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In response to photos circulating in the community of bags labelled "crystal" and "crack" in a waiting room at Lakes District Hospital, and accusations the hospital is dispensing "free drugs," Northern Health has issued an explanation.
The Lakes District News recently obtained a photo from a waiting room at the hospital showing what appears to be prescription bags labelled in handwriting with the street-drug names "crystal" and "crack." The question of whether or not the hospital dispenses drugs is a recurring one in the Lakes District. In response to a 2024 Facebook post about someone observing another person injecting drugs at the mall in Burns Lake, one Facebook user wrote, "They can do that the hospital where they get free drugs."
Northern Health said in a statement that the bags did not contain drugs—only harm-reduction supplies associated with those drugs, such as glass pipes, alcohol wipes and naloxone kits.
"These bags do not include prescribed medications or narcotics of any kind, including those prescribed under the B.C. prescribed safer supply program or as part of opioid agonist therapy," the statement said.
As to the street-drug labels, Northern Health said the street-drug names were likely healthcare staff's attempt to make the bags easier to understand for a client, but the labels could be seen as inappropriate by community members.
"Harm reduction staff customize bags of harm reduction supplies for individual clients. Given they contain different supplies for different types of substances, staff may have hand-labelled the bags for the benefit of a client," Northern Health said.
"Northern Health understands how seeing bags labelled in this manner could raise concern among community members. Northern Health will be working with staff to ensure that individualized bags of harm reduction supplies are labelled appropriately going forward."
The harm-reduction supplies may have been unattended in the waiting area due to a Provincial policy that states such supplies do not need to be directly handed to a client, Northern Health said.
"It is best practice to offer harm reduction supplies using a variety of distribution models, in order to reduce possible barriers for clients to access harm reduction supplies. As per [B.C.'s Ministry of Health] direction, it is not required for clients to interact directly with clinical or non-clinical staff to receive supplies, as long as the supplies are stored in a supervised area. This process is called passive distribution," the statement said.
"The Lakes District Hospital emergency department has a designated, after-hours pick up area for harm reduction supplies. It is most likely that the supplies were placed, or inadvertently left behind, in the place in where they were photographed by someone who had obtained them from that designated pick-up area."
