Juno News - Is the legacy media fuelling the drug crisis？

00:00:00.000 I can't remember if I mentioned it on the show before or if it was in another interview but I

00:00:13.280 was at a social gathering in some way and I was talking to someone that was very not conservative

00:00:18.980 didn't like Danielle Smith did not like Pierre Polyev did not like the conservatives or on

00:00:22.980 anything and I was like oh this is going to be a terribly painful dinner and then the person

00:00:27.300 volunteered although I will say about Danielle Smith I love what she's doing on drugs because 0.99

00:00:32.760 they realize that drugs are ravaging their communities and you have so many people in

00:00:37.880 officialdom who are doing nothing but furthering this problem and the news that has come out

00:00:45.240 including in London from the London police the diversion is happening is really just reaffirming

00:00:49.360 what people paying close attention to this that aren't bound to their ideological support for

00:00:54.620 these programs had have known for a while and one of those is Adam Zivo who again was probably the

00:00:59.900 least surprised by the London police announcement because he was reporting on it before I don't even

00:01:04.640 know if it's cool now but he was certainly reporting on it before anyone in officialdom was acknowledging

00:01:09.980 the problem he joins us on the line now columnist for the National Post and founder and director for

00:01:15.560 the Centre for Responsible Drug Policies Adam always good to talk to you thanks for coming back on here

00:01:20.840 I don't know if you saw those two clips I played from from Pierre Polyev but the one in particular

00:01:26.120 I found interesting was he put aim on the media here and said the media has to stop elevating this

00:01:31.760 certain class of quote-unquote experts while really ignoring that these people are so heavily invested

00:01:38.240 in the status quo I was wondering what your thought on that was well I think that's a very fair criticism

00:01:42.620 we have to keep I think it's pretty obvious that many journalists within Canada are not doing their job

00:01:48.000 responsibly when it comes to addiction policy so they only consult with a very small number of

00:01:53.640 quote-unquote experts who often don't even have a background in addiction medicine oftentimes they're

00:01:59.160 public health experts who come from a different educational background which is much less rigorous

00:02:04.260 than addiction medicine and they don't have a lot of clinical experience treating people who are

00:02:08.700 struggling with addiction and so this this small group of ideologically minded activist scholars

00:02:14.520 are cited again and again and again in most Canadian media while addiction physicians who are actually

00:02:22.080 on the ground are largely ignored on top of that many journalists uh don't really analyze their data

00:02:29.340 really carefully so what happens is that you often have them citing studies which are very low quality

00:02:35.400 um and the journalists will just go and parrot the conclusion of the study but they'll pay zero attention

00:02:40.740 to the methodology uh there's a great study that came out in January uh in the British Medical Journal

00:02:47.160 that actually showed that safer supply didn't work but that the data was reframed to imply that it did work

00:02:52.680 and there was a lot of missed media management there which was an excellent case study of this I'd love to

00:02:56.860 talk about that later if we have the time yeah and I would say in general there's a shortcoming in a lot of

00:03:02.760 science and health journalism and that you have people that are not science and health experts and again

00:03:07.520 one of the things that's great about journalism is that you can develop a proficiency and a knowledge

00:03:11.960 of something without having gone to you know 12 years of school but it means in a lot of ways you're

00:03:16.200 beholden to the data you take in and if you're getting in bad data or bad insights or you're getting uh

00:03:22.120 you know expert opinions that themselves are co-opted in some way or very heavily biased the output is

00:03:27.960 going to be that way as well and the reporter may not even know that well that's the thing and then the problem

00:03:32.760 here is that also many journalists don't have enough time or resources to properly evaluate the

00:03:37.460 studies that are presented to them so I'm going to use the BMJ article that I mentioned earlier as

00:03:42.480 a case study so that was that that study followed around you know 40 4800 drug users in British

00:03:49.240 Columbia over 18 months and they claimed that safer supply patients had a 55 to 91 percent reduction in

00:03:56.120 mortality the week after accessing safer supply so they claimed that safe supply was remarkably effective

00:04:02.740 at saving lives but then I contacted seven physicians and a statistician and we spent about

00:04:08.520 three weeks analyzing this this study and we realized that it was junk science that the underlying

00:04:14.080 data actually showed no statistically significant reduction mortality but that the researchers have

00:04:19.440 relied on you know one week outcomes instead of one year outcomes and it failed to fully filter out

00:04:25.160 compounding variables to inflate the positive effects of safer supply and you know that kind of work takes

00:04:32.800 a lot of time but many journalists they don't want to do that so all they'll do is just you know parrot

00:04:38.900 what's in the conclusions which is unfortunate and even though you know my analysis has come out

00:04:43.940 many journalists just continue to cite that study uncritically which suggests that they're not even

00:04:49.840 interested in understanding the methodological flaws of harm reduction it's it's concerning the amount of

00:04:55.500 laziness and willful blindness we see in this space I think that people like Sharon Koivu who I know you

00:05:03.360 and I well you you were alongside her on a panel I had on the show a while ago she's probably one of the

00:05:08.560 most effective commentators because she does not have skin in the game in any other sense than she is a 0.98

00:05:14.660 healthcare practitioner and I and I think her testimony has always been valuable because she was a big

00:05:19.420 supporter of these policies and just did what scientists and researchers are supposed to do

00:05:23.340 which is realize this isn't working it's making problems worse and then she's backed away because

00:05:28.000 I do think Polyev's criticism of experts that have skin in the game is incredibly valid I mean there

00:05:33.940 people don't realize and I was hoping you could shine some light on this how much money there is being

00:05:38.700 made by the status quo well I mean we have to keep in mind that safer supply is very profitable for certain

00:05:45.440 doctors and certain pharmacies if you're coming in to get your safer supply drugs

00:05:49.020 vaccines every single day then the pharmacy is charging the government a dispensing fee every single day and I've

00:05:55.900 spoken to a few physicians who have crunched the numbers and they've discovered that one pharmacy with 100 or more

00:06:02.060 safer supply patients can make a million to 1.5 million dollars off of that right and so that alone so that's nothing to do

00:06:08.860 with you know giving people Viagra or beta blockers or anything else that's just on the safe supply yeah and this of

00:06:15.020 course creates pernicious financial incentives to keep people on safer supply rather than to get them

00:06:19.900 on addiction medications that stabilize them and lead them to visit pharmacies less often for example

00:06:26.140 supplicate is a monthly injectable quasi vaccine essentially for drug use uh it's essentially like

00:06:33.340 it's like a like a methadone it was like suboxone but then it just dissolves in your body over the course of

00:06:37.900 a month so you know if you're on supplicate you're there for you know you come to your doctor once a

00:06:43.180 month you come to your pharmacy once a month there's much less money to be made off of you and of course

00:06:47.980 many pharmacies are reluctant to support it because they can't profit off of it um it is concerning

00:06:55.260 that some pharmaceutical interests are very invested in propagating safer supply i know that shoppers

00:07:02.140 drug mart provided about two million dollars if i recall correctly uh to the british columbia center

00:07:09.100 on substance use uh to help fund training on safer supplies so you have this big corporate interest

00:07:15.180 you know providing financing to an ostensibly independent research body to support safer

00:07:20.060 supply that happens to be profitable for that corporation yeah and i think that when we look at

00:07:26.700 this i mean to be honest that should be treated with the same level of skepticism that people you know

00:07:31.660 should treat harm reduction research done by tobacco companies on on vaping i mean you have to look at

00:07:36.540 where this research is being funded and i i would ask you about the other side of this which is that

00:07:42.460 no one seems to be talking now in these halls of officialdom which is the the term i've been using

00:07:47.980 on this episode about getting people off of drugs and you know i remember about a decade ago when when

00:07:53.020 i first started to see the harm reduction discussion in london and even elsewhere ramp up there was always that

00:07:58.860 that that promise that okay and once we get people into the system we can then look at getting them

00:08:03.820 off of drugs and i just don't hear that conversation at all taking place and i certainly don't see any

00:08:09.660 data to support that any of these mechanisms are getting people off of drugs do you no and here's the

00:08:14.700 underlying problem so many of the policy makers and public health experts who are uh in control of

00:08:22.060 addiction policy making in canada are beholden to radical drug activists who are often in active

00:08:27.500 addiction so in vancouver the vancouver area network of drug users vandu is highly influential and has

00:08:33.500 close relationships with a number of really prominent policy makers so if you as a policy maker are

00:08:39.660 listening to people who are actively using drugs under the auspices of you know listening to people with

00:08:44.140 lived experience or living experience then maybe you're not going to prioritize getting people off of

00:08:49.100 drugs because the people you are listening to uh are using they want to keep on using they

00:08:53.660 conceptualize their drug use as a human rights uh it's interesting i was talking to a british reporter

00:09:00.300 or rather photojournalist who did that big piece in the telegraph recently about vancouver and he was

00:09:04.620 expressing shock to me because when he spoke with van du and when he spoke with harm reduction activists

00:09:09.660 about a month or two ago they told him that they didn't feel like there was any problem with addiction

00:09:14.380 they said it was oppressive to expect people to live uh fulfilling lives or at least that's what

00:09:19.100 he told me so how do we reorient this because obviously some of the proposals on the table from

00:09:27.180 the conservatives are ending funding for uh so-called safe supply programs that doesn't outlaw these

00:09:32.540 programs provinces could still step up i mean theoretically community organizations could i i don't

00:09:37.660 know if they will because i think there really does need to be a government gravy train keeping this

00:09:42.140 alive but uh one out one attitude that we've seen in alberta is really even putting forced

00:09:48.060 intervention on the table and i think we need to see a little bit more about what that would look

00:09:51.420 like and pauliev this morning said he'd be open to that nationally but hasn't yet committed to it but

00:09:56.780 what other resources are available to deal with this well i think on the surface level we should be

00:10:01.740 investing far more heavily into recovery uh it some if someone wants rehab if they want detox that

00:10:08.060 should be available to them right away and it should be free uh and it takes several it's like

00:10:13.900 several tries for someone to get off of drugs right so like if it's expensive if it takes forever if it

00:10:19.900 takes a month to get into a program that's not going to happen so at the surface level that's what

00:10:23.100 needs to be fixed but on the more foundational level we need to think about reforms for education

00:10:29.100 and reforms in our bureaucracy uh our public health bureaucracy is a cesspool of radical ideology

00:10:35.740 uh in ontario i know that public health bureaucrats are very much pushing for these radical policies

00:10:41.580 against the will of the provincial governments and if you change government that's not going to be

00:10:45.900 fixed and those policy makers are coming from schools that are once again highly highly ideological

00:10:52.300 so if you have graduate programs that you know don't that aren't committed to evidence-based policy

00:10:58.300 making that you know think that drug prohibition is just structural racism and then that filters

00:11:03.900 into the bureaucracy we have a problem so it's going to take a long time to shift our underlying

00:11:11.820 political or i guess governmental uh understructure which leads to these disastrous

00:11:16.780 addiction policies yeah i just before i let you go i wanted to ask you about that because you had

00:11:21.260 a piece in the hub to that effect that to bonnie henry who's the you know chief public health 0.83

00:11:25.420 czar in british columbia uh criminalizing drugs is white supremacy yeah i mean that is the most 0.93

00:11:31.740 profoundly stupid thing i've ever heard so look you can argue that individual laws in certain contexts 0.96

00:11:38.060 may have racist intentions or outcomes that's fair laws are just a tool that we use to order society and 0.99

00:11:43.820 any tool can be abused but they were arguing that drug prohibition in general is rooted in white supremacy

00:11:50.620 and anyone with even a cursory understanding of history let alone like the current global landscape can

00:11:55.980 see that that's ridiculous i mean we have sharia law which is uh banned the consumption of mind-altering

00:12:03.340 substances since the seventh century so you know if islamic scholars and lawmakers from the very

00:12:08.460 beginning supported prohibition how do you attribute that to white supremacy uh china in the 19th century

00:12:15.660 advocated strongly for prohibition because opium was destroying its citizens and then of course the british

00:12:21.740 came in and forced china to end prohibition with its warships so by by by the um the harm reduction

00:12:29.020 anti-racist framework you can basically argue that you know the british sent their anti-racist warships

00:12:35.180 to decolonize china's drug policies it's absurd and even today racial like minority communities 1.00

00:12:42.620 tend to hate this kind of stuff they hate drug liberalization uh in vancouver and in san francisco

00:12:49.500 asian like communities are the ones that want change that want prohibition in across the world 1.00

00:12:55.260 today east and middle eastern countries are the ones that most strongly ban drugs and now we have

00:13:00.620 some you know let's be honest upper middle class white progressive bureaucrats saying actually this

00:13:05.340 is racist you should probably listen to racialized communities if you're going to claim to be an anti-racist

00:13:11.180 yeah i remember when that one white protester was yelling at a guy from hong kong to go home at a

00:13:15.740 city council meeting and i think it was vancouver or whatever a couple of weeks back but uh

00:13:20.140 it's exactly the point here adam zeebo always good to talk to you sir thanks for coming on today

00:13:24.220 well thanks for having me on again thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show

00:13:28.540 support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - July 28, 2024

Is the legacy media fuelling the drug crisis？

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