The Superintendent of the Kamloops RCMP says it may be time for safe supply of illicit drugs.

Syd Lecky was speaking to Kamloops council this afternoon, and says we need to start rethinking how to prevent fatal overdoses.

“We’re not charging people anymore for simple possession for the most part. We are really trying to focus and target those who provide the illicit drugs and they are preying on our folks,” he said. “We’ve had record deaths in our community and throughout the province, for fentanyl and related products. It seems to me the time has come where we need to start talking about safe supply.”

Lecky says we all pay for social issues in some way. He points to a 59-per-cent rise in business break and enters last year as an example.

“At the end of the day, if our goal is to save lives and as a community… Do we need to start thinking and re-thinking how we’ve been doing business? Because we’ve been doing this forever and we’re not getting any further ahead,” he added.

“We’ve got more people dying today than we’ve ever had. And complicated with a pandemic, its even worse.”

In 2020, there were 60 suspected fatal drug overdoses in Kamloops and 1,716 across B.C., a – both of those figures were the highest on record.

For more than two years, Kamloops mayor Ken Christian has been advocating that the Ministry of Health consider hydromorphone dispensing, which would mean supplying pharmaceutical-grade opioids in vending machines for drug users.

“Well Superintendent Syd Lecky, if you get in trouble for calling for decriminalization of addiction and a safe drug supply in Canada, you’ll be calling for it alongside the mayor of Kamloops, so we’ll both be in trouble together I guess,” Christian told Lecky after he made his comments.