Bonus Episode: Garth Mullins' "Crackdown" Podcast

any type of drug. Hello, Psychoactive listeners, So in a few days you'll be hearing my interview on Psychoactive with Garth Mullins. He's a drug user activists and award winning radio documentarian and hosts an executive producer of the Crackdown podcast, where drug users cover the drug war as war correspondents.

So advance of that, I thought i'd give you a taste of an episode of Garth's podcast, specifically episode thirty, where he talks about a drug giveaway organized by one of the drug user organizations in Vancouver, which was trying to challenge the government to step up more quickly to respond to the overdose epidemic in that city. I think I dispec Sam, it's okay to play up one rapper like half an hour ago is a good rap. I'm

Arth Mullins. This is Crackdown, Episode thirty Drug User Liberation Front. On the last episode of Crackdown, we told you the story of one day. Wednesday, February the ninth. That was the day British Columbia's Chief Corner announced the illicit drug toxicity death statistics for last year. One was the sixth year of the public health emergency. And it is with tremendous sadness that I report that our province is in a worse place than it has ever been in this

drug toxicity crisis. In one we lost two thousand, two hundred and twenty four people to elicit drug toxicity, two thousand, two d and twenty four dead, a new grim record. The government dodged our request to do an interview about the statistics, and they held a press conference where they mostly bragged about all the good work they're doing and how they're trying so hard. Never have so many people

worked so hard and stood up so many supports. Ministers Dix and Malcolmson still have not granted Crackdown an interview. Drug user organizations like the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, the BC Association of People on Opioid Maintenance, and the Drug User Liberation Front called on these ministers to step down, to resign. Instead, they're giving themselves a pay raise millions upon millions of dollars that dumped down the drain each year, when the solution is right in front of their eyes.

On the same day, we held our own event, a sort of memorial where we remembered our friends who died the previous year and gave out a safe supply of tested drugs. It was meant to show the world what a post drug war future could look like. We're going to distribute some drugs. These drugs have been tested by mass spectrom the true by Amino Aci GiB sticks, by f T I R testing to the best of our ability. We are doing what the government should be doing, and

we hope you enjoyed the drugs. But we didn't tell you how we pulled this off. Where did the drugs come from, who gave them away, and where did we get the idea to do this in the first place. I look like a criminal, but Jeremy looks like he could be, you know, an average Okay, I'm I'm I got really limited eyesight, and Radio has no eyesight, So you're gonna have to describe each other. Okay, Rris, you

described Jeremy. Jeremy looks okay, well to do, kind of nice person like Patagonian jacket, blue jeans, like yellow tims, but just like nicely caught hair, you know, relatively good. You look like a scientist mixed with like a field researcher, geologist. Now you do me all right? Well, you know, Aris looks like, uh, you know, a punk who got punched in the head of like a couple too many times. Right. If it was just me doing this without Jeremy, I

feel like we'd have a lot less public traction. You know, it's good to have a figurehead that looks like respectable enough that people trust them. This is Aris Nicks and Jeremy Kellicum, organizers with the Drug User activist organization DOLF that stands for Drug User Liberation Front. I'm also part of the group. Dolf's philosophy is simple, don't wait around for the government to do something. Do it yourself, even

if that means breaking the law. Arison Jeremy's on me that they came to this kind of radical thinking through very different ways. You know. Essentially, I come from low income, delinquent roots, and you know, I really wanted to you know, build something of myself and become a successful person. So I had, you know, my plan all all mapped out, and now I wanted to go into med school. UM. So I was going through my undergrad and some doctor came to our school to talk about, you know, how

to get into med school. And I'm like, oh, like, what can I do to set myself apart from the pack. They're like, oh, why don't you open it like a needle exchange, like do something cool. I was like, oh, that's a great idea. Um. And that was right when when people were pushing for overdose prevention sites and there was a city counselor who was very vocal about it, and I messaged him. I'm like, hey, like, why don't

we just set up an overdose prevention site? Like it seems like people are doing that, um and you know, it seems like something that we could we can make happen. And he was like, yeah, let's do it. And a week later we set up an overdose prevention site in the parking lot of City Hall in Nanaimo. Were you a drug easier at the time of this, No, I'm complete square and never even tried. We're really seeing many drugs. It was just something that you know, I felt like

we should do. I thought it would be a good kind of resume builder or whatever. I'm like, cool, like this will help me stand out. And then it just kind of, you know, like really I realized I couldn't step away, Like this wasn't a kind of one and

done sort of thing. I mean, I started working in the shelter system when I was like quite young, like nineteen, and I guess like at the time, I was a bike mechanic and I was making like ten hour and rain City was hiring for their like winter heats and it was like twenty three dollars an hour, and I was like, oh, yeah, like these are the homies. I'll just go do that. Uh So, you know, it was like the increase in wages. But at the longer I

did it, and I like doing that. I like hanging out in the shelter and like helping people out and being like, yo, you need food, you need me to bridge you to this other shape. You need housing, like you know, that's what I like doing. But what drew me into public policy was a fact everyone was dying. I remember in Team Rolls Around, It's like everyone's dead. There's like eight ten overdose of the shaft, like it's

crazy town. I remember the time Herris is talking about there was a huge spike of deaths and the media started to take notice. They started telling a story the drug users had known for some time, Vent and All was taken over the drug supply and causing people to fatally overdose at an alarming rate, six overdoses and six as morning. When narcan works, that is a good call. Sometimes it doesn't in a province where a state of emergency has been declared because two people are dying every day.

In April of that year, the provincial government declared a public health emergency, but the declaration didn't come with any kind of bold action, no decriminalization, no safe supply. Instead, we got an anti stigma ad campaign and enough crocodile tears to fill a swimming pool. Sister, daughter, friend, People who use drugs are real people. Learn more at Stop Overdose BC dot C. A A message from the government

of British Columbia. The government also put a special emphasis on addiction treatment as one of the main ways to fight the crisis. There's still long wait lists for most inpatient programs here, but the government frequently announces new beds. This always struck me as a pretty dubious and long term solution to an immediate crisis. Treatment doesn't work for most people, and when it does work, it can take years.

There's also no evidence to show that these kind of programs actually lower the risk of overdose death, and in many cases they increase the risk of overdose. All this stuff from the government also seemed to ignore the weekend warriors and first timers. What good is an anti STI mccampaign for a kid who's trying oxy for the first time. What good is addiction treatment for someone who uses coke

at a party every few months. We're in a mass death crisis and we need solutions that are going to save your life this afternoon, so we started to do it ourselves. Drug user activists, including several members of Crackdowns editorial board, patrolled the downtown East Side with narcine. We checked to see if people who had been slumped over were still breathing. We became experts that bringing people back

from the dead. Right now, I don't know. Like in September, activists and Livingstone and Sarah Blythe opened an unsanctioned overdose prevention tent in a back alley. It was an act of bravery and defiance and it wasn't legal. Thinking back, the beginning of the crisis feels very strange now, like a different planet. It was a horrible time, but it

was also a time of some real political action. The sheer scale of death showcase the humanity of our community and the lengths we'd go to to help our most alienated and vulnerable friends. Our lives were thrust into the public eye like never before. Fentyl dealers are busy and first responders are in high demand. Do I go to hospital and get checked out? This is the new young face of fentanyl addiction. The latest person to die is a seventeen year old high school student. Young couple, a

husband and wife. They died they had mixed fentanyl with other One year old man died in North Vancouver on Friday. I remember the day Defense and all came out and my dealer said, you know, I've got these new pills, their fake boxes. He didn't tell me they were fentanyl, because nobody knew what fentanyl was. Yet everybody that we touch and everybody that we deal with, has a story. If I can get off, I would, But mostly detoxes are full, all the shelters are full. Every time you don't,

I know I'm taking a risk. I know that I might die, but at that point you're not really thinking about that because you're so dopey. You just want to feel better, right, doesn't matter how many times I indeed, I still use the xtate because the worst falls are so bad. They could never really see us when we were alive, but in death, so many deaths, finally we were noticed. Maybe it was the overdoses of white middle

class kids that pushed us into the public eye. Maybe it was the sheer scale, so many deaths, but it seemed like they finally saw us. But then what happened. Those illegal ops tents were given a little money and we're sanctioned. There were a few half measures, but eventually things just kind of settled into this awful malaise. The national press moved on to cover other crises. The government stopped talking and thinking about us nearly as much, and

so the death continued. The sense of urgency evaporated. Was a year they were like, oh, everything's gotten better. The interventions we have are working, no no now ops sites, overdose prevention sites and the locks, and this is successful. Rolls around and everybody starts fucking dying even worse than before us or I'm trying not to swear, go ahead and scrapped down as many bombs as you want, well

at any rate. So comes around and everyone starts dying a lot, and I think that, you know, really motivated people to be like, this is far from over and we need to do something direct. When COVID nineteen hit, borders closed and drug prices jumped. Suddenly, there was way more benzos in the dope. People were passing out for hours and hours. The drug supply was more dangerous than ever.

It was so hard for you know, drug user groups when when COVID started, because it was it was never really a COVID emergency for us, Like as soon as it started, we knew exactly what's gonna happen. We're like, they're gonna shut down all the services. People who are experiencing homelessness are gonna be left out starving with their feet soaked, and you know people, they're gonna close overdose prevention sites that really restrict them, and like, lots of

people are gonna die. Around that time, I started to get calls from government officials. They were asking me what to do if I was in their position, how could I keep people from dying. It was pretty clear they knew we were about to break records. The thing I kept telling them was safe Supply. We need to fucking safe supply at drugs. Don't try to convince us not

to use drugs. Don't wait until we're on the edge of death before doing something to help give us a regulated pharmaceutical version of ventanyl, heroin, crack, cocaine, meth whatever,

allow us to know what's in our drugs. The government eventually did put out something they called Safe Supply, but it didn't include the drugs that people actually used on the street, and it required doctors to prescribe them to us, and for reasons I'll get into later in this episode, it failed to make a real den and all the death new numbers from the Corner Service show May was the deadliest month yet in the overdose crisis. Last month, the hundred and seventy people died. That's a forty four

percent jump from April. That's a new record for a single month. Drug overdoses are getting so much worse. In all of June, eight people died from COVID from Melissa drugs one hundred and seventy five, a new all time monthly records, surpassing the previous record, which was the month before. Another one hundred and seventy five people have died from overdoses in July alone, the vast majority of them connected

to fentanyl. The overdose numbers came out and there was like the worst month ever, and we're like, this is a this is a travesty. We need to do something right away. UM. So that's when we called together that meeting. Now I remember, I think you both were there. You were Arrison was like on zoom or something, and we're talking about doing this and talking about a name, making a group that wasn't any of the existing groups like b c U, Connor Vandy or whatever, and it was

like what do we call it? And people were suggesting safe supply this or safe supply that, and then the conversation went to like, well, the government has now made that word really hard to unpack, and and was like liberation Front, you know, like that old seventies militancy, and that's the name that's stuck the drug user liberation Front. Those words felt uncooptible to us, and a plan started to emerge by drugs, test them and hand them out for free in public, Invite the media and let the

whole world see what we're doing. Let everyone know what a safe supply really looks like. The first action that we threw together is really fast, um, and I was I was pretty confident that I could get it from from the dark web, and the people who are trying to source in person ended up they all ended up falling through. And the only one that reliably came through

with the darknet. This has long been like an idea you talked about in the neighborhood, you know, like giving out drugs, Like and Livingston several years ago was like, we should just have a sock full that delatted and handed out and like at the side of meetings and conferences and then and so I remember that first giveaway.

It was like in June, you know, they had a little tent on dun Levy Street and the spectrometer readings and the dope was being given out in the tent, but there wasn't heroin, right, It was like that nobody could find that yet, at least not in a not in a concentration or not like with ingredients that we're

happy with, right, that's right. Yeah, so we did. We did end up finding heroin, but it was it was cut with with fent on, and so we decided to skip the heroin and just hand out coke and opium instead. We set up a little blue tent near VANDU on the corner of dun Levan Hastings. The cops were right across the street. Someone was playing the Clash on the boom box. People lined up, laughing and chatting, some not really believing this was happening, and they got to choose

a couple of points of coke or some opium. The government is not coming to save us, so we have to save ourselves. That's what we fucking learned. We learned it. We learned it with safe injection sites. They weren't going to set up Insight until we set up sites there and there illegally without permission ourselves. First, we broke the law to embarrass them into doing it. That was the last overdose crisis. There's another overdose crisis, and our demand

is safe supply and it's the same fucking thing. They're not going to give it to us, so we better fucking do it ourselves. And that's what today is all about. What we devote free drugs to a tiny percentage of the people on the downtown east Side who could have used them, and our quantities were very small. That wasn't going to give people what they needed for the day, but it was provocative. It showed what was possible, and in the words of activist Phoenix McGreevy, it felt like

a tiny moment of liberation. The cops didn't arrest anyone that day, and the government basically ignored our action. So we decided to do it again. We started planning more ahead, and we're able to you know, we wouldn't plan an action until we actually had the substances to avoid that sort of um, kind of chaotic rush to find good dope. So what we do is we crowd fund money from middle class, normal well to do citizens. We take their money, we turn it into bitcoin. We trade the bitcoin for

ma Narrow, which is an untraceable form of cryptocurrency. We use Linux to go on these dark web markets using Onion servers, so it's like relatively private, you know, you engage with these vendors on these dark dark web markets and then your drugs just come in the mail. The first time I did it, I was like, I can't believe you know, this just worked right? Uh? And it continues to like I have Heroin with me right now.

Let's see. So this is like this is like a cardboard package that came into mail right with postal marks all over it, like did Amazon give us to you? No? No, nook there it is right there, us pointing the microphone at it as if that tell us here's all the work that has brought us here on this day of action. On this the fourteenth of April, the fifth year declaration

of the overdose crisis. Seventeen hundred people died last year and these aren't faceless April fourteen, that's that was the five five year anniversary of the declaration of the overdose crisis in BC. And there's an event and I remember the lineup was down the alley, you know, between Hastings and pender Off a dune Levy there and oh yeah, all the way over to Gore. Yeah, they went down

the whole alley. We're gonna keep getting out of the free drugs of free drugs are in this time over here, pre cocaine, heroin, and methap set a name, all playing all tests and we're not gonna stock of just stock. We kind of screwed up because we were just like, if you use drugs, if you're over the age of eighteen, we will screen you. You can get pre screened at

Van do blah blah blah. So it was just like everybody that used drugs, our screening wasn't you had to be an active member of a drug user group in the neighborhood. It was just like, do you use drugs? Are you over eighteen? And uh, you know there were advantages to that, I e. Like, people that aren't members of these groups could have access to a safe supply

at that time for that one you know dose. But I'm also just like the amount of people that wanted the dope that didn't get it because we didn't you know, give people like tickets or counted out. You know, people lined up and then waited for a while, and some people were hollering at me out it, you know, like and everybody. I just remember because we had to. We were doing a march afterwards in Jeremy was just like start the march. These people are gonna kill me. And

I was just like, we fucked up? What was that? Like what was happening? Well, you know, we we kind of like ran out of all the dope we're supposed to have people kind of running up and down the line like letting people know that, like what's what's happening, and um, you know if some some people kind of got tired. It was a long day and like the message didn't get all the way down the line. I'm like,

we're out. Like I've been telling them to like run down the line like as we go, like and they're like someone's gonna beat that ship out of you, Like you gotta get out of here right now. And people are like, where is that guy. I'm like, Arias, we gotta go now, we gotta go. No more cloud seconds they've all been Vancouver art punk band crack Cloud played

off the back of a flat bed. A big crowd followed as they rolled down Hastings heavy riffs echoing off the old s r os despite running out of DOLP. Dolf's second giveaway was a big success, and it had an almost joyful feel to it, with rock bands and a barbecue. Nothing about the giveaway felt medical or bureaucratic. Soon, Dolf had plans to do a third giveaway, but this time it would be even more provocative. It would really

give people something to talk about. The three big events we did over the summer were designed to have a lot of media, Paul and a lot of attention drawn to them. That's why we're doing the blog parties and stuff, and we're trying to figure out where we want to do it. And the idea was floated in front of the cop shop and we're like, oh, that seems like kind of stupid, like that seems like we're just asking

to like get our just get beat um. But you know, then it then it just like became this this thing where we're like, it's it's it's not really about protecting us, it's about making a statement and really getting this kind of conversation happening. And it was one of the most strategic things that I think we did. And then we were like, well, it would be nice if we had somebody who has a little bit more kind of protection

to be able to give this stuff out. It just so happened that we knew someone who fit the Bill City councilor James Swanson. I've known Gene for a few years, long before she became a city counselor. She was a community organizer, a dogged radical force for social change. And Jeane just recently would had like donated some some money, like a thousand dollars to the Drug User Liberation Front and we're like, hey, Geane, it seems like you know, you're a real ally here. Um, we have a crazy idea.

What do you say you come and give out the dope with us? And she's like yeah, I'm like it's gonna get a bit crazier. We're gonna do it right in front of the police station in the downtown you side. And she's like, yeah, that sounds great. Thanks so much to Dolphin Van Do for organizing this. It's so so so bad that you had to organize it. Um, I want to talk to you about something you did this

week because you're taking some heat over it. You hand it out legal drugs with an organization or illicit drugs with an organization called the Drug Users Liberation Front. Um, what exactly did you do so? Uh Dolf? That Drug Users Liberation Front and van do the vancouvern are a network of drug user's had an action. They asked me to come and hand out shape drugs that they had tested.

We need government to act like the people who die from poison drugs are just as important as the people who die from cold, because they are, and that means we need safe supply now for everyone who wants it. Is that really what you should be doing as an elected person for the glo of the city. That isn't a big question that we should be asking. The big question we should be asking is should six almost six

people a day be dying from a preventable cause. We need a safe supply, and we need it now, and we can't keep waiting and waiting and waiting. Perhaps measures and Aris. You were dressed up as Willy Wonka that day, right, I was high and I was like, wouldn't it be funny if we mailed everyone a giant Willie Wonka ticket inviting them to this event, just like the film Willy Wonka. Well, once you have the golden ticket idea, then you're like,

it's a golden ticket giveaway. Then you're like, I'm Willie Wonka. You know, I've heard you say that this is like a symbolic action. It's not meant to give everyone what they need for across the whole neighborhood for the whole day or whatever it's it's it's supposed to be provoking action from government, right. I think drug policy is a really I mean, aside from its relationship to you know,

systematic racism, it's a game of public opinion. So what you want to do is try and get as much price and as much good press on the issue to try and sway people's understanding of why this policy needs to be changed. I see this the same way as Heiress. It's all still mostly about changing people's minds. I really wish I could tell you that we could just do it ourselves, that we could just grow poppies or buy enough drugs to replace the toxic drug supply. But you've

got to stop and consider the scale. Experts estimate that over a hundred thousand people regularly use illicit opioids in BC. There's even more people if you count all the weekend warriors and not to mention the people who use side or smoke rock. Completely replacing the toxic drug supply for all those people is a massive undertaking. The only institution that's big enough to deliver access to safe drugs for

that many people might be the state. So so far, DOLPH has only been able to give out a couple of points to a few dozen people at a handful of events. But these actions show what's possible. They're pushing the conversation about safe supply into the mainstream, and they're putting pressure on the government to offer that kind of program at scale. I think the proof is in the pudding. We know we've given out over a hundred and twenty

grams of drugs. Nobody's overdosed. To me, it's a problem with the regulation of drugs, and I think what we're illustrating is as long as people know what they're getting and what they're dosing themselves with, they aren't going to die. Uh. Here's here's the thing. I'm like, we're not adding anything to the market. The purpose of DOLPH is to take

drugs that already exists. They are already there. You know, all the they're in the country, all the crimes happened, uh, and to take them out of the market, test them, label them, and reintroduce them. That we're not adding any additional drugs to the market. We're not manufacturing government on producing drugs. Were just taking what exists and labeling and then giving it back to people without making any money. So do you need someone behind all that writing a prescription?

Hell no, no prescribers. Maybe maybe that's a good thing to explain. Actually, what what's the problem with prescribers? So I can I can talk to this as pretty well as you know, someone who's kind of working uh in a sort of safe supply evaluation, and it talked to two lots of doctors. Um. You know, either doctors don't want to prescribe because they're you know, opposed to the

whole you know, concept of harm reduction. Or the ones who do are are so afraid that they're going to be audited by the college because they are being audited regularly, um, or they're bullied by their colleagues and don't prescribe. And you know, kind of going a bit deeper than that, like it's safe supplies just something that is not fit for the medical system and relationships that people have with

their healthcare providers. UM. You know, if you go to your your doctor is someone who's like an alcoholic and you ask for you know, more and more alcoholic, you know your doctor is gonna be like, well, maybe we should like think about weaning you off UM. And you know that's that's the same thing that's gonna gonna happen with like substances, and that's not people's relationships with substances.

A lot of the time. Some people are recreational and some people have chaotic patterns, but coercion doesn't work, and neither does UM force treatment. It's I can just chime in here too. I'm just like, this really makes me mad about modern drug rhetoric, where people are like, drugs aren't a criminal issue, there are a medical issue. There neither a criminal issue nor a medical issue. There are

social issue, and it's an issue of bad regulation. So anyone out there in radio land listening to this, stop saying that drugs are a medical issue. You know, chaotic patterns of substance use, So people are using drugs and it's just drying their lives. I'm like, that's an issue, but it doesn't mean everyone who uses drugs has a substance whose disorder or a mental disorder, or are traumatized. Drugs are are fun and uh, you know, I like doing them. I might have my own problems, but I

don't see them as a crutch. I see them to a means of enjoying things. You know. In November, Dolph apply to make what they're doing legal. They sent documents off to the federal government with the support of Vancouver City Council. If granted, Dolph would be able to run a legally sanctioned compassion club. It's been five months and still no word from the federal government. So that's what we dream of creating in BC. But what do we actually have? What options do drug users have right now

to avoid the deadly street supply. If you watch the mainstream news or listen to government press conferences, you might have heard that BC already has a safe supply. That's what the government claims. It's just not true, but has effectively muddied the waters and made life much more challenging for drug user activists. The story starts back in COVID and the overdose crisis were raging, and the BCNDP quickly rolled out a new program called Risk Mitigation Prescribing. It

was a set of directives to physicians. For the first time, they were told they could prescribe medications to drug users as a substitute for the illegal street supply, not part of a treatment program or any kind of pain management, just to keep them out of the illicit market. I consulted on these guidelines and it felt like they were a little step forward. We even covered the Risk Mitigation program on Crackdown when it first launched. What I'm doing

right now is legal. This is a legal process that I have been accepted to do. I don't know. I just hope it's going to be a different chapter in my life. Ye I guess we have to give us a try. Here. Is you really going on? You're hearing Crackdown editorial board member Laura shaver Back in March. Laura was one of the first people I knew who got

drugs through this new program. So I UM, I got ahold of my doctor yesterday's UM and asked, uh if I can get the safe reply basically UM replacement for my heroin youth and my UM cocaine use and and that's above and beyond what I already have as my metadult prescription and would the doctors say, She says, Okay, how much are you using? What? What? What is the which one would you like? Wow? Well, I'm really glad for you, Laura. I'm really I'm really happy for you.

Thank you, And I'm actually pretty happy to you. I'm excited because it's just actually might be a kind of a different maybe a different except for me that I had planned. Maybe I'm going to finally get to do non street narcotics and not have to be street narcotics anymore. Yeah, I hope so me too. It would be kind of cool, I think. But Laura didn't stop using street drugs. The government's so called safe Supply program wasn't enough for her, and it hasn't been enough for almost everyone I talked

to about it. This week Crackdowns On. Ryan McNeil published a paper about BCS risk mitigation prescribing program in the American Journal of Public Health. So I wanted to have him on the show to tell us what he found. Hey, Ryan, it's been a minute, Um, welcome back. Can you introduce yourself? Great,

Hi Garth, It's Ryan mcnale. I'm an assistant professor in the school of Medicine at Yale and uh I Guess Scientific advisor for Crackdown Fucking A. Ryan McNeil recently published a paper about BCS risk Mitigation prescribing program in the American Journal of Public Health. In his paper, Ryan set out to find out what drug users actually think of it.

We've got the study approved and then we started talking to people in February of and what we really wanted to do is kind of get a cross section of folks from across the province who had accessed or tried to access prescriptions under the guidelines to really understand, you know, what's happening. How do they feel about this change and then finally were they able to access prescriptions and how and then what impact did they have on their lives?

And so we ended up talking um to forty people predominantly in Vancouver the Interior and uh from Vancouver Island. The first thing Ryan's participants tell him isn't the drug supply became way worse during COVID. The price of meth was skyrocketing, there were more benso diazepines in the down than ever before, and there was absolutely massive fluctuations in the potency of fentanyl in the middle of that clusterfuck.

Many of the participants were eager to try out the government's new program, and so folks you know, talked about, hey, you know what, it is helpful to me, right, It does to some extent, limit my engagement with the drug supply. It does let me kind of establish better patterns around my drug use, especially as we're experiencing this huge shot

to the supply. But ultimately, like we we can't pretend it's the same thing, it's what I'm used to, or that it allows or accommodates the types of drug using experience that I want. And that was mostly because the drugs were not the same ones people used in the street. If you use meth, they might put you on adderall. If you're wired de fentanyl and enzos, they put you onto lauded. And that's just not good enough. Most people

I know can't even get by on heroin anymore. Not to mention lots of people got prescribed way too small a dose to keep them from feeling sick. Ultimately, so many people framed it as you know what, it's good,

but it's not the same. I mean, there's one of our participants who put it one particular way, which is like, you know, separately, is like the crassest quote I've ever been able to get into an act academic paper, and I'm like, awesome, But he basically put it this way, and it's like it's the terms that everybody described it. So it's just fucking boring. I don't feel the rush. It's like having fucking sereal with no milk. It's just like jerking off with no busting a nut, you know

what I mean, It's not the same. And so what this meant for so many people that we talked to, and really the majority of them, we're still supplementing their use by accessing street based drugs. Yeah, I definitely, you know, I see a thirty three out of the forty respondents in your the people you interviewed, we're still relying on

the street supply, at least in part. And that really reflects what I saw too, is people started off with a lot of hope, um, but then a handful of delauted just is an ups to substituting for um, you know, really powerful fentanyl or benzo dope. You know, it just it just doesn't bridge people across. And certainly one of the things that we saw with the guideline implementation is that, you know, close to people who were able to access

a prescription, we're put on basically daily dispensation. That an fortunate part of really the method own program pored it over to this and folks being put on on daily pick up. In other words, Ryan's participants had pretty complicated feelings about the program, and that's how people who actually got prescriptions feel. An even bigger problem with the risk mitigation guidelines is that only a tiny percentage of BC's

drug users could actually access the program. Ryan was curious about why, and so we wrote a Freedom of Information Act request to see some of the government's emails. One email in particular jumped out at him so uncovered in this kind of hundreds of pages of documents, So we ended up getting back It was this email from uh Dr David Unger, who's the Deputy Registrar of the College of Physicians and Surgeons BC. Here's what doctor Unger's email says, quote,

I write with deep concern. There's been tremendous backlash and the guidelines put out thus far from doctors that manage addiction patients and in adictions specialist stating to me that they're shocked at the College has permitted these guidelines to be put up. Doctors feel that they're being put into positions where they're being asked to do guided to do things that are dangerous unquote. In a very concrete way.

This is laying out that there was opposition to these guidelines, and it's coming directly from the people vested with the responsibility of caring for folks who use drugs. I mean, I can confirm this. I just I saw so many examples of doctors who did not want to do this, you know who just said either in meetings or two people we were trying to help get on the prescribing you know. No, the opposition from doctors has been so loud that it's even made its way into government press conferences.

Here's Dr Remnick dossage from Doctors of BC speaking into press conference with Sheila Malcolmson, BCS, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions. I don't mind telling you that as a doctor, it's not an easy decision to prescribe a narcotic. Even if it is regulated, there can be all kinds of ramifications for the patient and for the prescriber. Doctors will look at all extenuating circumstances before deciding on this approach.

So to sum it all up, BCS so called Safe Supply program is not accessible to most drug users, doesn't give those few who can access it the drugs they're actually using on the street, doesn't provide most people a dose necessary to avoid withdrawal symptoms, requires almost everybody to go to the pharmacy every single day, and is being administered by a community of doctors who are very uncomfortable with the whole thing. Hey, can you hear me asking?

This is Moira Whiten, a health reporter with the TIE. Moira and I both heard the press conference where the government claimed they had offered around twelve thousand people what they called safe supply. I wasn't so sure, and neither was Moira. I emailed and I asked if they could provide the substances that they're counting under that number, and

and then I pressed a little bit more. They actually gave me the breakdown, um, and what I found is that, you know, none of the drugs that they were counting under the twelve thousand people figure were actually drugs that people would necessarily be seeking on the illicit supply like in a in a regular way. Um, you know, if someone were using methamphetamine, they would be prescribed at all, and so that would be counted in this twelve thousand

person figure. So what they're counting in that figure are mostly short term under three weeks prescriptions. It's not safe supply UM as as you and listeners will know, UM because it's counting alternatives UM to the street supply rather than direct untainted replacements. And so Moira says, this made you're curious how many people in BC are actually on something that resembles what we would call a safe supply.

How many people are getting the kind of drugs they previously used on the street and without any expectation of a taper or anything else. There are a number of like about four or five pilot projects that are mostly federally funded, that are providing safe supply in NBC. Is also an estimate, because um, we don't have like a centralized publicly reported number from those federal pilot projects that

are operating in addition to the crosstown clinics. From the estimate I have, there's about a hundred and thirty people UM at most I know it does fulctuate slightly at Crosstown UM, and then a handful more in Surrey receiving inductible diocetle morphine as well. UM. And then there is the Safer Initiative in Victoria and a couple of other pilot projects that are very small in scale. Five people.

That's an absolutely tiny number. I don't even know if all five hundred of those people are actually getting the dose that they need. This just isn't what a serious emergency response looks like. This isn't what it looks like when they care whether we live or die. Maybe the government hopes this is all just going to go away, that there just won't be any of us left, but

I wouldn't count on that. Experts say the number of people regularly using illicit opioids keeps going up, and as the old drug user adage goes, things can always get worse, and they usually do. Can you imagine if the energy put into COVID vaccination was put into ensuring access to say for supply among folks and bc as more people have died of overdose than of covid R. Yeah, what we really heard from folks is, you know, a in some communities there were just no prescribers, no willing prescribers,

or there were very few. I think we see this in government announcements all the time, where there's this tendency to ward wanting to act like, hey, you know, it's safe supply. We're doing that, you know, wrap a little bow on it, call it done. It's out there in the world, and that's it. And and really this is the first step, and many more are going to be needed to ensure the people actually have access to what

they need. Dolf's drug giveaways not only show what's possible, but breaking the law seems to be the only way that we get anywhere. Civil disobedience and twisting the government's arm is how we got access to syringes, crack pipes, and overdose prevention sites. It's the same thing with safe supply, but the state is crafty. They've stolen our word, watered it down, and created a high barrier program that only

a few can access. And then right wing calumnists and conservative politicians and other governments point at BC and they say, look, they tried safe supply and it doesn't work, even though the truth is we haven't really tried safe supply here at all. So I'm saying to governments, stop patting yourselves on the back for doing funk all. Stop calling whatever water down bullshit. You got safe supply. If you're not going to help, at least take our word out of

your mouth. Crackdown is produced on Musquilliam, Squamish and Slay with the Territories. If you like what we do, please consider donating at patreon dot com slash crackdown pot. The research covered in this episode is part of a supplement in the American Journal of Public Health. It's called Crisis and Change, Overdose and Health Justice, During and After COVID. Our editorial board is Simona Marsh, Sheldon Caster, Greg Frez, Jeff Lowden, Dean Wilson, Laura Shaber, Rian Jean and Rest

in Peace, Dave Murray and Charis Q. Watt. This episode was conceptualized, written and produced by Sam Fen, Alex Kim, Alex Dubour, Lisa Hale, Ryan McNeil, and me Garth Mollins. Thanks also to Alex Betsos We're Sorry for your Dad's passing, My Friend. Sound design by Alex Kim. Original score was written and performed by James Ash, Sam Finn and I stay safe and keep six