MOHAMED: B.C.’s provincial health officer should be fired

B.C.’s Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has been one of Canada’s leading advocates for radical “harm reduction” policies — but Premier David Eby cast an unmistakable vote of non-confidence in her judgment last week when he called her position on safer supply a “non-starter.”Eby’s remarks came just days after Dr. Henry told a parliamentary committee in Ottawa that she supported the “legalization and regulation” of illicit street drugs. The public disagreement suggested a sidelining of the doctor within the provincial government — especially after Eby further distanced himself from her by announcing that he’d appointed a separate medical expert, Dr. Daniel Vigo, to advise him on the province’s toxic drug crisis.It is great to see that Eby is starting to treat Dr. Henry’s activist-driven recommendations with the scepticism they deserve. But he needs to go farther. The doctor should be fired.Yet Eby has thus far rebuffed calls to remove Dr. Henry from her post. To the contrary, Eby insists that he has “huge confidence” in her ability to continue on as B.C.’s top public health official, despite his disagreements with her on how to combat the overdose crisis.To reiterate, the premier’s current position is that he trusts his provincial health officer to effectively do her job, despite being fundamentally and irreconcilably at odds with her over the province’s most pressing public health issue — which, might we remember, kills roughly seven British Columbians each day. This is not some minor quibble that the premier can simply gloss over with a new advisor and a few scolding words. If Eby cannot abide by Dr. Henry’s views on safer supply, as he claims to be the case, he has a professional and moral obligation to find a new provincial health officer who shares his vision on beating back the scourge of illicit drugs.And while Dr. Henry’s latest parliamentary remarks alone were egregious enough to justify her firing, what’s even more concerning is that they fell in line with a pattern of ideological and unscientific statements on drug policy. Two years ago, Dr. Henry stunned many in the recovery community by publicly stating that abstinence "does not work for opioid addiction.” By implying that it is unrealistic to expect opioid users to kick their habit, and dismissing abstinence-based treatment programs in a carte blanche manner, Dr. Henry not only devalued the lived experiences of scores of British Columbians who’ve recovered from opioid addiction, she also betrayed a profound ignorance of decades of scientific research that shows that ex-addicts can, and often do, attain long-term abstinence from opioid drugs through community-based treatment programs. Surrey, B.C.-based addictions specialist Dr. Jenny Melamed said in an email that it was “disingenuous” for Dr. Henry to “differentiate opioid addiction from other forms of addiction with respect to the ability (of addicts) to recover.”“I have devoted my medical career to working with individuals with addiction. I witness recovery on a daily basis from all addictions,” wrote Dr. Melamed.Instead of helping drug users obtain recovery, Dr. Henry has fixated on ideological policies that only enable and entrench addiction.Dr. Henry’s mission to legalize drugs has been particularly concerning. In a 2019 report titled, “Stopping the Harm: Decriminalization of people who use drugs in BC,” she wrote in an executive summary that B.C. cannot “treat its way out of the overdose crisis.” The report recommended that provincial authorities “urgently move to decriminalize people who possess controlled substances for personal use,” following the then-fashionable hands-off approach to drug use.Her solutions have catastrophically failed in jurisdictions across North America, most recently in the State of Oregon, whose leaders now acknowledge that legalizing hard drugs was a mistake. But Dr. Henry shows no capacity for this sort of hard self-reflection — despite the mayhem that decriminalization, a policy she aggressively championed, caused in B.C. over the last year.She is instead choosing to double down on an ideological dogma that is fast losing popularity with both experts and lay citizens. Dr. Henry’s inability to admit she was wrong when confronted with new information is perhaps the most damning indictment of her fitness to lead. British Columbians deserve a provincial health officer who will follow the evidence, especially when it leads them to reconsider strongly held beliefs. One public figure who hasn’t minced words about Dr. Henry’s unsuitability as B.C.’s top doc has been South Surrey MLA Elenore Sturko, a newly minted BC Conservative, tweeted last week that “David Eby needs to fire Dr. Henry immediately.” In a phone interview, Sturko said that while Dr. Henry has done some good work as provincial health officer, she believes it’s time to change directions.“Given the lack of improvement, and the complexity of the overdose public health emergency, I believe that we need a change of approach. Perhaps it’s time to appoint an addictions specialist with front line experience as well as a research background lead this emergency,” Sturko said.“In a statement last week NDP Premier David Eby said he’s not in agreement with Dr. Henry’s push to legalize drugs,” Sturko added. “If she is focusing her work and response to a public emergency in a direction that isn’t supported by the premier, this conflict will perpetuate his government’s ineffectiveness at saving lives.” With drug-related deaths on the rise for three consecutive years, B.C.’s near decade-long drug crisis shows no signs of abating. The time for half-measures has long since passed. David Eby must take a clear stand against the failed drug policies of yesteryear by removing Dr. Bonnie Henry from her post as provincial health officer. The stakes, both political and human, are frankly too high for the premier to keep the intransigent doctor in her current job. Rahim Mohamed is a Calgary-based freelance writer.