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The response to Canada’s opioid overdose problem should be elevated as a national issue with a significant harm reduction approach, new NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said during his first visit to Vancouver as party head Friday.

“Thousands of people are dying in our country as a result of this crisis and it needs to be named a national crisis first,” said Singh, speaking after taking a tour of Chinatown.

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Singh’s first official visit to the city after winning the federal NDP leadership Oct. 1 came a day after the City of Vancouver released the latest grim statistics on the overdose crisis — 275 suspected overdose deaths to the end of Oct. 9 — and a week after it was revealed that possible overdose deaths across B.C. surpassed all of 2016 at the end of August with 1,013.

Photo by Jason Payne / PNG

Singh said he supports the decriminalization of personal possession of drugs, and favours the Portuguese model of harm reduction, which leans heavily on treating addiction as a health and social justice issue with most resources directed at treatment, mental health services, and rehabilitation rather than criminalizing addicts.