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The fallacies of Poilievre’s drug policy

“Do you feel like everything’s broken in Canada?” That sounds like the tag line for a dystopian science fiction movie. And as it turns out, it is.

This video, which features Pierre Poilievre, opens with the federal Conservative leader sitting in front of a Vancouver homeless encampment at dusk. For the next five minutes, amid a backdrop of scenes of agony and angst, Poilievre describes in vivid detail a wholly fictional account of drug policy.

To begin with, by running a montage of homeless scenes while Poilievre discusses overdose deaths, the video suggests everyone on the streets uses drugs and that homelessness is always caused by drug use, not by the prohibitively high cost of housing in cities like Vancouver and Toronto.

As with virtually everything in the video, the reality is far different. Not all unhoused people use drugs and relatively few overdose deaths occur on the street.

According to the B.C. Coroner’s Service, 83 per cent of overdose deaths in 2022 occurred inside, including 56 per cent in private residences and 27 per cent in shelters, hotels and social housing.

Contrary to Poilievre’s dystopian diatribe, addiction is clearly an equal opportunity scourge that affects every strata of society. But scenes of middle class housing or Vancouver’s numerous seaside mansions wouldn’t fit the “everything’s broken” narrative of Poilievre’s propaganda video.

Undeterred by these inconvenient facts, Poilievre continues his screed by highlighting overdose statistics. Noting that B.C. is on track to amass more than 2,000 overdose deaths this year, Poilievre laments the fact that deaths have increased dramatically in B.C. in recent years.

That’s true: According to the B.C. Coroner, illicit drug toxicity deaths increased from 270 in 2012 to 2,267 in 2021. They’ve increased in Ontario and Toronto too. There were 595 opioidrelated deaths in 2021in Toronto, double the number seen in 2019.

This problem, Poilievre helpfully informs us, is “the result of a failed experiment.” That’s also true, but he blames the wrong experiment.

For Poilievre, the experiment involves “flood(ing) our streets with easy access” to drugs, which is exactly what organized crime has been doing for years. But the culprit, according to Poilievre, is safe supply — the provision of pharmaceutical-grade drugs to illicit drug users.

Never mind that B.C. only established Canada’s first provincial safe supply policy in 2021, and safe supply programs across the country remain woefully inadequate to reach the vast majority of drug users.

Had Poilievre completed a review of overdose death statistics, he would have noticed that something else increased dramatically in the last decade: The potent opioid fentanyl was detected in just five per cent of B.C. overdose deaths in 2012, compared to 87 per cent in 2021. Safe supply is a response to that contamination, as pharmaceutical-grade drugs, unlike street drugs, are subject to quality control.

In contrast, the experiment that has led to our current crisis — and necessitated the use of safe supply — began in 1908, when Canada first criminalized opium. That experiment allowed organized crime to flood the streets with drugs, and contaminated drugs at that.

By criminalizing drug use, criminalization also stigmatized drug users, dramatically decreasing the likelihood that they would admit to having a problem, let alone seek help. This too, is something that safe supply, and related harm reduction efforts like consumption sites, can help repair.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that harm reduction programs decrease overdose deaths and infectious disease transmission while acting as a point of first contact with the health-care system. This, in turn, can increase uptake of treatment programs.

Seemingly oblivious to this evidence, Poilievre confidently asserts “we’re going to fix” the problem, though he offers few details. If anything is in need of fixing, it’s Poilievre’s drug “policy,” since everything about it is broken.

OPINION

en-ca

2022-11-29T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-11-29T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://torontostar.pressreader.com/article/281818582847933

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