.<\/p>\n The report, which was led by the BCCDC\u2019s Dr. Mike Irvine, notes that the program saw a 20-fold increase in demand between 2016 and 2017. Overdose prevention sites, supervised consumption sites, emergency rooms, health centres, correctional centres, community organizations and pharmacies are among the sites that distribute kits.<\/p>\n Irvine, who is a senior scientist in Data & Analytics Services at the BCCDC, said the study looked at better understanding the impact of not only the take-home naloxone program, but also other harm reduction services such as overdose prevention sites, supervised consumption sites and opioid agonist treatment.<\/p>\n The focus on 2019 to 2024, Irvine said, was for two reasons: it coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, where people were \u201cseeing the huge disruption to all facets of life,\u201d and an increasingly toxic drug supply. It was also during that period that B.C. saw the highest number of death rates since the public health emergency was declared a decade ago in 2016.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really trying to sort of look in combination across all of these harm reduction services to see what sort of an impact they had.\u201d<\/p>\n There were 12,356 fatal overdoses in B.C. from 2019 to 2024, with 992 deaths in 2019, 1,774 in 2020, 2,293 in 2021, 2,386 in 2022, 2,593 in 2023 and 2,318 in 2024.<\/p>\n Irvine said that if people are just looking at the number of deaths alone, it can be difficult to continually see the high rates of death.<\/p>\n \u201cBut this is why I think also having a study as part of the motivation really is to highlight that (harm reduction) is having an impact and to be able to quantify the extent of the impact that it\u2019s having.\u201d<\/p>\n Irvine said that while B.C. has seen a \u201chuge, huge rate of death\u201d over the time period of the study, \u201cit would have been a lot worse\u201d without the interventions helping to stabilize every day.<\/p>\n He said the study also looked at where take-home naloxone was distributed, finding that with both overdose prevention sites and supervised consumption sites, the kits were much more likely to be used.<\/p>\n \u201cWe found that something like just from the community programs alone it was equivalent to around 1,000 death events averted per 100,000 people at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n Irvine said part of the survey was to show the impact that these preventative measures are having, and that has been well-received so far.<\/p>\n Asked if he hopes the study can help with public perception of harm reduction, Irvine said it\u2019s a much broader question \u201cthan any one study is able to resolve.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn public health decision making, there are a lot of tough choices that need to be made, and obviously we want to be able to sort of provide people with the best evidence in order to make those decisions, as well as provide that for the wider public to say what sort of an impact it is having, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it can only be better with more evidence and more data available.\u201d<\/p>\n Both the B.C. Coroners Service and the federal government have reported a decrease in fatal overdoses in the last year.<\/p>\n The B.C. Coroners Service reports fatal overdoses from toxic, unregulated drugs each month.<\/p>\n In the first four months of 2026 \u2013 which is the available data so far for the year \u2013 there have been 522 fatal <\/a>overdoses<\/a>. That\u2019s compared to the 617 deaths in the same period in 2025 and 840 deaths in 2024.<\/p>\n