December 28, 2024 • 13 mins
Adam Zivo, Founder & Director of the Centre for Responsible Drug Policy & Breaking Needles, joins Jon Liedtke on AM800 CKLW to discuss what 2024 brought to Safe Supply opioid programs in Canada and what to expect in 2025.
This interview aired on AM800 CKLW
This interview aired on AM800 CKLW
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome back to AM eight hundred CKLW. John Lidkey here,
and I am glad to be joined right now by
someone who is very knowledgeable on the harm reduction angle,
the drug policy angle, and the opioid and synthetic opioid file,
the founder and director of the Center for Responsible Drug Policy,
(00:25):
as well as the publication Breaking Needles. Adam Zo joins
me right now, Hey, Adam, how you doing good.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
It's great to have you here. So doing a little
bit of a year end reflection right now on this show,
and yours is one file that I didn't want to
leave lingering. There are certain stories that come up throughout
the year that you know, you take them or leave them.
I don't care too much about it, but yours is
one that I've followed now for actually a better part
of two years, and I wanted to get a reflection
(00:54):
on what twenty twenty four has meant when it comes
to the drug policy, respective from the harm reduction perspective,
what you've been seeing on the grounds, because I know
that there has been a lot that's been going on
just in this calendar year.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Well, so what I would say is that twenty twenty
four is the year when the pendulum really swung on
harm reduction and diction policy in Canada more generally, So,
you know, we saw that drug decriminalization ended in BC.
We saw a general recognition that it was a terrible experiment,
at least as the way that it was modeled in
British Columbia Portugal is a very different model. We saw
(01:34):
an increased recognition across all levels of governments that we
need to have more accountability for drug use. We saw
the BCNDP embrace law and order politics and pivot towards
discussing recovery rather than just simply enabling drug use. And
on safe supply, which is my parent primary beat, we
saw a validation of the concerns about widespread diversion, concerns
(01:58):
which had been dismissed in twenty twenty three as disinformation.
So when I first started writing articles about safe supply diversion,
you know, my first one came out in May of
twenty twenty three. The federal government insisted that this was unscientific,
that safe supply was backed by strong evidence that I
was fear mongering and spreading disinformation. In January and February
(02:22):
of this year, we had the BC government come out
and say that actually, there are widespread concerns that diversion
is happening and it is an everyday occurrence, and that
this intervention is not evidence based. Really. Then we saw
the London Police admits in June and July that hydromorphone seizures,
(02:44):
that's the opioid that is dispensed through safer supply primarily
you know, it's as strong as heroin, had that the
seizures of this drug had increased by over three thousand
percent since safe supply became widely available. Right, And then
I got that data showing that in Waterloo, a Niagara region,
that they also saw increases of one thousand or one
(03:04):
five hundred percent in hydromorphin seizures. So we saw these
police departments finally come out and say, actually, we see
that there's a problem. We see that this drug is
flooding the market, and we know from what we're hearing
from our finline officers that safer supply is driving this.
We saw the federal governments, which was previously gung ho
(03:26):
on decriminalization and gung ho on safe supply, suddenly take
things back a lot. So let's say the Minister for
Addiction and Mental Health y are a Sachs. You know,
she was a giant safe Supply advocate. She would slander
anyone who criticized the program, saying that they were fear mongering.
The last time that she has publicly advocated for safeer
(03:48):
supply was in February of this year. Since then, she's
been completely silent. You know, I was at the Canadian
Society of Addiction Medicines Annual Scientific Conference last year, sorry,
last month, and your sex provided a video recording opening remarks,
and over the course of her several minutes speech, she
listed all the things that she was proud of in
(04:10):
terms of interventions that the federal government had invested into,
and safe supply was completely omitted, it says, if it
didn't exist. So taking all these things together, we can
see that the public is exhausted with harm reduction radicalism,
even if more moderate forms of harm reduction are useful.
You know, I think we can all agree on that,
(04:31):
and that various provincial governments as well as the federal
government are realizing that it is that it is a
political liability to continue supporting these radical interventions that did
not pivot towards recovery.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
You know, I think it's a little bit of the
slippery slope is what people started to see, and not
in an abstract sense, but in a very real sense.
I remember the story about the British Columbia hospital where
there was a nurse who was told to stop breastfeeding
because they were exposed to fentanyl smoke, for example, And
they were allowing for people to bring sharps into the
(05:08):
hospital because they didn't want to risk upsetting the people
who were bringing those in who might be using drugs. Obviously,
it's been a very quick shift this year away from
measures that allowed that type of a thing. What do
you think it was that caused overwhelmingly the situation to change.
(05:28):
Was it the reality on the ground, Was it that
it became more observant for people, or was it ideological shifts?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I think that reality is on the ground, shifted perspectives,
and I think that there's a class element here that's
really important. So harm reduction radicalism has been around since
the mid twenty tens, late twenty tens. You know, we
had an increase in supervise injection sites. We had we
had safe supply in London, Ontario in twenty sixteen. We
(05:57):
had it expand in twenty twenty, and for the most part,
people supported it because it sounded great in theory. Right
in theory, all of these interventions sound wonderful because the
harm reduction activists will say that there is a meaningful
effort to shepherd people into recovery. They promised that this
would reduce public disorder. They said that open drug use
(06:18):
would not be a big problem, and it was apparent
a few years ago. It was already apparent that this
was not necessarily true. But the problem, though, is that
the open drug use and the public disorder that we
saw was mostly quarantine to low income neighborhoods. And let's
be frank, most Canadians don't care about what happens in
(06:39):
those neighborhoods because they don't care about what happens to
poor people. But after the pandemic, as addictions spiraled out
of control and open drug use spiraled out of control,
and decriminalization allowed it to proliferate in every neighborhood, suddenly
middle class Canadians said, wait a second, Now I'm finding
(06:59):
needles in my playground. Now I'm seeing drug addicts shout
at children in the area that I live in, and
that changed their perspective. They were no longer able to
just support these policies in theory because they as to
contend with the real life consequences of these interventions.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Showing up in your own neighborhood can certainly change people's
perspectives on things, and I guess shifted away from the
ideal to the actual on the ground. We're looking at
a I mean, who knows what this government's going to
look like in a couple of weeks at them. Things
are changing so rapidly right now. There was just a
cabinet shuffle that happened. We're expecting a change of government
(07:42):
to occur next year, whenever the election will be. How
do you think things will look under an expected here
qualiev conservative government.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Well, I mean, obviously they're going to invest significantly into recovery.
That's their whole thing. They've been very staunch critics of
radical forms of harm reduction. All at the same time,
they do generally recognize that more moderate interventions like needled
exchanges can be useful, and so poly f has been
He's focused his entire campaign on teaming our cities taming
(08:12):
the addiction crisis, ensuring that there is accountability, and I'm
very confident that he will follow through that any attempt
at decriminalizing drugs will be killed. You know, drug decriminalizations
still exists to a certain extent in BC. You can
still possess drugs, you just can't use them openly, which
makes it easier for drug traffickers to move their product
(08:33):
around because they just keep it below a certain threshold
that will probably disappear because that's under federal jurisdiction. Right,
you might see an attempt to outlaw the prescription of
safer supply, and you'll see increased investments into recovery oriented treatment.
That being said, there's only so much of the federal
government can do because healthcare is under provincial jurisdiction. So
(08:56):
they can say that they want to chart this direction.
But if provincial governments still want to stick with harm
reduction radicalism, I mean it's going to be hard to
prevent that from happening. So we'll still see you more
harm reduction VC, and we'll still see it a lot
in Ontario because even though the Ford government is nominally conservative,
(09:17):
they've been missing an action here. So we'll see a
huge shift towards recovery oriented treatment, but maybe not as
much as people want to see because of that jurisdictional difference.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Is there a middle ground between the two when it
comes to a recovery based abstinate treatment, which is what's
being pushed by the federal government, well, by excuse me,
by expected Pierre Puali of federal government and more of
the more progressive harm reduction measures, Like is there a
combination that you see as an ideal.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, I mean there are harm reduction initiatives that can
help with the addiction crisis, but at the same time,
they just need to be better managed and better regulated.
So let's say overdose prevention sites slash supervised injection sites
right now, they're an absolute disaster because they're underregulated. We
often employ people with lived or living experience, which means
(10:10):
that these interventions are being sorry, these standards are being
staffed by people who were active drug addicts. And we
saw what that did in Toronto, right where there was
a South Riverdale, you know, overdose overdose prevention site slash
supervise injection site, and neighbors said that it became a
lawless area that police were dissuaded from enforcing the law
(10:33):
near the site. As a result, drug traffickers flocked to
the area. Violence increased, children were being harassed by violent
drug addicts, which I think we can all agree is
a bad thing. You would have drug dealers who would
go into this site and they would take up a booth,
a booth that was supposed to provide a safe space
for people to use their drugs, but you know safe
(10:56):
in quotation marks, and they would just they would traffic
drugs from that booth for the whole day, right, So
they essentially turned the supervised injection side into a drug
trafficking hub. Now, in a situation like this, you know
it's not a good intervention. But if you had a
supervised injection site that was first of all, not near
(11:16):
any schools, and second of all, you know, didn't employ
act addicts, and third you know, had doctors on site
who could prescribe people addiction medications like methodone or suboxone,
so that you can get that right away, you know,
maybe that would be better. Now. Am I saying that
I necessarily support this model? No, because I can see no,
(11:41):
Because I can see that there could be problems there.
But I think that it's a model that is reasonable
enough for us to have discussion about with respect to
safe supply. I mean, our current model makes no sense.
We just hand people bottles and bottles and bottles of drugs,
you know, powerful opioids, with no supervised consumption and expectation
that they'll change their behavior. But if you switch to
(12:04):
a model where you had supervised if you had witness
consumption of safe supply, where there was no ability to
divert because you have to consume it on site, that
would be a lot better. And if you made it
recovery oriented so that people would have to eventually transition
into treatments rather than stay indefinitely on drugs, that would
(12:25):
be a lot better too. I could see this working potentially.
It's worth having a conversation, but that's not what we
have right now.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Well, it's obvious that the status quo is not working
at them, and it's something that we're going to be
keeping our eye on, and I know that you're going
to be keeping your eye on this file going into
twenty twenty five. I want to thank you so much
for your time, and this will be the last time
that we get to chat this year. Thank you so
much for having me happy New Year. Adam Zevo is
the founder and director of the Center for Responsible Drug Policy,
(12:53):
as well as the publication Breaking Needles. We're going to
take a quick break. We'll be back right after this
Welcome back to AM eight hundred CKLW. John Lidkey here,
and I am glad to be joined right now by
someone who is very knowledgeable on the harm reduction angle,
the drug policy angle, and the opioid and synthetic opioid file,
the founder and director of the Center for Responsible Drug Policy,
(00:25):
as well as the publication Breaking Needles. Adam Zo joins
me right now, Hey, Adam, how you doing good.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
It's great to have you here. So doing a little
bit of a year end reflection right now on this show,
and yours is one file that I didn't want to
leave lingering. There are certain stories that come up throughout
the year that you know, you take them or leave them.
I don't care too much about it, but yours is
one that I've followed now for actually a better part
of two years, and I wanted to get a reflection
(00:54):
on what twenty twenty four has meant when it comes
to the drug policy, respective from the harm reduction perspective,
what you've been seeing on the grounds, because I know
that there has been a lot that's been going on
just in this calendar year.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Well, so what I would say is that twenty twenty
four is the year when the pendulum really swung on
harm reduction and diction policy in Canada more generally, So,
you know, we saw that drug decriminalization ended in BC.
We saw a general recognition that it was a terrible experiment,
at least as the way that it was modeled in
British Columbia Portugal is a very different model. We saw
(01:34):
an increased recognition across all levels of governments that we
need to have more accountability for drug use. We saw
the BCNDP embrace law and order politics and pivot towards
discussing recovery rather than just simply enabling drug use. And
on safe supply, which is my parent primary beat, we
saw a validation of the concerns about widespread diversion, concerns
(01:58):
which had been dismissed in twenty twenty three as disinformation.
So when I first started writing articles about safe supply diversion,
you know, my first one came out in May of
twenty twenty three. The federal government insisted that this was unscientific,
that safe supply was backed by strong evidence that I
was fear mongering and spreading disinformation. In January and February
(02:22):
of this year, we had the BC government come out
and say that actually, there are widespread concerns that diversion
is happening and it is an everyday occurrence, and that
this intervention is not evidence based. Really. Then we saw
the London Police admits in June and July that hydromorphone seizures,
(02:44):
that's the opioid that is dispensed through safer supply primarily
you know, it's as strong as heroin, had that the
seizures of this drug had increased by over three thousand
percent since safe supply became widely available. Right, And then
I got that data showing that in Waterloo, a Niagara region,
that they also saw increases of one thousand or one
(03:04):
five hundred percent in hydromorphin seizures. So we saw these
police departments finally come out and say, actually, we see
that there's a problem. We see that this drug is
flooding the market, and we know from what we're hearing
from our finline officers that safer supply is driving this.
We saw the federal governments, which was previously gung ho
(03:26):
on decriminalization and gung ho on safe supply, suddenly take
things back a lot. So let's say the Minister for
Addiction and Mental Health y are a Sachs. You know,
she was a giant safe Supply advocate. She would slander
anyone who criticized the program, saying that they were fear mongering.
The last time that she has publicly advocated for safeer
(03:48):
supply was in February of this year. Since then, she's
been completely silent. You know, I was at the Canadian
Society of Addiction Medicines Annual Scientific Conference last year, sorry,
last month, and your sex provided a video recording opening remarks,
and over the course of her several minutes speech, she
listed all the things that she was proud of in
(04:10):
terms of interventions that the federal government had invested into,
and safe supply was completely omitted, it says, if it
didn't exist. So taking all these things together, we can
see that the public is exhausted with harm reduction radicalism,
even if more moderate forms of harm reduction are useful.
You know, I think we can all agree on that,
(04:31):
and that various provincial governments as well as the federal
government are realizing that it is that it is a
political liability to continue supporting these radical interventions that did
not pivot towards recovery.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
You know, I think it's a little bit of the
slippery slope is what people started to see, and not
in an abstract sense, but in a very real sense.
I remember the story about the British Columbia hospital where
there was a nurse who was told to stop breastfeeding
because they were exposed to fentanyl smoke, for example, And
they were allowing for people to bring sharps into the
(05:08):
hospital because they didn't want to risk upsetting the people
who were bringing those in who might be using drugs. Obviously,
it's been a very quick shift this year away from
measures that allowed that type of a thing. What do
you think it was that caused overwhelmingly the situation to change.
(05:28):
Was it the reality on the ground, Was it that
it became more observant for people, or was it ideological shifts?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I think that reality is on the ground, shifted perspectives,
and I think that there's a class element here that's
really important. So harm reduction radicalism has been around since
the mid twenty tens, late twenty tens. You know, we
had an increase in supervise injection sites. We had we
had safe supply in London, Ontario in twenty sixteen. We
(05:57):
had it expand in twenty twenty, and for the most part,
people supported it because it sounded great in theory. Right
in theory, all of these interventions sound wonderful because the
harm reduction activists will say that there is a meaningful
effort to shepherd people into recovery. They promised that this
would reduce public disorder. They said that open drug use
(06:18):
would not be a big problem, and it was apparent
a few years ago. It was already apparent that this
was not necessarily true. But the problem, though, is that
the open drug use and the public disorder that we
saw was mostly quarantine to low income neighborhoods. And let's
be frank, most Canadians don't care about what happens in
(06:39):
those neighborhoods because they don't care about what happens to
poor people. But after the pandemic, as addictions spiraled out
of control and open drug use spiraled out of control,
and decriminalization allowed it to proliferate in every neighborhood, suddenly
middle class Canadians said, wait a second, Now I'm finding
(06:59):
needles in my playground. Now I'm seeing drug addicts shout
at children in the area that I live in, and
that changed their perspective. They were no longer able to
just support these policies in theory because they as to
contend with the real life consequences of these interventions.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Showing up in your own neighborhood can certainly change people's
perspectives on things, and I guess shifted away from the
ideal to the actual on the ground. We're looking at
a I mean, who knows what this government's going to
look like in a couple of weeks at them. Things
are changing so rapidly right now. There was just a
cabinet shuffle that happened. We're expecting a change of government
(07:42):
to occur next year, whenever the election will be. How
do you think things will look under an expected here
qualiev conservative government.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Well, I mean, obviously they're going to invest significantly into recovery.
That's their whole thing. They've been very staunch critics of
radical forms of harm reduction. All at the same time,
they do generally recognize that more moderate interventions like needled
exchanges can be useful, and so poly f has been
He's focused his entire campaign on teaming our cities taming
(08:12):
the addiction crisis, ensuring that there is accountability, and I'm
very confident that he will follow through that any attempt
at decriminalizing drugs will be killed. You know, drug decriminalizations
still exists to a certain extent in BC. You can
still possess drugs, you just can't use them openly, which
makes it easier for drug traffickers to move their product
(08:33):
around because they just keep it below a certain threshold
that will probably disappear because that's under federal jurisdiction. Right,
you might see an attempt to outlaw the prescription of
safer supply, and you'll see increased investments into recovery oriented treatment.
That being said, there's only so much of the federal
government can do because healthcare is under provincial jurisdiction. So
(08:56):
they can say that they want to chart this direction.
But if provincial governments still want to stick with harm
reduction radicalism, I mean it's going to be hard to
prevent that from happening. So we'll still see you more
harm reduction VC, and we'll still see it a lot
in Ontario because even though the Ford government is nominally conservative,
(09:17):
they've been missing an action here. So we'll see a
huge shift towards recovery oriented treatment, but maybe not as
much as people want to see because of that jurisdictional difference.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Is there a middle ground between the two when it
comes to a recovery based abstinate treatment, which is what's
being pushed by the federal government, well, by excuse me,
by expected Pierre Puali of federal government and more of
the more progressive harm reduction measures, Like is there a
combination that you see as an ideal.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, I mean there are harm reduction initiatives that can
help with the addiction crisis, but at the same time,
they just need to be better managed and better regulated.
So let's say overdose prevention sites slash supervised injection sites
right now, they're an absolute disaster because they're underregulated. We
often employ people with lived or living experience, which means
(10:10):
that these interventions are being sorry, these standards are being
staffed by people who were active drug addicts. And we
saw what that did in Toronto, right where there was
a South Riverdale, you know, overdose overdose prevention site slash
supervise injection site, and neighbors said that it became a
lawless area that police were dissuaded from enforcing the law
(10:33):
near the site. As a result, drug traffickers flocked to
the area. Violence increased, children were being harassed by violent
drug addicts, which I think we can all agree is
a bad thing. You would have drug dealers who would
go into this site and they would take up a booth,
a booth that was supposed to provide a safe space
for people to use their drugs, but you know safe
(10:56):
in quotation marks, and they would just they would traffic
drugs from that booth for the whole day, right, So
they essentially turned the supervised injection side into a drug
trafficking hub. Now, in a situation like this, you know
it's not a good intervention. But if you had a
supervised injection site that was first of all, not near
(11:16):
any schools, and second of all, you know, didn't employ
act addicts, and third you know, had doctors on site
who could prescribe people addiction medications like methodone or suboxone,
so that you can get that right away, you know,
maybe that would be better. Now. Am I saying that
I necessarily support this model? No, because I can see no,
(11:41):
Because I can see that there could be problems there.
But I think that it's a model that is reasonable
enough for us to have discussion about with respect to
safe supply. I mean, our current model makes no sense.
We just hand people bottles and bottles and bottles of drugs,
you know, powerful opioids, with no supervised consumption and expectation
that they'll change their behavior. But if you switch to
(12:04):
a model where you had supervised if you had witness
consumption of safe supply, where there was no ability to
divert because you have to consume it on site, that
would be a lot better. And if you made it
recovery oriented so that people would have to eventually transition
into treatments rather than stay indefinitely on drugs, that would
(12:25):
be a lot better too. I could see this working potentially.
It's worth having a conversation, but that's not what we
have right now.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Well, it's obvious that the status quo is not working
at them, and it's something that we're going to be
keeping our eye on, and I know that you're going
to be keeping your eye on this file going into
twenty twenty five. I want to thank you so much
for your time, and this will be the last time
that we get to chat this year. Thank you so
much for having me happy New Year. Adam Zevo is
the founder and director of the Center for Responsible Drug Policy,
(12:53):
as well as the publication Breaking Needles. We're going to
take a quick break. We'll be back right after this
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.