Juno News - March 16, 2024


Liberals turn blind eye while “safe supply” drugs flood streets


Episode Stats

Length

11 minutes

Words per Minute

183.93813

Word Count

2,156

Sentence Count

104

Misogynist Sentences

2


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 We are going to pivot from CBC to BC here because you may have caught this announcement last week
00:00:15.440 from the RCMP that they had seized large quantities of drugs, which, I mean, it's BC,
00:00:21.920 but 10,000 prescription drugs that had been originally distributed through government
00:00:29.360 safe supply programs, so-called safe supply programs, and we can get to that shortly.
00:00:35.200 But these drugs were put out through this channel and then they were diverted and end up in the hands
00:00:42.800 of organized crime, which are, of course, selling these opioids for profit. Now, following this,
00:00:48.800 we have the Premier of British Columbia and the Attorney General and Solicitor General of BC saying,
00:00:54.560 oh, we've never really seen evidence of too much diversion. It's all just no big deal here. That
00:00:59.280 was effectively Premier David Eby's point on this, but diversion has been something that critics of
00:01:04.480 these so-called safe supply programs have been sounding the alarm about for quite some time.
00:01:09.760 One of these is journalist Adam Zivo from the National Post who joins us once again. Adam,
00:01:15.440 good to talk to you. Thanks for coming back on.
00:01:17.120 Oh, thanks for having me back on the show.
00:01:19.280 So how does diversion work first and foremost? Because I know this is something that people that
00:01:24.560 have blissfully not been in this world might not realize or understand.
00:01:30.000 Well, so safe supply is a program where we give out free pharmaceutical opioids and stimulants as a
00:01:35.040 way to dissuade people from using the illicit street supplies. So for example, if you're addicted
00:01:39.440 to fentanyl, you don't know what's in it. It could be contaminated with benzodiazepines or xylazine.
00:01:45.120 The dosage is unpredictable, so you can easily take too much, which causes you to overdose and die.
00:01:49.760 So the concept behind safer supply is that if we give you government funded drugs, that you'll know
00:01:56.400 what you're getting and therefore you'll stay alive until you can seek treatment. And that sounds great
00:02:00.000 in theory, but in practice, a significant portion of those drugs are actually sold on the street so that
00:02:06.560 drug users can make money to buy stronger substances, which means that not only were we not mitigating
00:02:13.120 these substances in that market, we're actually subsidizing it and flooding these diverted drugs.
00:02:21.760 So is this a case of drug users, people that are on these drugs going, getting them and basically
00:02:27.920 wanting to do what that one red paperclip guy did years ago of trading them up for something else?
00:02:32.960 Or is it people that are, for whatever reason, not drug users that are being co-opted or paid
00:02:38.640 to go into these programs and pose as drug users? Or is it a bit of both?
00:02:43.280 It's a combination of both. So the vast majority of it are people who are actually addicted to
00:02:48.080 fentanyl. And we give out something called hydromorphone, which is the strongest heroin,
00:02:51.680 but fentanyl is 10 to 50 times stronger than heroin and hydromorphone. So if you're a fentanyl user,
00:02:56.960 the hydromorphone is not going to do anything for you. So you're going to go and sell your
00:03:00.080 hydromorphone to get money to buy fentanyl. So those people are actually addicts. Then there's a smaller
00:03:05.440 population of people who may have drug issues, but it's not as severe. And for them, they are often
00:03:10.880 coerced by, these are vulnerable women who are coerced by abusive partners or spouses who push them
00:03:18.000 to get as much safer supplies possible to sell for money. So it's a combination.
00:03:23.040 And I mean, when you look at organized crime, which is what the police allegations here are,
00:03:27.200 being involved in it, it wouldn't be difficult to imagine criminal organizations that are running
00:03:32.720 these vast networks. I mean, in many cases, this is in BC, but these could be spanning the entire
00:03:37.120 country. And it seems to be really unbelievable for the province to come out and say, well,
00:03:42.720 we've not really seen any evidence of this when police have literally made that claim days earlier.
00:03:48.480 Well, here's the thing. I've been hearing about organized crimes involvement in this market for
00:03:51.600 about a year now. I heard it when I was doing my initial report based on interviews with 14
00:03:55.920 addiction physicians. And that report came out in May. Then I interviewed another addiction
00:03:59.680 physician who prescribed safer supply in Victoria. And she said, yeah, we're aware of the fact that
00:04:04.320 organized crime is involved here too. Then last July, I interviewed former drug users in London,
00:04:08.800 Ontario. And one of them said, yeah, he just got out of jail. He knows that organized crime is involved
00:04:13.360 because his associates are in organized crime and they traffic safer supply. And then last October,
00:04:19.600 I went and basically did an investigation on safer supply trafficking on Reddit and found dozens of
00:04:27.600 example of thousands of pills being sold online, originating from safer supply validated with safer
00:04:34.880 supply prescriptions. And it's obvious that if you're trafficking to that degree, that there's an
00:04:39.840 element of organization there. And then on top of that, I even interviewed one drug dealer who I was
00:04:46.000 able to locate through this investigation who confirmed like how this all works. He mentioned that
00:04:50.880 you would have criminals put together teams of let's say five or six safer supply clients. And then
00:04:55.520 that criminal would go and buy up all of their supply, get like a thousand pills in a week,
00:04:59.760 and then ship it all over Canada. So we know this is happening. And then in January or rather early
00:05:05.360 February, the BC government came out with a report based on extensive interviews with clinicians and
00:05:12.240 drug users across the province. And they concluded that diversion was a common occurrence. And then last
00:05:19.680 week, the RCMP at the lower level did two big drug busts where they found thousands of safer
00:05:25.280 supply pills that had been sold. And these frontline police officers are saying that organized crime
00:05:31.040 is involved. But now, now that there's political pressure here, all of a sudden, the top level of
00:05:37.120 the RCMP is spreading this new narrative, which is completely at odds with all the other information
00:05:44.080 that we have out there, which to me would raise concerns about the politicization of the leadership of
00:05:51.120 the RCMP. Yeah. And I've been obviously, I think, giving a fair bit of deserved criticism to the BC
00:05:57.440 government here, but the federal government is not immune from this at all. And I know you've written
00:06:02.240 about this where activists, or experts rather, in this space have brought their concerns directly to
00:06:07.680 the federal government. And basically, they've fallen on deaf ears. Well, yeah, I mean, look, right now,
00:06:12.400 the Minister of Mental Health Addictions is Yara Sachs. She is not competent to be in her position.
00:06:16.960 She just comes from a background where she was a yoga teacher. And then she was the head of some
00:06:20.800 mental health nonprofit. I mean, you know, we got a yoga teacher in charge, and we've got a former
00:06:25.120 drama teacher in charge, maybe not the best team to be handling a high stakes initiative like this.
00:06:31.360 And a team of 17 addiction physicians, many who are highly respected in their field, tried to write
00:06:37.760 a public letter to Yara and said, you know, we have concerns, we are seeing mass diversion in our
00:06:43.440 practices, we are seeing people relapse because of safer supply in our practices, we have some very
00:06:49.920 moderate recommendations on how you can reform this program. So you can keep it in some aspect,
00:06:55.040 but make it much more responsible, and much less harmful to surrounding communities. And she ignored
00:07:00.480 them. And after she ignored them, they sent they found more signatories. So there was now another open
00:07:06.000 letter with 35 signatories came out, I believe, in late October, early November. And she ignored that,
00:07:12.800 too. So then they sent a third letter, and then she finally responded. She gave them 30 minutes of her
00:07:19.440 time in January, which is nothing. And she changed the timing right beforehand, which suggests that they
00:07:25.680 either you know, that they weren't really valuable. And they gave her a presentation that was very firmly
00:07:30.880 based on evidence, you know, these highly experienced addiction physicians. And I reviewed the slides that
00:07:36.480 they showed to the minister, you know, it was all solid material, it was all thoughtful, none of it was
00:07:41.440 alarmist, all of it was based on evidence, and strong reasoning. And she never responded. And then a few
00:07:47.520 weeks later, told the Canadian press, that criticism of safer supplies unfounded, and based in fear and
00:07:54.880 stigma. And so she's essentially arguing that these addiction physicians who went into this field to
00:08:02.080 help people who are struggling with addiction, now have some giant fear and stigma directed towards
00:08:09.200 their clients, which doesn't make any sense at all. One of the things that I wanted to raise on this is
00:08:15.280 that obviously, if you do have organized crime co-opting this system, as you've certainly laid out the
00:08:21.280 case for, we're going to see more people using this than would otherwise be eligible or drawn to it.
00:08:26.880 And the problem is, is that the people that are all in on this, see increases in usage as being a
00:08:32.960 positive, because they say, Oh, well, great, more people are using this program, that's what we want.
00:08:36.560 So there isn't really, there isn't really an incentive for them to face the fact that it's not
00:08:42.080 working and face the fact that even if you believe in the core essence of what safe supply is supposed
00:08:47.120 to be, which is dubious, the diversion problem isn't really being caught by them.
00:08:52.240 Well, for them, many of these people think that diversion is totally fine, because they want to
00:08:57.680 flood the market with quote unquote safe. Because organized crime is selling the the safe government
00:09:02.560 approved drugs. Is that the argument? Well, because they say, look, if people buy these,
00:09:07.360 these diverted pharmaceutical drugs, at least it's not something that made in someone's bathtub,
00:09:12.160 and therefore it's safer for them to use. The fact that when you add more supply to the market,
00:09:18.400 that cheapens prices, and that leads to more overall usage. And you can't just expect to
00:09:24.240 replace the entire illicit supply with pharmaceutical opioids, that's not going to work. That's not what
00:09:29.760 we're seeing in practice today. You know, what happens is that the people who are using the street
00:09:35.040 fentanyl, car fentanyl, they just continue using that they don't want the pharmaceutical
00:09:38.880 opioids that we're giving to them. So this idea that we're keeping people safe is really naive.
00:09:44.080 And then on top of that, the entire reason that we have an opioid crisis to begin with in North
00:09:49.280 America is because we're doing exactly what these harm reduction activists want. We did that,
00:09:54.240 sorry, 20 years ago. So you had this, you know, the OxyContin scandal, where you had this predatory
00:10:00.480 pharmaceutical company called Purdue Pharma, that essentially lied to people about how dangerous
00:10:04.960 pharmaceutical opioids are, said it was safe, said it was fine, and then flooded communities
00:10:09.600 with safe pharmaceutical opioids, and that got everyone addicted, and then created the crisis
00:10:13.600 that we see today. So now, for some reason, even though 20 years ago to 10 years ago, like,
00:10:19.120 this isn't 100 years ago, this is very recent, we saw how damaging it is. Some people are saying,
00:10:24.320 ridiculously, that flooding communities with pharmaceutical opioids is somehow a good thing.
00:10:28.640 Wow, well, very, very well put. And good work on this, Adam Zeevo from the National Post. And I
00:10:34.960 should also plug, you are the founder and director of the Centre for Responsible Drug Policy. What's that
00:10:40.320 about? It's a new organization that I started, launched about a month ago, that is focused,
00:10:45.840 as the name suggests, on pushing Canada towards more responsible drug policies that rain back some of
00:10:51.680 the excesses that we've seen in recent years. But at the same time, we are cognizant of the fact,
00:10:58.960 that the war on drugs rhetoric that we saw in the 80s and 90s doesn't work either. So we're
00:11:02.880 basically trying to chart a middle path that doesn't just rely on incarcerating drug users,
00:11:07.920 that is actually empathetic to their needs, and focuses on addressing why people do drugs,
00:11:12.640 and investing to mental health and housing. But at the same time, saying that maybe it's not a good
00:11:17.840 idea to give everyone free drugs to destroy themselves. And maybe it's not a good idea to
00:11:22.160 decriminalize drugs without investing into treatment and recovery.
00:11:24.800 Very, very well put on that point as well. Adam, thanks very much.
00:11:28.880 Thanks for having me.
00:11:30.320 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to
00:11:34.960 True North at www.tnc.news.
00:11:39.280 Thank you.
00:11:41.280 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.