Alberta minister slams ＂harm production＂ approach to drugs
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Summary
In this episode, Alberta's Mental Health and Addictions Minister Dan Williams joins me to talk about BC's recent decision to decriminalize drugs in public spaces, and why it's a bad idea. We also talk about the Alberta model for recovery from addiction.
Transcript
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Rachel Emanuel brings the news each day on Alberta Roundup. She has her say.
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Hey everyone, welcome back to the Alberta Roundup. I'm your host Rachel Emanuel.
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Today I am joined for the first time by Alberta's Mental Health and Addictions Minister
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Dan Williams. Minister Williams, thank you so much for joining us today.
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Thanks Rachel. Minister Williams and I have actually gotten to know each other a little
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bit at the Calgary Stampede. So it's great to see you here in maybe a more formal setting.
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So one of the things that we're going to be taking a look at today is our friends over in BC. We know
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that BC has a drastically different drug policy from Alberta. They have sought to decriminalize drugs.
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For the last two years they had a pilot project that allowed adults to carry two and a half grams
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of drugs for personal use without facing any criminal charges and that was made possible
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through an exemption granted by Health Canada under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
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Just recently, BC Premier David Eby asked for an adjustment to that exemption to recriminalize
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the use of those drugs in public spaces such as hospitals and restaurants.
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So one of the things that Alberta Premier Daniel Smith has been saying is, look,
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I understand that BC can control its own policies, but there's issues where we are worried that these
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drugs are going to be flowing into Alberta and I know she's gotten the RCMP involved in that.
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So this change, it's just a minor change. Do you think that this is going to improve the situation here in Alberta?
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Well, I don't think it's minor. Obviously, it's good for the country,
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and I think that's good for Alberta. A few things I want to highlight about how we got here.
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So BC decriminalized, which it's not just when they decriminalize, there's no criminal consequences
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to drug use, to public drug use that could endanger others. What they have are no consequences. No one
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apprehends the drugs and takes them. There's no administrative penalties. Most of this decriminalization
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that we see in places like BC and Oregon, both of whom have reversed their policy,
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come out of a misinformed understanding of what happened in Portugal in the early 2000s,
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where they decriminalized. But what they did in Portugal was heavily burdened administratively
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somebody who uses drugs. So you go to a mandatory dissuasion commission if you're using even marijuana
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recreationally, never mind hard drugs like opioids. And if somebody's an addiction in their system in
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Portugal with the decriminalization, they can take away your social assistance, they can take away your
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social housing, they can take away your passport. These things are unconstitutional in Canada. I'm not
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suggesting we do that. But I'm saying they're trying to take a very complex situation that was built and
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made for another country in another decade with no fentanyl and a completely different legal system and a
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totally different culture and take a child's understanding of it and pose it onto our societies
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here in North America, whether it be Oregon or BC. And it's been devastating, which is why BC went not
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even halfway through the three month trial pilot for decriminalization. I can tell you all the reasons
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why and my experience as a minister of mental health addiction in Alberta, why decriminalization is a bad
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idea. But I think your viewers probably know it already. You don't need to be a minister of mental
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health addiction. And you don't need a PhD in addiction medicine or social policy to understand
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that if there are no consequences for devastating, harmful and life ending drug use, that the drug
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use is going to expand and extrapolate. And so this is one of the big problems that we are facing in our
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society is a tragic addiction crisis. There is a response to it. There is a healthy human and
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compassionate response. It's not allowing addiction to just proliferate and facilitate everywhere it goes
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when it interfaces with government. It's governments and families and communities that need to intervene
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and say, no, there's a way to get healthy. There's a way to deal with this addiction. And we're calling
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that the Alberta model. It's focused on recovery. It's getting people off of the addiction to pathway,
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which leads addiction run its course ends in only one of two ways, Rachel, it can only end in pain,
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misery and eventually death. Or it ends in treatment, recovery, and a second lease on life. Now,
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as a minister of mental health and addiction, I feel like I have a moral obligation to do all I can to
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get people into that second path, that one of hope, that one of recovery, the one that gets people
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healthy again, when they're faced with that, that disease of addiction. Sure. So when we take a look
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specifically at the BC policy here, and now they're kind of walking some of it back, I know that your
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government has actually asked the federal government to put chemical tracers in some of these drugs that
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BC was given out, that request was rejected, government said that it wouldn't be possible. So I know we
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can't specifically track which drugs might be flowing into Alberta from BC. But if you had to just sort of
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speculate, I mean, what do you think the impact of BC safe supply is on Alberta and the addictions
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that we're seeing here? Great question. And it's really consequential. So we need to highlight the
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difference between two different devastating policies. One is the decriminalization. That one
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says no consequences for public drug use for your drug use that endangers yourself, others community,
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no consequences there in the criminal code. But then the second policy is one called safe supply or
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safer supply. They're euphemisms and they're branding advertising slogans. It's not real policy
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in the sense of evidence-based, thoughtful, helpful for those struggling. What it is, is a program that
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says, and the federal government funds approximately 100 million dollars of this a year, where they say,
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we are going to not only facilitate addiction, but we're going to do it to the point where we're going to
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provide high powered opioids. So for example, hydromorphone, the drug that the federal government supplies in their
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safe supply program, it's about five times more powerful than street heroin. So if you thought
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heroin is powerful, this stuff is pharmaceutical grade opioid, and it's used recreationally, unwitnessed,
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without any intention of trying to taper people off of it. It's not like opioid agonist therapy,
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which is evidence-based medicine to help people get healthy and deal with the addiction that
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physiologically affects them. No, this is different. This is just flooding opioids onto the street,
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and there are approximately 65 million, eight milligram pills. Each of those pills,
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five times more powerful than heroin, that the government distributes unwitnessed into the community,
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that is flooding our streets. Anecdotally, I can tell you, in BC, the price went from a decade ago
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of hydromorphone, even less than that, five, six years ago, it was approximately 15 to 20 dollars a pill.
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It's now in the neighborhood of 20, 30, 40 cents a pill. In Alberta, it's been decreased as well,
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not to the same degree. We saw it was maybe worth 15, 20 dollars a pill previously, and now,
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anecdotally, I hear, it can be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of five to eight dollars a pill.
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So what you can understand from that, if you know basics of supply and demand,
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that the federal government has now become effectively the provider of the drugs. They are,
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in some ways, trying to push out the drug dealers themselves as the purveyor of these high-power
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opioids. And it no longer becomes about harm reduction when you do that, it becomes harm
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production. It doesn't matter who gets those, who gives those drugs out, whether it be a drug dealer,
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Justin Trudeau. The physical consequence of that to an individual's body is the same. And I'll tell you,
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the number one axiomatic rule of addiction policy is if you increase supply, you increase harms. It's just
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a correlation. There's no getting around it. The evidence on this and the literature is abundantly
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clear. So we put in a request, as you mentioned, to say, federal government, if you're going to
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continue doing this, which we oppose in Alberta, handing out these high-powered opioids on the street
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with no real policy to try and help people, but just to facilitate addiction, we've made it legal in
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Alberta, but we're concerned the stuff that you're producing in other provinces is crossing the border.
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And the anecdotal evidence suggests that that's true. We now hear multiple reports from RCMP saying
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they believe they have now seized tens of thousands of pills from the Safe Supply Program,
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and that the RCMP publicly said they believe those pills were purposed for being sold in other
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provinces. Well, if you're in British Columbia, and you have a whole bunch of high-powered opioids,
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and it's going to be sold in another province, very tough for that province not to be Alberta,
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at least part of it. So we're very concerned about what we call diversion, which is these pills not
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going to the ones they're meant for, but instead going to our high schools and our colleges,
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and hooking a whole bunch of people in the lifelong battle with addiction.
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Yeah, you know, a couple months back, I actually encouraged my audience to go watch those two
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really excellent documentaries. I'm sure you've seen them. I'm sure everyone in your office has seen
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them. Vancouver is dying, and Canada is dying, both by filmmaker in front of the show,
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Aaron Gunn, and I'd once again just reiterate that call. And in one of those films, we learned
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that it was actually creating youth as young as 12 years old to be addicted to these really
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high, powerful, high potent opioids. And I think that wasn't the indication that it was time for
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BC to change its direction. I don't know what was. Obviously, now we see BC is slightly, you know,
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changing its direction on the decriminalization. With that policy change in mind, are you guys still
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asking for the federal government to put that chemical tracer in? Or at this point, is it maybe a
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situation where you're really looking at BC and thinking they finally might understand the
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implications of what they've done? Let me be clear, it's the federal government that enables
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all of these absolutely banana policies, the banana policy of handing drugs out to drug addicts to deal
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with an addiction crisis. You don't need I mean, you have to be a federal liberal to think that's going
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to help. It's insane. The policy around decriminalization, it's a federal exemption. I put this squarely
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in the federal government with their powers, trying to infringe upon healthcare responsibilities in
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Alberta and other provinces, but also allowing BC to go down these roads. So I think it's a federal
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government that's responsible. And we are 100% still asking Minister Sachs and Minister Holland,
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the federal ministers responsible to put a chemical identifier in the safe supply they produce. That
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technology of the chemical unique chemical identifier is used for for profit pharmaceutical companies in
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the United States to protect their intellectual property of what they developed. If it's possible
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to be used for a decade in the United States for profit, then surely we can do it to save lives in
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Canada. I don't know what could be a better use of my federal tax dollars. I don't think a lot of them
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are going to good right now. I see the debt piling up and useless spending on item after item. How about
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something concrete? How about something that's going to save a life and give the federal government the
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data that they need to show that this is being diverted? We'd be able to see in autopsies if
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there are overdoses resulting from their safe supply. We'd be able to see in drug seizures the
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RCP have whether this was definitively from safe supply. I think they're afraid. I think they're afraid of
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what consequences that would be not just politically but also legally. The liability that they would have,
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I think, would be incredible if it were hard evidence to show what their safe supply has done to
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our communities. Let's change directions a little bit and look at what Alberta is actually doing.
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You briefly mentioned the recovery-oriented system of care that your office is working on. The UCP
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government has been working on this since they were elected. Have you felt that you've had the
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federal government supports in your efforts to really encourage addicts to get into treatment and
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to get into recovery as opposed to giving them so-called safe supply? Well, they haven't brought it into
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Alberta. I mean, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did mention at some point in passing that he was
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having conversations with municipalities in Alberta surrounding that. I hope to goodness that's not true
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but we have made that illegal here. The federal government came, I even spoke with their health
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committee today at one of my recovery centres that I operate in central Alberta for them to see the
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hopeful, optimistic alternative to facilitating addiction. I'm not saying just lock people up.
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This isn't a criminal justice response. I'm not just saying let them languish. This isn't apathy.
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This is a conservative movement full of compassion. And my view, deeply informed by my conservative values,
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is that we have a responsibility to our community to intervene to help these people to give anyone
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struggling with addiction every resource imaginable. So we've invested close to half a billion dollars in
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capital to build two so far out of 11 total recovery communities, five of them in direct partnership
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with Indigenous, four on reserve with First Nations. We know that a strong relationship with Indigenous
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who are deeply affected by this crisis is really important. So we are spending a huge amount of
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resources to tell Albertans and all Canadians there's another way and to build a system that has
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continuous care, all of it leading towards recovery. Because if you're not leading towards recovery
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and addiction, the only alternative is to lead towards death. And I think that's deeply un-Canadian
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to just let that happen, to facilitate it, to give up hope on people and say,
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you're addicted. I'm going to let that happen. Nothing I can really do about it. Here's a syringe.
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Here's some drugs. Here's a place for you to do it. That's safe, apparently. I think that the appropriate
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response wherever we can is to get people into opportunities where they can see hope and therefore
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end up in recovery and live full lives again as Canadians and Albertans, as mothers and sisters
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and brothers, as family members and community members. I actually had the opportunity to visit
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one of those facilities, the one that recently opened up in Red Deer. How often would you say those
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facilities are at full capacity? There's just always people in them to the brim. Well, ever since we
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open them up, it's a staged opening. So we don't put the 75 folks in the Red Deer facility in day one,
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they go through the cohort and they graduate in time. But we're running at a very high capacity in
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the high 90s. If there's a bed open, it's really because it's earmarked to someone who's coming out
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of detox and just making sure they have that space open. We have two out of 11 open. When we have all 11
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open, we'll have increased our capacity by 2000 spaces per year. And that 2000 spaces is incredible
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because we're talking about the highest quality treatment up to one year of treatment with social
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cycle supports, medical supports in that, and work with a continuum of care where we're doing a warm
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handoff to where they're going to afterwards as well. So the system we're building is universal in
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how it's trying to grab individuals and bring them into care so that we can get them out the other
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side recovered and full of life and opportunity again. I know your government is doing a lot of
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work on a recover-oriented system of care, but overdoses in the province remain extremely high.
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They seem to just be going up and up and up. One of the things I'm curious about is during the COVID-19
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pandemic, we saw so much isolation. People were told, stay in, don't go out, we're going to close
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your churches, we're going to close your schools, we're going to close your place of work, and we're
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going to coerce you into being vaccinated. And we saw mental health issues, you know,
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exponentially rise faster than we've probably ever seen them rise in Canada. And I think a lot of
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people were turning to substances to sort of alleviate some of the pain that they felt.
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How much of the overdoses that we're seeing now, how much of the addiction crisis that we're seeing now,
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would you attribute to COVID-19 policy? Well, it's very hard for me to give any concrete numbers.
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It's tough to tease these things apart. I'm sure there'll be lots of studying and data that will help
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inform academics to that end. But I can tell you that isolation, it feeds addiction. Addiction,
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for example, in particular, when you're talking about mental health challenges, addiction really
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is a disease of isolation, of withdrawing into oneself and not being able to look oneself in the
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mirror, not being able to build relationships to others around in a meaningful and importantly
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healthy way. So often addiction is a consequence of other trauma, other mental health issues,
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a sense of loneliness and isolation. And so to rebuild that, we need to have these communities.
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And we saw numbers go up of addiction for multiple reasons. One, for the reasons you said,
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you put a lot of money in someone's hand who's struggling with addiction and then you lock them
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away or say you effectively have to spend time independently by yourself. That's not a recipe for
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for a healthy outcome. But then also we had to limit our capacity and intake when it came to our
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treatment facilities, which we were just starting to ramp up at the time. So it was something that
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was difficult for us as a government to try and manage both sides of that balancing act. But I can
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tell you now, we are seeing a lot of important facilities opening up that give us more capacity
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and a lot of opportunity for people to get the help they need. I'm looking forward on going full bar
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and, you know, both barrels all the way as hard as I can to get these facilities open and get the
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capacity going again. Minister, just my last question here before I let you go. Your government
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announced a few months back the creation of Recovery Alberta. So mental health and addiction
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services are going to be moved from Alberta Health Services and to this new Recovery Alberta
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Ministry that will fall under your department, of course. Wondering what the benefits are of moving
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this outside of AHS and whether it's still scheduled, these changes are still scheduled to go into effect
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beginning in July. Yeah, we're hoping to be able to stand up on July 1st. We just passed one bill
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yesterday that's necessary for standing up part of this around CORE, Canadian Center Recovery Excellence,
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and we introduced a new bill as well yesterday. So hopefully we'll have that figured out and
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hopefully the legislation passes. Now, the value of this is that we're focusing on mental health and
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addiction in a serious way. AHS is a big organization. It's literally the biggest employer in the country
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126,000 staff plus. That doesn't include part-time or, pardon me, casual. You see over 18-19 billion
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dollar organization. Any one of the files that Minister of the Grange works on are massive and
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consequential. You talk about emergency wait times, EMS response, talk about surgeries, all of this
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adding up into what is a really important and complicated file. By taking mental health and addiction
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out, me as a minister, as a full minister now, by taking the part of AHS that dealt with mental health
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and addiction and giving it its own dedicated ministry and organization, that's organizations
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now is going to be called Recovery Alberta, focusing on mental health and addiction recovery for health.
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It allows us to focus on it in a really serious way and to dig my shoulder into the grindstone and make
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sure that we're getting the policy outcomes we need. Canadians and Albertans are more aware of
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addiction and mental health in their families' communities than ever before. It deserves its own
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committed funds, its own budget line, its own organization. I can also change the culture.
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And AHS is an acute organization. Its culture is very different from addressing a challenge and a crisis
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like addiction or mental health. Mental health and addiction crises are often in the community.
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They're with family members. They're not in hospitals. If they've gotten to the point you're in an
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emergency hospital, I mean, we're way at the far end of this. We need to address this way before.
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And the culture of it can't just be acute, medicalized, pharmaceutical intervention exclusively.
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I'm talking about building community. And you'll notice Recovery Alberta, the language itself is about
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recovery and health. It's not just about responding in some medical way, but a healthy individual and
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the wellness that they need. Even look at our logos. You see the semicircle of chairs around the word
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recovery. It's talking about conversation and community coming together. We need to take a
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very serious look at how we think about mental health and addiction in the West. And if we over
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pharmaceuticalize and intervene exclusively in this highly acute medical way, we're going to be
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missing a lot of the important work that needs to happen before that's even started. And that's what
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Recovery Alberta allows us to do. Minister, I know a lot of what you had to say and what your
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government's doing on addictions will really resonate with my viewers. Thank you so much for coming on today.
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Thanks for inviting me, Rachel. I hope I can be invited back. I really appreciate the chance and
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the work you guys are doing. Yes, absolutely. We'll definitely have you back. For the rest of you,
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I'll be back on Saturday with my regular programming and just a little tease for you. I have a big story,
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but the United Conservative Party and some action they're taking against COVID-19 vaccines,
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especially those for children. So you guys won't want to miss that. I'll see you all on Saturday.