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

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we talk to journalist Adam Zivo about a recent announcement from the Canadian government regarding the diversion of prescription drugs from safe supply programs into the hands of organized crime. We also talk about organized crime involvement in the drug trade.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
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 0.99
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 0.99
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.