A proposed class action lawsuit has been filed in the B.C. Supreme Court on behalf of two teenage girls who developed opioid addictions due to, the lawsuit claims, diverted “safer supply” drugs. This litigation is long overdue and sorely needed.

Safer supply programs distribute free addictive drugs — typically eight-milligram tablets of hydromorphone, an opioid as potent as heroin — to mitigate the use of riskier street substances. Though advocates claim this “saves lives,” a series of stories in the National Post has shown that clients regularly divert (sell or trade) their hydromorphone on the black market, which then floods communities with the drug and fuels new addictions and relapses.