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VICTORIA — Top health officials in B.C. are actively discussing a plan to prescribe clean heroin or other opioids to people with addictions, in an attempt to stem the rising death toll caused by street drugs tainted with fentanyl.

B.C.’s chief medical officer, Dr. Perry Kendall, said Thursday he supports a provincewide program in which those suffering from addiction, who are at high risk and can’t be treated with conventional means, are given clean medical heroin or synthetic morphine and a safe place to inject.

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Kendall said he envisions a network of trained addictions physicians and usage sites.

“Each health authority would have several places where an addiction expert was able to address and triage these people, and in a clinic where maybe it was attached to a supervised consumption site,” he said.

“Those folks would be able to receive the oversight they’d need for the injections, and get their prescriptions filled there. And then when those folks become more stabilized, maybe you can transition them to an oral medication, and then they might be somebody that a general practitioner could manage more easily.”