A heavily redacted report suggests federal police found dozens of cases of prescribed opioids in B.C. being “diverted” to the illicit market, even as RCMP and government officials denied that was a widespread problem. 

That assessment came amid mounting controversy over B.C.’s “safe supply” programs, which aim to prescribe opioids and other drugs to people who use substances in a bid to reduce overdose deaths caused by the highly unpredictable supply of drugs in the illicit market. Critics of that program have long warned some recipients of those drugs may resell or otherwise redistribute the drugs they receive.