Juno News - London police turn blind eye to “safer supply” diversion crisis

00:00:00.000 you're tuned in to the andrew lawton show

00:00:05.920 let's uh let's take a moment here i this is a story that's closer to home for me

00:00:13.960 in i live in uh southwestern ontario as many of you well know and the reality is in the city of

00:00:20.320 london it we used to just be this nice little quiet sleepy city didn't have it was more

00:00:26.360 conservative culturally not necessarily politically and i remember even a decade ago

00:00:31.240 looking at the drug situation in vancouver and seeing that as a problem over there

00:00:35.580 and london very quickly became around that time 2015 2016 uh one of the worst cities in terms of

00:00:43.640 a drug problem london was one of the cities that early on embraced you know needle distribution

00:00:49.200 crack pipe distribution all of these other things and all of that is novel and quaint compared to

00:00:55.380 uh what we're seeing now with the proliferation of so-called safe supply now this has been an issue

00:01:01.700 we've talked about at a relatively length well we've talked about it at length i had dr sharon

00:01:06.640 koibu on the program a couple of weeks back and she used to well she is an addiction medicine

00:01:11.300 physician in london but she used to be a significant champion of so-called safe supply and she did what 0.97

00:01:17.200 any other scientist and researcher does she followed the data and the data showed her that these things

00:01:23.280 were not only not helping people with drug addiction but they were making things worse she saw another

00:01:28.220 number of key metrics continue to rise uh and in fact balloon well uh now we have a another report

00:01:34.480 from our friend adam zivo who is with the national post and also is the founder of the center for

00:01:40.080 responsible drug policies the seizure police seizure of hydromorphone pills skyrocketed three thousand

00:01:47.980 percent after the city's safe supply or so-called safe supply expansion uh going back to the year 2020

00:01:56.220 this is massive a three thousand percent increase uh given that uh this was uh finding these hydromorphone

00:02:04.780 tablets were finding themselves being diverted to the black market uh police were seeing this didn't really

00:02:10.460 say boo about it didn't speak up didn't take aim at any of these policies in any public way and and in fact uh adam zivo

00:02:17.340 adam zivo as he's recounted in his article here he had a heck of a time getting some of the information

00:02:22.700 that was necessary from police and getting this disclosure and there was a former london police

00:02:27.820 sergeant who has now become a documentary filmmaker that was trying to do similar stuff he was trying to

00:02:33.020 do research on this and was finding himself getting absolutely stonewalled but in early june the deputy

00:02:40.700 chief of the london police service paul bastian confirmed to adam zivo that hydromorphone seizures

00:02:46.060 have gone up uh just to put some raw numbers on here in 2019 the london police had fewer than 1 000

00:02:53.180 tablet c's in 2020 that number had increased sharply and when you get to 2022 over 30 000 and they're

00:03:02.700 expecting this year it will match or exceed last year so we have seen a massive massive increase

00:03:10.460 increase in this this is just one drug in one city in canada but i think there's probably a bigger

00:03:17.500 picture here that we'll see adam zivo joins us on the show again let's just talk about this here

00:03:22.860 because diversion is something that there is irrefutable evidence that's happening you've pointed

00:03:28.300 to like ads on reddit threads promoting diverted drugs we've seen these numbers yet still the activists

00:03:35.740 and advocates of safe supply i i mean in some ways pretend it's non-existent at all or when they are

00:03:41.580 confronted with the evidence just downplay it considerably but this is not an insignificant

00:03:45.980 increase no i mean like going from 1 000 pills season 2019 to 30 000 pills season 2023 is huge uh most

00:03:55.740 people when they hear these numbers they don't really have any frame of reference but we have to

00:03:59.500 remember that just two or three of these pills is enough to induce an overdose in an opioid naive

00:04:05.260 user such as a teenager so essentially these 30 000 pills is the equivalent of 10 000 overdoses uh and

00:04:13.740 as dr sharon koivu pointed out when i interviewed her for this piece these seizures represent just a

00:04:18.700 drop in the bucket of what is flowing throughout the city overall so so we're looking at probably

00:04:24.380 hundreds of thousands if not millions of pills flowing through london ontario because of safer supply

00:04:30.060 let me just ask you about this because if you look at one drug you look at hydromorph and you

00:04:35.580 see an increase it's not all that surprising that if diversion happens that when uh this product is

00:04:41.500 given an expanded access in a particular point in time that you're going to see an increase of it

00:04:46.380 my question would be and i don't know if we have the data on this is there a net increase in drugs in

00:04:52.220 the city or has hydromorph just replaced something else that would have been seized had these tablets not

00:04:57.820 been and in that case you know the activists would argue maybe it's healthier because this is better

00:05:02.220 for you than some of these other things well it's hard to talk about the net number of drugs uh net

00:05:07.660 amounts of drugs flowing through a city that's incredibly hard to track uh however from my

00:05:12.140 understanding safer supply has not replaced the illicit drug supply but has in fact only subsidized it

00:05:17.980 the reason why safer supply clients sell their drugs in the first place is because hydromorphone though

00:05:22.460 it may be as powerful as heroin is only about uh two percent as powerful as fentanyl and so for a

00:05:31.100 fentanyl user hydromorphone even in large doses is useless so they sell their safer supply to buy

00:05:36.300 fentanyl and if all of these safer supply clients are purchasing fentanyl uh and flooding the streets

00:05:42.060 with their hydromorphone that indicates the dental market is still very active and that safer supply

00:05:46.460 is not replacing it or mitigating it but rather is subsidizing it and i think that's very concerning

00:05:52.540 uh now when we want when we want to look at other metrics that quantify diversion in in london ontario

00:05:59.340 so dr coivu did do a chart review of her patients in victoria hospital so she reviewed 200 patient

00:06:05.340 charts between january and june of 2023 and she found that 30 or 33 of the patients who were not enrolled in

00:06:13.420 the safer supply program self-reported accessing hydromorphone diverted from safer supply also

00:06:19.900 camnh recently released a report that looked at self-reported uh drug patterns or drug use

00:06:26.780 amongst ontario high school students and middle school students and they do this survey once every

00:06:31.820 two years and they found that between 2021 and 2023 the number of students who self-reported using

00:06:39.500 pharmaceutical opioids for non-medical reasons skyrocketed by about 70 percent and the number

00:06:46.460 of students who said that these opioids were easily available also skyrocketed by about 40 percent so

00:06:52.860 all of these indicators suggest that there is a huge influx in into the uh supply of pharmaceutical

00:07:01.100 drugs i mean prices used to like these pills used to cost 20 each now they sell for about one to two

00:07:05.980 dollars and that it's not dissuading people from using dangerous substances it's getting into the

00:07:11.340 hands of kids and hooking them into addiction which then eventually escalates to fentanyl use and then

00:07:17.420 kills them so if a lot of these drug users are offloading hydromorph to buy uh fentanyl who's

00:07:25.420 the market for hydromorph if you know a lot of these drug users are getting rid of it because it

00:07:29.740 doesn't do what they want it to do well that's the thing that's so pernicious about this diversion

00:07:34.300 is that the uh people who buy this hydromorphone tend to be newer users uh let's look at kids as an

00:07:40.300 example i've interviewed dozens of kids who have told me all about how you know hydromorphone has

00:07:45.180 become very popular in their schools or in their communities this is predominantly in bc and they say

00:07:51.820 that they weren't aware of how dangerous the drug was right they they know that heroin is bad and that

00:07:58.780 they shouldn't do heroin and the fact that you often have to inject heroin uh is a very powerful

00:08:04.620 way to dissuade people from experimenting with it but when you're a kid is at a party and someone

00:08:10.300 hands them a pill and they hear hydromorphone and they have no clue what it means and they're told

00:08:15.100 that it's just a prescription pain medication which is marketed as safe from the government

00:08:20.060 they're much more likely to try it uh and they don't realize what they're getting into until they're

00:08:24.780 already addicted uh now that's one group other groups include uh people who are in recovery and

00:08:33.340 who have lower opioid tolerances and who know not to mess with fentanyl and not to mess with heroin

00:08:39.980 but think that hydromorphone is something that they can handle once again because it's marketed as safe

00:08:46.060 and if the drug is so cheap how serious could it be i interviewed an addiction outreach worker in

00:08:51.900 ottawa who estimated that 90 percent of safer supply clients in that city divert their hydromorphone and

00:08:59.020 he had friends because he used to be a heroin user so he had friends and acquaintances who got hooked

00:09:03.900 onto the drug and a common theme was that they thought it was maybe as potent as a tylenol 3 which is

00:09:09.900 still an opioid but it's much weaker because the drug was so cheap you know it was one dollar a pill

00:09:16.140 so what happened in 2020 that changed this in london so much well so safer supply was first piloted in

00:09:24.460 2016. it was initially marketed as a way to uh help stabilize the lives of vulnerable sex workers

00:09:32.540 essentially if we give them the drugs that they want then they have fewer reasons to sell their bodies

00:09:37.980 on the streets to make money to buy drugs then it was quickly expanded uh to become what we know

00:09:43.820 was safer supply today so it was available to anyone really uh who was severely addicted and this was a

00:09:49.500 pilot project and there was a lot of research that suggested on paper that it was doing well i mean

00:09:54.300 most of these evaluations and studies were incredibly low quality most of them just involved interviewing

00:09:59.500 safer supply clients and asking them do you like this program where you get free opioids and when they

00:10:03.980 predictably said yes this was framed as objective evidence of success so based on these evaluations

00:10:10.060 safer supply was expanded nationally in 2020 uh the covet pandemic was used as the impetus for this

00:10:17.100 essentially the argument was that we needed new emergency guidelines to provide these drugs to drug users

00:10:23.180 to encourage them to shelter in place or to prevent them from going into withdrawal or overdosing because

00:10:28.540 they couldn't access their normal drug dealers uh and then this emergency situation was very quickly

00:10:34.620 established as safer supply as we know today there was a scope creep much in the same way how we saw a

00:10:40.140 scope creep in london ontario uh so so that expansion uh hit all of canada and allowed many more pilot

00:10:49.500 project programs to open up and regular prescribers to provide safer supply so we saw a huge increase in

00:10:54.540 access and consequently a huge increase in diversion are you convinced that london is any sort of outlier

00:11:02.460 here or that this is something that if you were to get the data in other cities would be pretty much an

00:11:07.020 identical uh identical situation i would assume that the data is fairly consistent across major cities where

00:11:13.980 safer supply is being run uh i actually am very interested in reaching out to different police uh departments

00:11:21.020 and asking them for their data hopefully they'll respond uh what i would say is that the data that

00:11:26.620 we have coming out of british columbia suggests that there is a huge problem there that is uh as bad

00:11:31.900 as if not worse to what we're seeing than in london so earlier this year uh a high-level official from

00:11:39.820 the bc associations of police uh who was the deputy chief of the vancouver police department testified in

00:11:45.580 parliament parliament that approximately half of the hydromorphone that is confiscated in bc or has been

00:11:51.740 confiscated in bc recently can be attributed to safer supply and we have to keep in mind that when

00:11:57.420 you look at the numbers approximately five percent of the hydromorphone patients in the province are

00:12:03.740 safer supply patients so five percent of these patients uh account for fifty percent of the total

00:12:09.900 seizures so that would require them to divert a truly huge amount of safer supply uh to have such

00:12:17.420 an impact on the market it's it's i wouldn't say i'm surprised by it but i i'm disappointed that

00:12:24.620 tracking these numbers was not just a given when rolling out and developing these programs that the

00:12:30.220 governments that approved these that were pushing these didn't just want this information up front that

00:12:35.260 you're having to go to police and hope that they hand it over well here's the problem is that safer

00:12:41.180 supply advocates and harm reduction researchers often do not want this to be measured uh so they

00:12:47.740 make only wonder why well yeah so they make only the most cursory attempt to measure diversion

00:12:53.180 oftentimes there's studies that measure diversion amount to asking safer supply clients do you divert your

00:12:59.100 drugs and if so why uh as if you're going to get an honest response from that uh any

00:13:05.260 any quantitative studies that exist which are very scarce to begin with make no attempt to measure

00:13:10.140 diversion uh when the alberta government pushed for tracing elements to be included into safer

00:13:17.740 supply drugs so for example special chemical indicators special dyes special colors the federal

00:13:24.620 government refused even though this was highly practical because this these kinds of tracers have 1.00

00:13:28.860 been used in the united states already to to track counterfeit drugs and in fact dr andrea

00:13:34.620 sarita who is the founder of the safe the original safe supply program in in london who is basically

00:13:40.700 the progenitor of safe supply and the city's main advocate for safer supply uh said to parliamentarians

00:13:46.860 earlier earlier this year that she opposes putting in tracing elements because these tracing elements

00:13:52.540 would be stigmatizing which is it's absurd what kind of mental gymnastics do you need to believe that

00:13:58.460 like as if people uh would somehow feel stigmatized from taking their pink pills on the streets in full

00:14:06.860 public view versus their white pills uh let alone the fact that chemical tracers cannot be seen by the

00:14:13.500 public you know no one's going to notice the worst case scenario just like you know put it up to your

00:14:18.300 mouth like this if you really need to like yeah it's absurd and and when when you have safer supply

00:14:24.780 advocates using such absurd arguments to to contest the need for for tracing elements in safer supply

00:14:33.500 i think that's suspicious and i think that we also have to keep in mind that many safer supply

00:14:38.220 advocates think that diversion is a good thing uh once again dr andrea sarita has often defended

00:14:44.460 diversion and has said that you know it is better for someone to access diverted safer supply than

00:14:49.500 illicit street drugs but once again going back to my earlier comments it doesn't seem that

00:14:54.540 people are choosing to use safer supply in lieu of illicit street substances this safer supply is

00:15:01.340 merely adding to the total drug supply and creating a very dangerous gateway into harder substances

00:15:09.180 adam zivo great work as always the piece in the national post is as we've been talking about

00:15:14.700 hydromorphone pills seized in london skyrocket 3000 after safer supply expansion great work adam thanks for

00:15:21.660 coming on today thanks for having me on the show thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show

00:15:27.020 support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - July 06, 2024

London police turn blind eye to “safer supply” diversion crisis

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