Smoking identified as preferred mode of opioid safe supply use; investigating correlates of smoking preference through a 2021 cross-sectional study in British Columbia

Table 1 Reasons participants gave for preferring to smoke opioids/down compared to other methods

Reasons for smoking opioids^A		N (%)^B	Overall %
Safety reasons	Less likely to overdose	49 (14.0%)	47.6%
	Less likely to get blood borne disease e.g. HIV/HCV	44 (12.6%)
	Less likely to get other infections e.g. abscess	39 (11.2%)
	Better able to control dosage	34 (9.7%)
Effect and practice of smoking	Prefer the effects from smoking	45 (12.9%)	26.6%
	Smoking is more social	25 (7.2%)
	Able to smoke together with stimulants e.g. crystal meth	20 (5.7%)
	Prefer the practice of smoking	3 (0.9%)
Do not Inject	Do not like injecting	40 (11.5%)	25.8%
	Never injected	27 (7.7%)
	Can no longer inject/cannot find vein	23 (6.6%)

Note: ^AThe reasons were provided by 161 participants of the 232 who responded 'yes' to having smoked any opioid/down in the past month
^B Total # of responses = 349, % is of all responses
Question asked to select all that apply, hence, these categories are not mutually exclusive
Other specified reasons were re-categorized into existing categories where appropriate or a new category was developed

ISSN: 1747-597X