Vending machines have been used to successfully distribute unconventional items before, but Canadian health officials are looking to take it one step further by using opioid vending machines in Vancouver.

This would allow people with opioid addictions to access pills from a vending machine at a minimal price. It would also allow the government to track the drug use and, more importantly, monitor the quality of the opioids being dispensed.

The country has seen a surge in overdoses in large part due to fentanyl, but also because the drug market is toxic. Street-grade fentanyl and heroin often vary in potency, which leads to more overdoses.

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The vending machines would dispense hydromorphone, a prescription opioid that is used to treat pain, but that also been shown to help battle more powerful opioid addictions to substances like heroin or fentanyl.

These machines aren’t meant to make drugs easy to access — but the idea is that if users are going to find drugs regardless, at least what they get from the machines will be consistent.

By the first half of 2017, almost 1,500 people died from opioid-related overdoses. In December, the Public Health Agency of Canada reported that the annual number was expected to be much higher.

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In fact, Dr. Theresa Tam, chief public health officer of Canada, told CBC that overdose deaths were expected to surpass 4,000 for 2017. In 2016, there were 2,861 opioid-related deaths.

"It's an extremely complex whole-of-society issue that we're dealing with. This is a national public health crisis," Tam told CBC in December.

With the support of the BC government and financial resources from the federal government, the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) will pilote the vending machines, according to Buzzfeed News.

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"We're exploring different methods,” Mark Tyndall, executive director of the BCCDC said in a press conference. “One of the more extreme models would be anonymous vending machines, but we're exploring many models that would just allow people access to a safe supply of drugs."

Chief Pharmacy Officer of the Ontario Pharmacists Association Allan Malek said Tyndall’s vending machine concept is innovative, but he warned it would need to be monitored appropriately.

“In terms of what’s happening in BC and other parts of the country, these are discussions that have to be had. People are dying. Something has to be done,” he said, according to the Canadian Press.

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called for more safe consumption sites, but harm reduction advocates see the need for more action.

As part of a harm-reduction strategy in partnership with Ottawa Public Health, Ottawa unveiled vending machines with clean needles and pipes in 2017.

Health Canada also overturned a ban on medical heroin in 2016, allowing doctors to apply to prescribe pharmaceutical-grade heroin to addicts.

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