Full Comment - Now we’re ‘racist’ if we don’t give people free heroin

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00:00:30.000 We have reports out in this country from supposedly serious medical experts calling

00:00:45.360 for Canada to essentially have a drug free for all in this country.

00:00:49.660 Hello, my name's Brian Lilly.

00:00:51.200 Welcome to the full comment podcast.

00:00:52.900 And one of the issues that we want to delve into today is how we went from having discussions

00:00:57.680 about safe injection sites and how we can help addicts consume drugs in a safe area to literally

00:01:03.600 handing out thousands of heroin pills and then calling for crack and fentanyl to be made

00:01:11.760 legal and sold in stores and distributed by compassion clubs.

00:01:15.400 That is where we're at in this country.

00:01:17.400 And there hasn't been much of a debate.

00:01:19.860 This is just what the health experts are telling us we must do.

00:01:23.740 Adam Zivo has been at the forefront of reporting on issues surrounding safer supply or in reality,

00:01:31.000 let's call it what it is, unsafe supply.

00:01:33.300 He's been writing in the National Post, occasionally in the Toronto Sun, and he is the founder and

00:01:38.460 executive director of the Center for Responsible Drug Policy.

00:01:41.380 He joins me now.

00:01:42.140 Adam, let me start there.

00:01:43.800 How did we go from, hey, let's have a safe injection site out in Vancouver to let's hand

00:01:50.580 out hydromorphine pills like it's a PEZ dispenser?

00:01:55.980 Well, it all comes down to the radical harm reduction movement, which has been advocating

00:01:59.840 for these changes for over two decades at this point, right?

00:02:04.360 You have this well-organized, very entrenched movement, which piece by piece kept pressing

00:02:10.840 the envelope with the ultimate goal of drug legalization, and now they've almost achieved

00:02:16.580 that goal, though thankfully there is a big public backlash which is thwarting them because

00:02:21.540 we are seeing the social costs of their radical experiments.

00:02:27.760 But we've been sold at every turn that, well, if we do this, such as safe injection sites,

00:02:35.140 we will have fewer drug deaths, and nobody wants to see drug overdose deaths.

00:02:39.700 And most of us have had to deal with this sort of issue, addiction somewhere in our family,

00:02:46.640 in our circle of friends.

00:02:48.980 And so Canadians being nice people have been, okay, well, I don't love the idea, but okay,

00:02:54.280 let's go forward.

00:02:56.220 And yet drug deaths have not gone down.

00:02:58.460 I'm looking at British Columbia's BC Coroner Service report, and they keep saying this is

00:03:04.100 working.

00:03:04.560 I'm not sure how.

00:03:05.300 Well, perhaps math was not a part of the equation to become a coroner, but the number of overdose

00:03:11.720 deaths went from 370 for the total year in 2014 to 2,558 last year.

00:03:22.220 And it's almost a straight line up.

00:03:24.120 There was one year when things went down.

00:03:25.840 And so far this year, we have seen more, actually, just about, actually more than double 2014's

00:03:42.180 number between the beginning of January and the end of April.

00:03:47.200 In four months, we're now seeing double the overdose deaths.

00:03:51.680 At some point, doesn't it clue, you know, don't you click in or clue in and say, this

00:03:57.100 isn't working?

00:03:58.780 You would hope, but there are other factors at play that they tend to blame this on, some

00:04:03.560 of which are legitimate and some of which are not.

00:04:05.380 So we have to acknowledge the fact that fentanyl did come in and change the game.

00:04:10.760 10, 15 years ago, fentanyl was negligible.

00:04:13.460 I mean, people didn't use it.

00:04:15.460 And it's 50 times stronger than heroin.

00:04:17.380 And slowly, it seeped into our drug supply.

00:04:20.200 Much more addictive.

00:04:20.620 Much more addictive, 50 times stronger.

00:04:21.720 And it's much easier to overdose and die on it.

00:04:24.940 So yeah, it's entered our market and it's entered the US market as well.

00:04:28.540 And as a result, deaths are skyrocketing in all jurisdictions.

00:04:31.560 Uh, so it's okay to say that these deaths are caused by fentanyl in a large respect and

00:04:39.840 that we shouldn't blame harm reduction for all of this chaos.

00:04:43.400 At the same time, you can also believe that harm reduction radicalism has been remarkably

00:04:49.900 ineffective at addressing this, these increased harms and has exacerbated these harms to a

00:04:55.800 certain degree.

00:04:56.560 So you can accept both things.

00:04:58.500 You can say, yes, you know, the increasingly deadly illicit supply is a factor and also

00:05:03.440 harm reduction is making things worse.

00:05:05.140 The harm reduction activists though, refuse to acknowledge that they may have made things

00:05:09.940 worse.

00:05:10.300 And they say that it's just the illicit supply that is to blame.

00:05:14.940 And that if there hasn't been any sign of success, that doesn't mean that harm reduction

00:05:20.420 is not working in their eyes.

00:05:21.500 It means that we just need more of it.

00:05:22.920 We need more liberalization.

00:05:24.480 We need a legalization and we need more safe drugs.

00:05:26.880 It's insane.

00:05:27.360 This sounds like the people that defend communism by saying communism's just never been tried

00:05:32.420 right.

00:05:32.700 It hasn't been done right.

00:05:34.240 And I would point out that everywhere communism has been tried, it's led to oppression of basic

00:05:40.640 freedoms, whether we're talking Cuba, China, East Germany, Eastern Europe, the former USSR.

00:05:46.040 The only way that those structures continue to operate is with repressing personal freedoms.

00:05:53.100 And, but you know, the diehards will say, well, no, we just got to try it again.

00:05:58.380 And that's what it sounds like with the harm reduction folks.

00:06:01.100 Well, this didn't work.

00:06:01.900 So we have to do more of it.

00:06:03.040 And that's the thing, right?

00:06:04.880 Is that if you're going to engage in an experiment, you have to have a testable hypothesis.

00:06:10.840 Your hypothesis has to be possibly false, right?

00:06:14.280 Uh, and what they're essentially saying is that we have this hypothesis that harm reduction

00:06:19.240 works, but we refuse to accept any evidence that it, that our hypothesis is wrong.

00:06:24.480 And so at this point, you're not actually engaging in science.

00:06:27.480 You're engaging in an ideological, uh, experiments that goes all the way and cannot be disproven

00:06:33.500 in your eyes.

00:06:34.960 So look, I accept what you're saying about fentanyl coming in, and that was really took

00:06:41.360 off around 2016.

00:06:43.860 Um, and not in all parts of the country, but in some parts of the country, it, it showed

00:06:49.780 up later, but around 2016, and you can see a definite jump.

00:06:53.700 Uh, 2016, British Columbia had 996 overdose deaths the next year, 1500, uh, the year after

00:07:01.480 that, just a few more than it went down.

00:07:03.500 And since then it has, uh, just been on an awful trajectory.

00:07:08.200 We went from 7.9, uh, overdose deaths per a hundred thousand to 46.3.

00:07:16.180 This year we're on track in British Columbia for about 40.3.

00:07:19.360 British Columbia has been at the forefront of this push for drug legal, uh, liberalization

00:07:26.880 protection for, uh, trying new harm reduction methods, uh, both in terms of where their

00:07:33.940 public health mindset is at, but also in terms of court challenges, um, like the Portland

00:07:39.240 Hotel Society for Insight.

00:07:40.760 So, you know, they've been at the forefront of this and we've got provinces or thankfully

00:07:47.740 not the government, but, uh, people like Dr. Kieran Moore, who's the chief medical officer

00:07:52.400 for the province of Ontario, he came out in March with a report saying we, we needed to

00:07:58.100 go in BC's model.

00:07:59.640 And he also pointed to Oregon, which recently backed off decriminalization.

00:08:03.520 He wanted full decriminalization.

00:08:05.380 He wanted, uh, to embrace, uh, the safe supply, which already exists to a small degree in Ontario,

00:08:11.060 not as big as British Columbia.

00:08:13.300 And, and, and my view is if British Columbia has one third of the population, but they have

00:08:20.560 more overdose deaths to me, that's just a non-starter that, that is the proof point that

00:08:27.060 this is not a model we should follow.

00:08:29.020 And I think any reasonable person would agree with you, but once again, public health officials

00:08:33.140 are not responding to evidence.

00:08:35.940 They are not advocating for evidence-based policy.

00:08:39.620 They have a goal.

00:08:41.140 Their goal is drug legalization oftentimes, and they are willing to relentlessly pursue

00:08:45.980 that goal regardless of the inconvenient facts that pop up.

00:08:49.740 What I thought was really interesting with Kieran Moore is how he cited Oregon in positive

00:08:54.860 terms, despite the fact that it's very well known that Oregon's decriminalization process

00:09:00.040 experiment was, was a complete disaster.

00:09:02.300 It led to a horrible breakdown in public safety, right?

00:09:06.280 And while he was citing BC as an example of success, we saw the same thing there with

00:09:12.040 a giant public backlash, uh, where, where families just didn't feel safe in their cities

00:09:19.240 anymore.

00:09:19.740 They hated the fact that when they went to playgrounds, they would often find syringes

00:09:23.800 and the, the BC NDP was forced to renege on decriminalization less than a year after implementing

00:09:30.220 it.

00:09:30.520 So, so how is it that someone who is, you know, uh, a leading official, a leading public

00:09:36.180 health official in Ontario can look at these two jurisdictions and say, that's what we want

00:09:40.500 to do.

00:09:41.040 I would highly question the trustworthiness of, uh, of that kind of official of their competency.

00:09:49.080 Well, you know, Dr. Moore, by comparison to some other medical experts, we, he was appointed

00:09:55.540 in the middle of the pandemic, he seemed much more steady of a hand than his predecessor

00:10:02.520 here in Ontario.

00:10:04.000 He also was, you know, he seemed like he was trying to look at the evidence and not just

00:10:09.560 go with whatever the, the latest thing that some doctor was screaming out on, uh, the all

00:10:14.540 news channels, uh, and seemed reasonable in that.

00:10:18.280 And so I thought, oh, okay, interesting fellow.

00:10:20.640 I'm not agreeing with all of his recommendations on COVID, but interesting.

00:10:23.980 And, and at least he appears to be thinking and thoughtful with public health officials.

00:10:29.060 It seems like harm reduction taken to the extreme is an article of faith.

00:10:36.960 You know, I, I, I, I'm a Roman Catholic.

00:10:39.540 I could sit here and recite the Nicene Creed.

00:10:42.040 Now, can I prove everything that's in there?

00:10:44.160 No.

00:10:45.320 Why?

00:10:45.860 But so why do I, I, why do you say it?

00:10:48.280 Because it's an article of faith.

00:10:49.620 It is, it is faith.

00:10:51.380 It is religion.

00:10:52.020 It is not science.

00:10:52.840 It is not proven.

00:10:53.500 They seem to be operating, uh, just like, uh, a Catholic at church on Sunday, a Jew in 1.00

00:11:00.540 synagogue, in at the synagogue on Saturday, a Muslim at the mosque on Friday.

00:11:06.060 I think that's a fair assessment.

00:11:07.560 And one thing that I do want to point out here is that our addiction policies are primarily

00:11:12.040 driven by public health officials.

00:11:14.080 There's this public health approach to addiction, but let's be honest, public health officials

00:11:18.740 are not necessarily addiction experts.

00:11:21.460 People who work in addiction medicine, including addiction physicians and addiction psychologists

00:11:27.000 are the experts here.

00:11:28.780 They are the ones who are, uh, experiencing this crisis on the front lines and are seeing

00:11:35.160 at the clinical level, what's going on.

00:11:37.500 And these experts are the ones who are saying again and again, that what we're doing is not

00:11:43.920 working, that safe supply is being diverted, that it is dissuading people from going into

00:11:49.660 recovery.

00:11:51.660 Um, and yet their voices aren't listened to because the public health experts now have

00:11:57.080 the microphone.

00:11:58.520 And I think, you know, we should remember that public health, it's, it's not a scientific

00:12:04.000 degree, right?

00:12:05.940 It's, it's kind of, I mean, it's a social science.

00:12:08.700 It's far less rigorous than addiction medicine.

00:12:11.500 So we've given our friends who are doctors keep making the joke that you, you end up in

00:12:17.340 public health because you were at the bottom of your class.

00:12:19.960 Exactly.

00:12:20.820 And look, some of our top public health officials do have a medical background.

00:12:25.820 You know, Kieran Moore has a medical degree, same with Dr. Bonnie Henry, but so many of the

00:12:30.340 people who staff the bureaucracy do not.

00:12:33.260 And so they have a really weak, uh, educational background compared to a medical official.

00:12:40.520 They don't have any strong background in addiction, and yet they have taken upon themselves to dominate

00:12:48.640 addiction policymaking, which is why we have the problems that we have today.

00:12:53.700 I'm going to read you, um, uh, some, uh, a portion of an email that I received from a

00:12:59.900 resident that lives near, um, an area where they have both a safe injection site and a

00:13:05.280 safe supply program.

00:13:06.320 It's in, uh, Toronto's, uh, Dundas and Sherbourne area.

00:13:11.360 It's, you know, economically not a great area, but there, there are families living in nice

00:13:16.340 houses on certain streets and they were getting along just fine.

00:13:21.660 And then these programs moved in and what are they dealing with?

00:13:25.480 Uh, the complaints include walking your kid to school and, uh, them being exposed to seeing, 0.99

00:13:32.860 uh, vaginas and nipples, a man urinating with his exposed penis, violence, vulgar language, 0.99

00:13:40.440 threats, aggressive panhandling, people passed out, blocking the sidewalk and harassed by unstable 1.00

00:13:46.240 people.

00:13:46.560 This same gentleman emailed me a while ago, photos of what he saw, just trying to leave

00:13:54.800 his, um, uh, garage at the back end of his house, sex acts being performed in the middle

00:14:01.660 of the laneway where all the families, uh, park their cars, where they store their garbage

00:14:06.900 cans when it's not garbage day, that sort of thing.

00:14:09.060 Your kid's going outside to play road hockey and there's people, uh, trading sex for drugs.

00:14:16.880 These are the, the, the harms that go beyond the harm of the addict, but this is what people

00:14:22.400 living in the neighborhoods where these, uh, facilities are set up have to deal with.

00:14:27.620 And I've talked to many of them and many of them are, you know, they're dismissed as, uh,

00:14:34.900 right-wing cranks who don't want, uh, to help addicts.

00:14:38.380 And they're not, they're very nice, lovely people.

00:14:41.400 Many of them, uh, quite progressive in their politics, but they're looking to their city

00:14:46.360 council.

00:14:46.940 They're looking to the medical officials that run these places and saying, you have to deal

00:14:52.060 with this mess because this is not what my children should be seeing on the way to school.

00:14:57.720 And, and I think that that is very true.

00:14:59.820 And I, I hear these stories all the time from people who are living near these facilities

00:15:04.120 and are experiencing really horrific, uh, breakdowns in public safety.

00:15:09.400 The problem here is that the bureaucrats who oversee these programs or fund them rather

00:15:16.800 and regulate them do not live in these neighborhoods.

00:15:20.500 They often live in nice, safe, relatively wealthy, relatively white neighborhoods farther away

00:15:30.180 from downtown course.

00:15:31.940 And so the types of places where they would never approve that type of program.

00:15:36.880 Exactly.

00:15:37.580 Because it's fine for crime to happen if it happens over there to those people, right?

00:15:44.100 Like for them, it's all very abstract.

00:15:47.160 They, they are fine with crime because they don't have to see it.

00:15:50.140 Which means let's be honest, lower income Canadians have to deal with crime.

00:15:55.220 Visible minorities have to deal with crime in Ottawa.

00:15:59.140 Uh, so I spoke with Stephanie Plunge.

00:16:01.280 She is the counselor for the ward where Byward Market is, where most of these sites are congregated.

00:16:07.560 That used to be where I worked right down at 87 George street at the CFRA studios.

00:16:12.260 I watched that area decline.

00:16:14.880 Yep.

00:16:15.180 Um, it's awful.

00:16:17.220 It's awful there.

00:16:17.840 And people who have means can move, they can leave, which means that this area, which was

00:16:23.140 already economically disadvantaged in many ways to begin with is now just getting more and

00:16:29.860 more concentrated in its poverty.

00:16:31.340 And then you have all of these low income Canadians who just want to have safety, who just want 1.00

00:16:36.920 to be able to go outside and feel okay.

00:16:40.140 And know that their kids are not going to step on a needle or be screamed at.

00:16:43.440 And then what happens is that you have these, you know, relatively well off activists who

00:16:48.960 are coming in from the suburbs saying that if you criticize these services, then you're

00:16:53.040 a bad person. 1.00

00:16:53.900 You're a racist. 1.00

00:16:54.760 Meanwhile, the racialized Canadians who want to be safe are not listened to it's it's, you 0.98

00:17:00.680 have these like really pompous and pretentious anti-racist quote unquote activists who are 0.62

00:17:08.160 imposing their experiments on low income neighborhoods.

00:17:12.140 Yeah.

00:17:12.820 I lived and worked in and out of that area for close to 20 years when I was in Ottawa.

00:17:18.820 Um, there was never a time when I wasn't dropping in on the Byward Market.

00:17:22.980 And if you have been a tourist in Ottawa, you've probably gone there.

00:17:26.260 It's got the farmer's market.

00:17:27.780 It's got, uh, you know, great restaurants and bars and pubs, and they are all struggling

00:17:33.400 now because of this.

00:17:35.520 Uh, yes, the shelters that people live in have been there for decades and yes, they're

00:17:42.960 overly, overly concentrated.

00:17:44.420 These are not new issues, but Adam, we went from a small drug problem in that area to,

00:17:52.840 by the time I left Ottawa in 2019, I was watch, having to walk by people shooting up in their

00:18:00.340 arm in the middle of the sidewalk to get to my car, just, uh, two blocks away from the

00:18:06.740 radio station and TV complex that I was working in.

00:18:09.620 It was an unbelievable decline.

00:18:13.260 And I haven't been back to the market in a couple of years, but I'm told it has just

00:18:16.760 gotten worse and worse.

00:18:18.340 And all of those businesses are continue to struggle long after the pandemic because the

00:18:24.760 population of Ottawa, not as interested in going down there as they used to be.

00:18:30.520 Yeah.

00:18:31.220 People have basically just abandoned this neighborhood to its crime.

00:18:33.840 I think the underlying problem here is that we have all of these supervised consumption

00:18:38.780 sites.

00:18:39.260 We have all of these safer supply programs, but we don't link them to recovery.

00:18:44.440 So yeah, you can shoot up under supervision.

00:18:47.060 There's plenty of resources for that.

00:18:48.700 But if you want to go to detox, if you want to go to rehab, suddenly that's not available.

00:18:55.360 So there's a saying, you need to meet people where they're at.

00:18:58.800 But we're doing that in a way we're meeting people where they're at with these services,

00:19:02.440 and then we're abandoning them there.

00:19:04.140 And we're calling that compassion when we enable their drug addiction.

00:19:07.680 That's it.

00:19:08.880 One of my colleagues, uh, asked Toronto public health years ago, um, as they were interviewing

00:19:14.780 them for a story about how do you recommend, uh, recovery or treatment services to people?

00:19:22.200 And they said, well, we don't.

00:19:23.900 Well, I thought that was the point.

00:19:25.380 She said, no, uh, recommending treatment would be considered judgmental.

00:19:31.920 And my jaw dropped when she told me that.

00:19:34.560 And then I covered the shooting outside the South Riverdale community, uh, center last

00:19:40.220 summer where a mother was fatally shot, just walking down Queen street to get lunch.

00:19:47.060 And, uh, a fight broke out between people across the street where, um, a safe supply center

00:19:52.600 had turned up and drug dealers had flocked to and bullets started flying and she was killed. 0.93

00:19:58.420 That center had on their website until we published it in the Toronto sun that they had no expectation

00:20:06.060 and no judgment of anyone giving up doing drugs.

00:20:10.700 That's the problem.

00:20:11.820 Right.

00:20:12.340 And, and there's an underlying reason why we'd have these kinds of policies.

00:20:16.020 So Canadian addiction policymaking is beholden to the whims of radical drug activists.

00:20:23.680 Uh, for example, the Vancouver area network of drug users, uh, there is currently in public health,

00:20:30.320 this strong emphasis on centering the voices of people with lived and living experiences in quotation marks.

00:20:36.420 And, and that's really big in the harm reduction space too.

00:20:39.780 And, and that kind of rhetoric makes sense if you're talking about actual minority groups, right?

00:20:44.760 If you're going to make policy about black Canadians or gay Canadians, then yeah, you should talk to black Canadians or gay Canadians.

00:20:52.020 But if you're going to make policy about drug users, then sure, to a certain degree, 0.66

00:20:58.280 you should consult them when it comes to some ideas on implementation,

00:21:01.380 but active drug users should not be leading policymaking and leading programs on drugs.

00:21:08.660 I mean, my guess is they're not asking them what would get you into a recovery program?

00:21:14.020 Well, that's the thing.

00:21:15.320 They're not asking them because for many of these drug users, they think that using drugs is a human right.

00:21:21.420 They think there's nothing wrong with it.

00:21:22.960 They think that drugs themselves aren't dangerous.

00:21:25.180 It's the criminalization that's dangerous.

00:21:26.760 And so they have a lot of cachet with these bureaucrats and they have a lot of cachet with very important institutions in BC.

00:21:35.640 And so of course, BC based institutions and public health bureaucracies across Canada are not going to push recovery.

00:21:42.280 They're going to push for what these active drug users want, which is like pure drugs and, and fewer restrictions on using drugs.

00:21:50.260 It's, this is completely unsurprising at the ground level.

00:21:53.760 We have set up our system to produce these kinds of results because we are listening to drug users and imagining that they are the final authority on what we should do with addiction.

00:22:03.180 Dr. Sharon Koivu out of London, Ontario, who you and I have both interviewed several times.

00:22:08.140 She put it to me this way on a previous episode of the full comment podcast.

00:22:13.160 She said the four pillars of drug policy should be treatment, enforcement, prevention, and harm reduction.

00:22:20.040 And she said, we've forgotten about the other three and we just focus on harm reduction.

00:22:24.220 Now we have to take a quick break.

00:22:26.500 When we come back, I want to ask you about the issue of decriminalization, because I think that that conversation can go in two ways for us.

00:22:35.460 One, we're going to make fun of Bonnie Henry and her insane report, but also I want to ask you about this push to, as you say, they want cleaner drugs.

00:22:44.160 They want us to give them the drugs.

00:22:46.600 So, you know, people that can't afford medications for an actual medical ailment are going to suffer.

00:22:53.380 And if the activists have their way, we will be giving out clean fentanyl just to make sure that addicts don't have to go into treatment.

00:23:02.440 More in moments.

00:23:02.980 I bet you didn't know that Canada's drug policy is racist.

00:23:07.820 Well, shouldn't surprise anyone. 0.79

00:23:09.580 Regular listeners know that pretty much everything in Canada is racist and white supremacy and built on colonialism.

00:23:16.000 But that's actually in a report from Dr. Bonnie Henry.

00:23:18.760 She's the chief medical officer for the province of British Columbia.

00:23:22.560 Someone who had, how is it, someone described her to me recently.

00:23:28.080 Oh, she was the COVID mom.

00:23:29.740 She was making everyone feel good during COVID.

00:23:32.180 And BC had, you know, fewer restrictions.

00:23:34.080 And she was sensible.

00:23:35.500 And she's a radical when it comes to drug policy. 1.00

00:23:38.400 Here is part of her recent paper on decriminalization and why it needs to happen in British Columbia.

00:23:48.080 Thankfully, the EB government, the NDP government of British Columbia has rejected this.

00:23:52.760 But she said that, quote, prohibition in Canada is based on a history of racism, white supremacy, paternalism, colonialism, classism, and human rights violations, end quote.

00:24:06.080 So, Adam, which part of that makes sense to you?

00:24:11.180 Very little of it.

00:24:12.380 Very little of it.

00:24:13.620 And look, so I'm going to make a clarification here.

00:24:16.400 I think it's perfectly fine to argue that some drug laws in some contexts have racist intentions or outcomes.

00:24:24.080 Because laws are just tools that we use to order society.

00:24:28.000 And like any tool, they can be abused for a variety of events.

00:24:31.720 But that is very different from saying that drug prohibition in general is inherently racist.

00:24:39.200 And that latter statement is one that no one can defend, if you're being honest.

00:24:44.220 Because we see all across history, all across the world, a resounding and resilient support for drug prohibition.

00:24:55.480 And I'm going to use a really good example here.

00:24:57.340 Let's think about Islamic law.

00:24:59.160 So, Sharia law has banned the consumption of mind-altering substances since the 7th century.

00:25:07.140 That includes alcohol.

00:25:08.420 Includes alcohol.

00:25:09.000 Includes, yeah.

00:25:09.840 And hashish.

00:25:11.160 And look, if early Islamic scholars and lawmakers and religious leaders said that drug prohibition is the way to go,

00:25:20.620 it is really bizarre to have someone like Bonnie come out and say, well, actually, this is white supremacy.

00:25:27.340 This is colonialism.

00:25:28.560 I mean, I'm sorry.

00:25:29.600 You know, colonial European empires only emerged centuries later.

00:25:33.340 So what?

00:25:33.860 Did they have access to a time machine?

00:25:35.880 Did they go back several centuries and say, actually, you know, you have to listen to us white folk?

00:25:40.040 I mean, this is crazy.

00:25:41.540 Well, you can also look around the world and see where are the strict drug laws.

00:25:48.320 They're not in white, liberal European countries.

00:25:50.760 They're not in North America.

00:25:51.840 They're not in Western Europe.

00:25:53.440 They are in places like China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia.

00:26:01.200 These are the places with the very strict drug laws.

00:26:03.620 We have very lax drug laws.

00:26:05.540 And then she says what little drug laws we have left is based on paternalism, colonialism, and white supremacy. 0.97

00:26:12.360 It's really bizarre.

00:26:13.940 And so here's the thing.

00:26:15.260 So what they use to justify this argument is they talk about how the implementation of our first drug laws in Canada in the late 20th century,

00:26:25.260 sorry, late 19th century and early 20th century was based on racist animus against Chinese immigrants.

00:26:32.060 I mean, these immigrants smoked a lot of opium. 1.00

00:26:34.620 So opium was associated with Chinese people, and therefore the drug was seen as a special moral threat to white society.

00:26:43.880 And it was policed much more harshly than other substances like alcohol and tobacco.

00:26:48.760 And then when you criminalize opium, you can use that as a legal tool to harass or deport Chinese Canadians.

00:26:56.280 That is a fair argument.

00:26:58.420 You can say that these laws were pretty racist.

00:27:01.040 That doesn't mean that the whole system is racist now.

00:27:05.980 No.

00:27:06.300 And here's the thing.

00:27:07.420 So if we're going to talk about Chinese experiences, it would be a great idea for us to recognize the fact that Chinese communities historically and in present day do not like drugs.

00:27:17.600 So in the 19th century, you know, under the Qing Empire, China had a huge problem with opioid addiction because the British were selling large amounts of the drug to China to make a lot of good money.

00:27:29.360 And so the Qing Empire tried to prohibit the drug as effectively as they could, and eventually they completely banned it and seized any supply that they could find and ended up destroying a lot of European wares.

00:27:42.700 And so the British got really pissed off at this, and so they launched not one, but two wars.

00:27:48.920 Both of them are known as the Opium Wars, to force China to accept prohibition.

00:27:54.440 And so-

00:27:54.900 To accept opium.

00:27:56.220 Sorry, sorry, to accept opium, to end prohibition.

00:27:59.640 And so under the harm reduction ideological framework, you would essentially argue that, you know, actually, well, the British sent their anti-racist warships to decolonize China's drug policy.

00:28:13.340 It's absurd.

00:28:14.260 China's drug policy, which was built on white supremacy. 0.81

00:28:16.960 Yes.

00:28:17.800 Okay.

00:28:18.080 And here's the thing, right?

00:28:20.520 So the Opium Wars is commonly marked as the beginning of China's century of humiliation when China was really weak as a result of its defeat to colonial European forces.

00:28:31.540 And Chinese nationalists to this day, you know, they hate opium.

00:28:36.560 They hate drug prohibition because they associate it with colonial domination.

00:28:42.520 So for them, drug liberalization is the colonial thing, not prohibition.

00:28:48.080 And when you look at Chinese-Canadian and Chinese-American communities, they are the ones calling for more prohibition. 1.00

00:28:57.860 In San Francisco, there's been this huge course correction because, I mean, the city is a petri dish for liberalization policies.

00:29:04.560 And now they're trying to pivot back to the center.

00:29:06.600 And it's Chinese-Americans who are pushing for that. 1.00

00:29:09.360 In Vancouver, Chinese-Canadians are the main political force who are pushing for stricter drug laws.

00:29:15.260 They were instrumental in the election of the ABC party in the 2022 municipal election.

00:29:21.160 ABC really, really reined in a lot of these overly indulgent drug policies.

00:29:26.860 So if they're going to say that prohibition is racism, I guess, you know, Chinese-Canadians are really raging white supremacists somehow. 0.97

00:29:36.180 Well, I'm not going to try and make sense of their logic.

00:29:40.720 I'm not sure that there is logic behind this.

00:29:47.460 As we said earlier, you know, you accept these proposals based on a premise and then the premise turns out to be wrong.

00:29:55.160 You should be turning around and reevaluating.

00:29:58.260 Decriminalization is something that the British Columbia government asked the Trudeau government in Ottawa to allow, and they did. 0.52

00:30:06.700 And it was supposed to be a three-year pilot project.

00:30:08.780 It lasted just over a year.

00:30:11.140 Again, the idea was that it would lower opioid deaths.

00:30:16.680 Instead, in the year that that was on, the number of opioid overdose deaths went up dramatically.

00:30:25.360 So they pulled away from it.

00:30:28.740 Henry wants it to go forward.

00:30:30.960 The Ontario Medical Officer of Health wants it to go forward.

00:30:34.200 We saw the other day that the briefing document for Yara Sachs, the federal minister in charge of mental health and addictions, it was a discussion about national decriminalization.

00:30:48.420 They really wanted to work with any jurisdiction that was open to this idea to decriminalize.

00:30:54.460 When I've criticized this, and I've seen this happen to you as well, online, the people who back this, because I don't think they back it because they have looked at the evidence.

00:31:05.560 I think they back it because they wear a certain team's political jersey.

00:31:10.660 And so they just, you know, they're on side with that.

00:31:13.760 So I can't question this issue because I'm a good liberal or what have you.

00:31:19.440 But the decriminalization, what they end up saying is that you're confusing it with legalization.

00:31:28.420 Well, decriminalization and legalization have the same effect for the average user.

00:31:33.980 There is nothing police can do about a guy sitting in a subway or in a children's playground smoking a crack pipe or shooting heroin.

00:31:44.200 Parents were horrified to see that sort of thing happening in British Columbia.

00:31:47.900 Yeah, they would call the police and say, can you move this guy?

00:31:50.940 And the police said, no, no, we can't.

00:31:53.020 This is allowed now.

00:31:55.660 Yeah, I think they're missing the point, right?

00:31:57.040 When they say that decriminalization is not legalization, because as you've pointed out, it has the same functional effect for any regular citizen, right?

00:32:08.880 Whether you decriminalize or whether you legalize, you're still going to have an issue with people openly using drugs in public spaces that should be shared amongst the entire public and yet are in many ways now dominated by drug users because no one else wants to go around someone.

00:32:23.000 Sorry, be near someone who is erratic because they are smoking meth or they are withdrawing from fentanyl.

00:32:31.720 The idea is that, well, it's just decriminalized for the user who would have their own personal supply.

00:32:41.380 And so, you know, if you're Pablo Escobar with a pile of cocaine, you can still get arrested, but, you know, you're just going to have like a small dime bag on you.

00:32:49.660 That's fine.

00:32:50.260 The BC proposal, the one trying to overthrow the colonialism and white supremacy, I believe they said you could be carrying up to a 30-day personal supply.

00:33:00.620 Yeah.

00:33:01.140 And that would be legal.

00:33:03.360 At that point, you could definitely be a dealer carrying around that much of any drug.

00:33:10.240 Of course, of course.

00:33:11.380 But like, once again, we really have to focus on the fact that this report is poorly argued and is not evidence-based.

00:33:18.420 So many of its recommendations are absolutely insane.

00:33:21.500 I mean, Henry's report argued for drug legalization under the logic that this would lead to quality assurance, much like with any other commodity.

00:33:33.340 So she basically said that, look, you know, when you have a regulated supply of clothing, of children's toys, of groceries, you have quality control.

00:33:42.860 And we should legalize the manufacturer and retail of drugs so you can have quality control there.

00:33:49.500 And that's insane because when you legalize a commodity, you increase its supply on the market.

00:33:56.960 And that's totally fine if we're talking about groceries or teddy bears.

00:34:01.180 But when it comes to highly addictive, dangerous drugs like meth and fentanyl, there is a serious cost there, right?

00:34:09.620 Because when drugs are more available, when they're cheaper, then people use them more and then they get addicted.

00:34:16.660 Henry's report conspicuously ignored that fact and tried to pretend that drugs are not inherently dangerous.

00:34:25.800 It's only if they're contaminated or illegal when they're dangerous.

00:34:29.360 But I'm sorry, even if a drug is legally prescribed, even if it is uncontaminated, it is dangerous.

00:34:36.600 Because pharmaceutical opioids, which are quote-unquote safe, which are illegal and uncontaminated, are dangerous.

00:34:43.600 If I took a bunch of dillies, I could die. 1.00

00:34:46.360 I've never taken heroin in my life.

00:34:48.320 I take a handful of dillies, I can overdose.

00:34:51.080 Just because it's so-called safe supply doesn't mean you can't die.

00:34:54.440 Well, I mean, the whole reason why we have an opioid crisis to begin with is because of overprescribing of legal pharmaceutical opioids.

00:35:00.680 I mean, it's the OxyContin crisis of the late 90s and 2000s.

00:35:03.480 We didn't have a huge opioid crisis before then.

00:35:08.160 And then Purdue Pharma, an American pharmaceutical company, aggressively marketed its new opioid, OxyContin, and said it was safe.

00:35:18.140 And basically bribed doctors to prescribe as much of it as possible and changed prescribing practices so that opioid prescribing became a really normal thing.

00:35:28.480 And so that led to mass diversion.

00:35:32.380 Pharmaceutical opioids easily flowed into communities, flooded them, and people died.

00:35:38.900 So we know what happens if you make access to quote-unquote safe drugs really easy and if you make it legal.

00:35:47.280 I know that OxyContin, you know, the diversion wasn't legal, but it was so easy.

00:35:50.840 It was functionally, like, legal at this point.

00:35:53.180 Like, people die.

00:35:54.400 People die from legal opioids.

00:35:56.260 It's not – there's no difference between toxic and non-toxic drugs.

00:36:01.020 You know, a legal opioid is not non-toxic.

00:36:04.440 It is still dangerous.

00:36:06.540 So, you know, this is why I keep saying that we have traded big pharma for big government in being the pusher.

00:36:14.720 All these dillies.

00:36:16.420 Who makes the hydromorphine pills?

00:36:19.680 My understanding is Purdue is making a good chunk of them that we're buying and giving out to people.

00:36:25.940 Well, yeah.

00:36:26.340 I mean, so Purdue is the manufacturer of Dilaudid, which is the brand version of hydromorphone.

00:36:31.480 And for some reason, safer supply programs very strongly prefer Dilaudid over generic hydromorphone, even though Dilaudid is 7% more expensive.

00:36:41.680 So, I think there are a lot of big question marks there.

00:36:44.440 Why is it that these safer supply programs are really fixated on buying a Purdue product?

00:36:50.440 I think that that's something that is worth investigating.

00:36:53.820 It's funny.

00:36:54.280 When I was looking at one of the announcements for safer supply by the Trudeau government, and I think it was made out in BC with David Eby, the BC government had been the lead in suing Purdue.

00:37:05.580 And they go from suing them to contracting them.

00:37:12.180 I don't think that they are contracting Purdue directly.

00:37:16.060 But indirectly?

00:37:18.140 You know, indirectly, Purdue is making a lot of money off safe.

00:37:21.600 Well, I mean, Purdue is making a lot of money directly off safer supply.

00:37:25.080 So, yes, indirectly, the government is sending this money to them, which is very concerning.

00:37:30.520 And I am aware of the fact that at least in one province, and this is a bit of a scoop, Purdue is lobbying high-level government officials for safer supply or expanding safer supply, which raises a lot of question marks here.

00:37:45.940 Okay.

00:37:46.060 Well, now I have to ask you where because you can't just drop that.

00:37:49.300 Oh, I can't.

00:37:50.200 If you want to know, you'll have to read the National Post in a few weeks.

00:37:54.180 Yeah.

00:37:58.440 Oh, God, if you I've got a lot of FOIs to file.

00:38:01.600 So, you know, I've got a lead, but I don't have the documents just yet.

00:38:04.300 So, let's talk before we go to safe supply fully, actually, let's talk about my contention earlier that we're moving towards a system where they just want us to provide the drugs because they keep saying it's the toxic drug supply.

00:38:20.520 That leads to you've got to decriminalize.

00:38:23.160 That means you've got to legalize.

00:38:24.800 That means you've got to enforce quality control.

00:38:27.200 And then eventually it will be what you've got to give them to the people.

00:38:30.480 So, do you see that same pattern happening?

00:38:35.840 Yeah, it's a slippery slope.

00:38:36.960 And I know the term slippery slope can be questionable sometimes, but I think in this case it very much is.

00:38:43.360 And I think that there has been a clear goal for many of these harm reduction advocates to end their project with legalization.

00:38:51.060 So, when you have something like safe supply, people who have been following this conversation closely know that this is not about getting people to recovery.

00:38:58.660 This is a stepping stone to legalization.

00:39:02.260 And Bonnie Henry's report made that abundantly clear, right?

00:39:06.940 She was talking about non-prescribed safe supply, which was essentially just drug legalization.

00:39:12.400 Safe supply.

00:39:17.160 There's been the whole controversy around diversion.

00:39:20.040 When this was first raised in the House of Commons, Carolyn Bennett was still the minister in charge of mental health and addiction.

00:39:26.400 She hadn't yet gone off to make something rotten in the state of Denmark as our ambassador to that country.

00:39:32.300 She claimed that this was misinformation and disinformation, that this wasn't happening.

00:39:37.160 I'm not sure if it was your reporting that triggered that.

00:39:41.600 Pierre Polyev asking about it in the House of Commons, but he asked about it.

00:39:45.420 Then there were the TV reports where they had reporters showing,

00:39:48.340 ah, I just bought a bunch of dillies, and they're holding them up.

00:39:51.600 Oh, no, that's still misinformation and disinformation.

00:39:54.420 Now you've got to the point where in London, Ontario, which was one of the pioneers in this movement,

00:40:01.700 the police admitted that last year they seized 30,000 hydromorphone pills.

00:40:07.160 And that they believe that they mostly come from safe supply.

00:40:11.280 And in some cases, they actually had the prescriptions labels on the pills they seized that proved they were.

00:40:19.780 Does the movement still deny that diversion is happening?

00:40:24.500 Has there been a change in how this is being discussed politically?

00:40:29.240 I know the Globe and Mail has gone all in and defending the people behind it.

00:40:33.260 Many of the harm reduction advocates, they're slowly conceding to the fact that diversion is happening.

00:40:40.400 They're still highly resistant.

00:40:42.180 And they're trying to reframe it as a good thing.

00:40:43.900 They're saying, oh, well, if you flood communities with diverted drugs,

00:40:46.680 then that means that at least people will be accessing safe drugs, in quotation marks,

00:40:51.360 instead of illicit drugs, which is obscene.

00:40:55.020 Because once again, these drugs are being diverted so that people can,

00:41:00.280 like a safe supply patient who diverts their safe supply drugs,

00:41:02.920 they're using that to make money to buy illicit substances.

00:41:06.600 But you have interviewed families where people have died from overdoses from safe supply,

00:41:12.780 or after getting addicted on safe supply.

00:41:14.940 The Camilla Sword case is very complicated.

00:41:20.060 The cause of death there is very complicated.

00:41:22.560 And there are a lot of very significant issues with her death investigation.

00:41:28.280 And that is something that I'm currently working on right now.

00:41:31.180 But I just want to flag that.

00:41:34.300 What we can say is that we do have evidence of youth accessing safer supply

00:41:38.760 and getting addicted to hydromorphone,

00:41:41.420 and then escalating onto fentanyl, which then kills them.

00:41:45.060 That is a big concern.

00:41:46.520 We see people dying there.

00:41:48.400 But harm reduction activists deny this.

00:41:51.360 They think that if you just,

00:41:53.060 that it's either you use dangerous illicit drugs,

00:41:55.300 or you use safe drugs,

00:41:57.140 and they keep on ignoring the fact that

00:41:59.940 when you make drugs more abundant and you make them cheap,

00:42:03.180 more people use drugs.

00:42:04.340 So sometimes, for many people,

00:42:06.300 it's a choice between using dilaudid or nothing, right?

00:42:10.860 But that doesn't factor into their calculus.

00:42:12.800 One thing I just want to mention,

00:42:15.220 and I found this really illuminating,

00:42:17.620 is, okay, you talked about the TV report that Global News did about a year ago,

00:42:23.860 where a reporter went onto the streets,

00:42:27.260 bought some safe supply drugs,

00:42:28.940 bought some dairies.

00:42:29.540 Very easily.

00:42:29.960 Yep.

00:42:31.520 And I think part of it was in the original packaging.

00:42:33.820 I'm not 100% sure.

00:42:34.960 Yep, it was.

00:42:35.680 And the dealers said that this is from safe supply.

00:42:38.460 And then the BC Ministry of Mental Health and Addiction

00:42:41.720 had the most absurd response.

00:42:43.280 They said,

00:42:44.100 we cannot be sure that a drug originates from safe supply.

00:42:48.240 Like, you don't know what's the origin is,

00:42:49.920 regardless of what the drug dealer tells you.

00:42:53.740 It's impossible.

00:42:54.820 So there's a contradiction here,

00:42:57.020 because just a few weeks earlier,

00:42:58.760 they were insisting to the public

00:43:00.200 that they are monitoring diversion very carefully.

00:43:03.380 And then when someone brings them evidence of diversion,

00:43:06.460 they say,

00:43:06.760 well, actually,

00:43:07.220 it's impossible to know if this diversion is happening or not.

00:43:10.120 So they speak out of both sides of their mouth.

00:43:12.800 They're simultaneously saying,

00:43:13.800 I mean,

00:43:13.900 they're monitoring this program.

00:43:15.160 And then when it's convenient,

00:43:16.220 they say it's actually impossible to know if diversion is happening.

00:43:22.680 I'll close on Alberta.

00:43:25.820 Alberta Premier Danielle Smith took a lot of flack when she said,

00:43:29.080 we're not going this route.

00:43:30.200 We're not doing that in this province,

00:43:31.740 and we're going to focus on recovery. 0.87

00:43:34.500 Her chief of staff is someone who is an addict,

00:43:38.360 who went into recovery and turned his life around.

00:43:42.380 And he does not believe that the programs being pushed

00:43:45.980 by the likes of Dr. Bonnie Henry or Dr. Kieran Moore

00:43:48.540 or the many activists across the country,

00:43:51.700 that these are useful, that they work.

00:43:55.420 And Alberta was mocked and ridiculed.

00:43:58.400 And every month after that announcement,

00:44:01.760 they said, well, your death rates are still up.

00:44:03.980 Your death rates are still up.

00:44:05.500 The most recent month that they have stats available for

00:44:09.300 is April of 2024.

00:44:11.500 The rate of drug poisoning deaths

00:44:14.940 per 100,000 person years by month,

00:44:17.580 that's how they describe it.

00:44:19.900 It's cut in half, actually, just a little over half

00:44:22.980 from a year earlier.

00:44:24.660 It is down by a third, roughly, from April 2022.

00:44:31.160 That, I would say, is a success.

00:44:33.680 They're doing something right there.

00:44:36.360 And instead of saying, oh, hey,

00:44:38.740 that's something that might work,

00:44:40.380 within the people that try and frame the conversation,

00:44:43.800 they're still being ridiculed.

00:44:45.040 Well, so I think that this new data from Alberta

00:44:49.300 is incredibly promising.

00:44:51.020 At the same time, it does have some limits,

00:44:53.320 but those limits are not nearly as severe

00:44:55.100 as harm reduction activists would want you to believe.

00:44:57.680 So Alberta currently has a huge backlog

00:45:00.900 in its death investigations.

00:45:03.440 And the reason for that is that

00:45:05.220 they require an autopsy

00:45:07.880 for pretty much every single overdose death.

00:45:10.760 And that is normal practice.

00:45:12.120 Like, most jurisdictions require autopsies

00:45:14.220 for, like, approximately 80% to 100%

00:45:16.720 of their overdose deaths.

00:45:19.060 BC is very different.

00:45:21.280 BC only uses autopsies

00:45:22.980 for about 15% of their overdose deaths.

00:45:25.820 And instead, they rely on toxicology data.

00:45:29.200 So basically sending someone's blood

00:45:30.960 to a toxicologist and seeing what's in there.

00:45:34.760 For Alberta, you know,

00:45:36.960 because they're having all of these autopsies,

00:45:38.580 they have that backlog.

00:45:40.440 Their backlog comes from them being conscientious.

00:45:42.640 But their more recent data

00:45:44.400 is based on preliminary toxicology results,

00:45:47.880 which is essentially the same methodology

00:45:50.000 used by BC.

00:45:52.860 And they say that these toxicology results

00:45:55.480 can confirm fentanyl-related deaths,

00:45:58.480 but may not be able to fully confirm

00:46:00.520 some other drug-related deaths.

00:46:02.540 So because fentanyl accounts for the overwhelming

00:46:07.640 majority of drug deaths,

00:46:10.320 even if these toxicology results

00:46:12.500 may miss a few non-fentanyl deaths,

00:46:14.920 I would be surprised if the total death tally

00:46:18.020 rose significantly once the backlog

00:46:20.160 of autopsies is cleared.

00:46:23.100 So even if we might see some rise

00:46:26.120 in the future in these numbers,

00:46:27.940 I think that it's very clear

00:46:30.340 that the numbers are still going to be

00:46:32.400 significantly lower

00:46:33.400 compared to what they were a year ago.

00:46:36.300 Either way, it is a reduction

00:46:37.700 and it's been going in that direction

00:46:40.200 for the last little while.

00:46:42.060 So promising news

00:46:43.700 and something to watch instead of ridicule.

00:46:46.160 Adam, we could continue talking

00:46:47.720 for quite some time,

00:46:48.700 but I've taken enough of your time.

00:46:50.660 I want to thank you for it.

00:46:51.960 And I'll make sure that I do read you

00:46:54.280 for that scoop in National Post.

00:46:55.800 Well, thank you for having me on the show as always.

00:46:58.980 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:47:01.160 My name's Brian Lilly, your host.

00:47:02.600 This episode was produced by Andre Pru.

00:47:04.860 Theme music is by Bryce Hall.

00:47:07.080 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

00:47:09.680 You can subscribe to Full Comment

00:47:11.000 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube,

00:47:14.600 wherever you get your podcasts.

00:47:16.200 Help us out by leaving us a rating

00:47:17.840 or a review and telling your friends about us.

00:47:20.700 Thanks for listening.

00:47:21.540 Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.

00:47:25.800 Thank you.

00:47:30.840 Thank you.

Full Comment - September 02, 2024

Now we’re ‘racist’ if we don’t give people free heroin

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