B.C. health minister vows revamped approach to overdose crisis [Video]

British Columbia’s new health minister says she’s aiming for more treatment beds and fewer deaths in a revamped approach to the province’s drug overdose crisis.

It comes after David Eby’s newly elected government eliminated the stand-alone Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, which advocates say had no “teeth.”

The former ministry was created in 2017 to provide co-ordinated responses to the toxic drug crisis, which has killed more than 15,000 people in the past eight years, but it has now been absorbed into the Health Ministry.

“Certainly, I really do think the time is right to fold the ministry back into the Ministry of Health,” said Josie Osborne, who was appointed health minister last week, replacing former minister Adrian Dix.

“I think we’re in a much better position to expedite action and decision making,” Osborne said in an interview. “Now is the time to bring that together. The premier’s been …