BC’s health minister unsure about regulating pill presses
Posted May 24, 2016 1:07 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – BC is in the midst of a public health emergency after a record number of Fentanyl overdoses, so why can people in this province still buy the presses that make the pills?
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While the province admits Fentanyl overdose deaths are at crisis levels, BC Health Minister Terry Lake isn’t confident making the purchase of pill presses illegal will stop criminals from buying them.
“If we were to say, ‘Look, we are going to ban the sale of pill presses,’ they would find them anyway. They would go to another jurisdiction, they would bring them back from the United States, they would bring them oversees, or they would get them from another province.”
He wants to see the federal government make nationwide legislation.
“I just think it would be far more effective to do it across the country. Otherwise if we do it here and Saskatchewan doesn’t, we will just see them move in here. I mean these are criminal organizations, they know how to get a hold of this equipment.”
A bill in Alberta to restrict access to presses used to make pills will soon become law — the first of its kind in Canada.
