The War Over Safe Drug Supply in Vancouver

July 24, 2024 7:14 AM

With advocates on both sides framing their positions in terms of absolute right and wrong, it has become nearly impossible to have a nuanced conversation. (slMacLeans)
posted by Kitteh (9 comments total)

There are solutions out there for this problem (hopefully) but they're expensive and multi-faceted. It's not just harm reduction through vetted drugs and clean needles. That keeps people from ODing, but it doesn't do anything about their addictions and what's keeping them on the streets. Canada has spent decades de- and under-funding mental health support and subsidized housing. Yet we're oh so shocked when the amount of people on the street with obvious mental health issues keeps increasing. Our courts tend to be more understanding and less likely to put such people into long term incarceration, but with the lack of any support once they're out of jail the cycle is never broken.

Personally, as someone who works and lives in downtown Toronto, I'm burned out by the amount of aggressive and unwell people I see on the streets. I hear about clean drugs and harm reduction, but just don't see the next step. My city has to fight tooth and nail to get even a handful of housing built because of NIMBY backlash. And even with housing and clean drugs, that still doesn't resolve the mental health and addiction issues. There's no money for it. There's never any money for it.
posted by thecjm at 9:19 AM on July 24 [11 favorites]

You’re on the streets alone, you can’t get health care

thecjm, on money:

Five members of Beverly Enterprises’ board of directors had ties to Governor Reagan; the chairman was vice chairman of a Reagan fundraising dinner, and “four others were either politically active in one or both of the Reagan [gubernatorial] campaigns and/or contributed large or undisclosed sums of money to the campaign.” Financial ties between the governor, who was emptying state hospitals, and business persons who were profiting from the process would also soon become apparent in other states.

[salon, Excerpted from "American Psychosis: How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System" by E. Fuller Torrey (g)]
posted by HearHere at 10:19 AM on July 24 [2 favorites]

Here's a thought--mainly for people who don't want to address the issue:
It's interesting that NIMBY's fight any project that will address homelessness, drug use, and mental health to get people off the street and hopefully into safe places physically and mentally, and yet they're fine with having them on their streets. Oh, they'd prefer they simply disappear or die, but if they really wanted not to look at street people with problems, then why not let them have walls they can hide behind? Give them housing or hospitalize them until they're well enough to function in society. There are going to be more and more homeless people. Unless you're a fascist and demand that they be shipped somewhere else, forcibly detained, or shot, you'll be looking at them. If you give them housing and health care, you don't have to see them on the street. Unless you enjoy watching someone suffer, even if it does lower the tone of the neighborhood.
posted by BlueHorse at 10:29 AM on July 24 [9 favorites]

HearHere, I hear you, but the article and the poster you were responding to were Canadian?
posted by I EAT TAPAS at 10:44 AM on July 24 [15 favorites]

I EAT TAPAS, Reagan is dead. the politician in the article is contemporary: "He makes up a fake argument because he wants people not to hope they might be able to get the medication they can't afford, or the reproductive medicines they need" [cbc]

thecjm's formulation was less focused on space than time: never
posted by HearHere at 11:55 AM on July 24

illegal in B.C. ?
"Ninety-five percent of British Columbia, including Vancouver, is on unceded traditional First Nations territory." [opentextbc.ca]
posted by HearHere at 12:44 PM on July 24 [3 favorites]

Kitteh, thank you for posting! i always appreciate your posts & realize i have probably not said that yet
posted by HearHere at 1:11 PM on July 24 [2 favorites]

I found this article infuriating.
I have lived in Vancouver since 1983 other than a few years in Montreal 30 years ago.
Back in 2021 I was trying to quit drinking, and successful at cutting down my intake under the care of a wonderful family doctor. Work found out, though, because I needed some time off after a relapse. I work for the government and under their employee treatment program for people with substance use disorder, I was forced into an AA facility, followed by 2 years of substance testing, 56 surprise tests in all.
So, in the rehab facility I saw up close what was going on, and have since educated myself, and also joined an organization that fights for work place substance use policies rooted in evidence based healthcare.
Aaron Gun, the festering goon behind Vancouver Is Dying, is not a journalist. He turns out extreme right wing propaganda and is currently trying to run as a conservative candidate in the next federal election. Vancouver Is Dying is not a documentary, either, it's full on propaganda as well. Eleanor Sturko is essentially a provincial version of Pierre Poilievre whose Everything Is broken video incessantly lied and played fast and loose with truth.
The right wing has seized on harm reduction as a wedge issue and has unceasingly pumped the debate full of lies which are never challenged by the press in this country.
Julian Somers is another notorious piece of shit. He pushes for abstinence only solutions, primarily because there is an immense amount of money to be made in treatment, addiction assessments, and substance testing. It's a new gold rush.
Anyways, I think I will put together a post when I have time that delves further into all of this.
My anger with the article is that none of this is reported, and these people I have mentioned are involved for personal, political, and financial gain, so maybe proper context McClean's?
We've had safe supply in the alcohol industry for decades and decades and I for one applaud what DULF and other organizations are trying to do with other drugs.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 1:13 PM on July 24 [17 favorites]

maybe proper context McClean's?
"The history of drug prohibition in Canada is punctuated by figures who played seminal roles in shaping policies that continue to harm communities (especially racialized) to this day. Emily Murphy was one such figure. She was a magistrate and ardent moral reformer who published a series of articles in Maclean’s Magazine that would later be compiled into a book, The Black Candle (1922). Her writing depicts substance use as destabilizing, corrupting force within civilized society and casts “racialized others” as a threat to a white nation." [drugpolicy.ca]
posted by HearHere at 1:28 PM on July 24 [1 favorite]