Vancouver has been addicted to heroin and opiates my whole life, we had a nice flirt with meth in the late 90s early 00's (good frontline on its west coast spread). East Hastings is ground zero. We used to have the highest concentration of AIDS in North America because of needle sharing. Combination of being a main pacific-rim port, mild weather, aboriginal poverty etc. Lots of people are blown away when they get here and see it.
Vancouver has always been like that. When people talk about drugs and homeless in the streets, Vancouver comes off as even worse than Seattle in many respects.
maybe around when the first logging camps were set up in the early 1800s?
It's been here longer than any of the cities have been.
Oh, opium and addiction that is.
The term "skid row" is said to originate here or Seattle - both have good claim to the term with similar history.
Fentanyl has been here for a long time, but it started getting mass imported a few years ago into drug rules and may be connected to why Canada's legalizing pot now.
The death rates keep rising.
Downtown Eastside has been what seems the heroin center of North America since the early 1980s, well before it spiraled out of control south of the border.