Xylazine is proof of the danger of supply side intervention or drug prohibition. As a result of prohibition, Canada’s opioid supply is becoming increasingly unpredictable and therefore risky. Since the mid-2010s, when heroin and other opioids began to be diluted with fentanyl, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of opioid-related overdoses in North America. This has led many to refer to the spike in overdoses as the “fentanyl crisis.” Fentanyl is a widely prescribed and highly effective painkiller, often given to people recovering from surgery. Since the beginning of the crisis, fentanyl has been the subject of much misinformation and law enforcement efforts, with some going so far as to (inappropriately) call it a weapon of mass destruction. One of the most important protective factors for people who use opioids in recent years has been the increased availability of take-home naloxone kits. Naloxone is an opioid antagonist that blocks the effects of opioids on the brain for a limited period of time, which can temporarily reverse an overdose. 

Xylazine, like fentanyl, is a central nervous system depressant, meaning that too large of a dose will result in the same symptoms fentanyl can produce: lowered heart rate and decreased respiration. Unlike fentanyl, xylazine is not an opioid, meaning that naloxone will not have any effect on a xylazine overdose. It is not, as some have said, “resistant” to naloxone – it is simply a different substance altogether. That said, in the case of tranq dope, the combination of fentanyl and xylazine, naloxone may mitigate an overdose by blocking the effects of fentanyl. People responding are advised to check whether the person is breathing, protect the head and airways, apply naloxone, and call for backup. 

In addition to the risk of overdose, xylazine poses a challenge because it causes painful and dangerous wounds, which can appear regardless of the method of consumption. Even in cases where the substance was injected, the wounds are not necessarily found at the site of injection, often appearing on the shins and forearms. The wounds lead to an eruption of eschar, a type of dead skin. If left untreated, eschars can be quite severe, with some cases leading to amputation. Research into xylazine’s effects on humans was discontinued early in its development, with the effect that very little is known about how it functions in the human body. The drug began to grow in popularity as a recreational substance in Puerto Rico in the mid-2000s, with researchers observing the risk of infection as early as 2011. Doctors remain unsure of what exactly causes the wounds, which resemble chemical burns or skin ulcers and which appear in nearly 40 per cent of people who use xylazine. 

Xylazine was synthesized in the 1960s as a treatment for hypertension and is used extensively by veterinarians as a sedative or anaesthetic, often in conjunction with ketamine. It’s been used recreationally by humans since the early 2000s, making it a relatively new addition to the recreational drug scene, with little research done to investigate its effects on the body. Xylazine was rejected by the FDA for use in humans because of the risk of hypotension, which has led to a dearth of information about its mechanism of action in the human body.  

In the case of tranq dope, xylazine appears to be being used as a cutting agent. A cutting agent is a product used to dilute recreational drugs with something less expensive than the drug itself in order for the manufacturer to increase their profit margin. When a bar sells a mimosa instead of a glass of champagne, for instance, the orange juice is the cutting agent. If the government decided to crack down on mimosa consumption by banning the sale of orange juice, bartenders would be forced to innovate. Some speculate that this is what has led to tranq dope – as political leadership and law enforcement focus on fentanyl, manufacturers may be innovating by adding xylazine to their products in order to stretch their supply.

Illegal substances are impossible to regulate. While legal medications have to meet stringent requirements regarding ingredients, unregulated substances are held to no such standard. This is not unique to the illicit substance market. The nature of the unregulated global drug market often means that a product will pass through many hands before reaching the consumer. At each step of the supply chain, the person supplying has a financial incentive to cut the substance in order to increase their profit. The more links in the chain, and the more often the product has been cut or diluted, the more opportunities for a toxic interaction or undesired effect. 

Suppliers often improvise using products that are affordable, easily accessible, and that mimic the effects and physical properties of the substance being cut. When choosing a cutting agent, the manufacturer usually tries to find a substance that is inexpensive, easy to get, relatively non-toxic, and copies the physical attributes of the drug to be adulterated, such as cutting cocaine with caffeine.  

Supply side intervention is the practice of banning a psychoactive substance in order to discourage its use. In theory, banning the use of drugs will reduce the supply of a particular substance and force people to stop using it. However, the reality is more complex. A myriad of examples demonstrate what decriminalization advocates refer to as the “Iron Law of Prohibition,” which states simply that: “the harder the enforcement, the harder the drugs.” As pressure from law enforcement increases, demand does not decrease. Instead, suppliers turn to more potent alternatives. This is one of the ways that drug prohibition, despite its good intentions, actually increases the risk to public health associated with psychoactive substances. 

At the beginning of the twentieth century, when opium was first banned, some suppliers began selling heroin, which was both far more potent than opium and odorless, making it harder to detect. As law enforcement tightened border regulations and increased penalties associated with the sale and possession of heroin, suppliers turned to selling fentanyl, which is more potent and synthetic, meaning it can be conveniently produced in a lab. A potent cutting agent is especially attractive under prohibition because the more potent a substance is, the less volume is required to achieve the same effects. Less volume means it’s easier to transport undetected. Evidence suggests that xylazine potentiates the effects of opioids, meaning that less opioid is needed to achieve the desired effect. 

The pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns have also contributed significantly to disruptions in the supply chain for psychoactive substances as much as for anything else. Border closures considerably affected the stability of Montreal’s opioid market, contributing to a significant increase in fatal overdoses beginning in 2020. 

Some might suggest that the answer is to make xylazine less readily available, but experts disagree. Dr. Kim Sue, Assistant Professor at the Yale School of Medicine, advocates supervised consumption sites as a response to the current crisis as well as an end to the stigma surrounding illicit substance use. Sue says, “What kills [her patients] is our society’s cruelly stigmatizing approach to substance use disorders and the lack of safe places they can use and receive immediate overdose supports.” Maia Szalavitz, author of Undoing Drugs, has also spoken out against the use of law enforcement to respond to a public health crisis, as have many others. Locally, Francois Mary, director of Cactus Montreal, called on public health to share data promptly and invest further in drug screening to protect the public. 

Doubling down on supply side interventions is likely to keep producing the same results – more unpredictable and potentially risky innovations by suppliers leading to uncertainty and danger for consumers – and yet Western governments persist in their effort to scare users straight by allowing some of them to die unnecessarily. People who use opioids deserve access to a safe supply. People who use xylazine deserve knowledge and research to make using it safer. Prohibition is not keeping citizens safer. It makes using drugs more dangerous by preventing research and regulation and by making it more difficult for people who use drugs to seek information and support. If the goal of prohibition is public health and safety, then it has been a failure and we need to end it. If the goal of prohibition is to violently coerce the public into “good behaviour” and sobriety, then it has been a failure and we need to end it. If the goal of prohibition is to make the lives of vulnerable Canadians even more dangerous and precarious, then the proliferation of xylazine in the opioid supply is the latest example of its success. 

Urgent action is necessary to protect the lives of people who use drugs in Montreal and elsewhere. It is clear that supply side interventions are endangering our communities. It is inaccurate to refer to this ongoing crisis as a fentanyl crisis – it is a toxic drug supply crisis, and its origin is not opioids but dangerously misguided drug policy. If anyone wishes to learn more or to get involved, AQPSUD – the Association Québécoise pour la promotion de la santé des personnes utilisatrices de drogues – will host an overdose awareness event in Montreal on April 6 at Place Émilie-Gamelin. 

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The murder of George Floyd in 2020 by two Minneapolis police officers sparked a wave of protests across Canada and around the world. The outcry from protestors demanded that municipal governments “defund the police” – referring  to a process whereby police budgets would be cut and the funds reallocated to other forms of social services and intervention that would prevent the occurrence of crime in the first place. New research reveals that the “defund the police” protests do not appear to have reduced funding for municipal law enforcement. On the contrary, Canadian mayors have steadily increased municipal police budgets over the past two years. Municipal leaders have justified the expansion of their police forces by citing an increase in the rates of violent crime, which according to Statistics Canada includes homicide, sexual assault, and hate crimes. Greater police presence, they argue, will lead to greater community safety. However, the  available evidence suggests that expanded police presence is an ineffective way to reduce community violence.  The evidence we see instead points to how mayors should have listened to protestors – that cities should invest in people rather than police.

Ken Sim, Valerie Plante, and John Tory – the mayors of Vancouver, Montreal, and the former mayor of Toronto, respectively – have all committed to expanding police budgets in the name of promoting public safety. Sim, whose candidacy was endorsed by the Vancouver Police Union, campaigned and won his bid for mayor on the promise of adding 100 police officers to the Vancouver Police Department. Meanwhile, Plante has called for Montreal to hire an additional 250 new police officers in an effort to reduce an increase in “gang violence” in the suburbs of Montreal. Montreal chose to increase funding at a greater rate than any other city in Canada. Not only did the SPVM receive an increased budget last year but they spent more than was allocated, going over their budget by nearly $30 million. This year, they will receive a $63 million increase bringing the total Montreal police budget to 787 million funded in part by an increase in municipal taxes. Whether Toronto will follow suit remains to be seen. At a recent special budget meeting of the police board in Toronto, Chief Demkiw requested an additional $50-million increase to the Toronto Police Services current budget of $1.1 billion claiming a lack of funding has made it difficult to meet their service goals. Mayor John Tory was poised to approve the request, which he believed was the only way to address violent crime in the city.

Across the country, in 2021, Canada saw a five per cent increase in the rate of violent crime as measured by the Crime Severity Index compiled by Statistics Canada. The Crime Severity Index measures several different kinds of crime including assault, homicide, sexual assault, and hate crimes. The recent increase of violent crime has been driven primarily by two factors: an 18 per cent increase in the rate of sexual assault cases reported to police and a 27 per cent increase in the number of hate crimes. There was also a three per cent increase in the homicide rate. The messages that municipal politicians create from crime statistics are incredibly pliable. Tamara Nopper, abolitionist and professor at Rhode Island College, notes that “[i]n the end, crime data is always a tool of police propaganda. If crime is low, the police are doing their jobs. If crime is high, we need to give more money to the police. The police always win.”

There are three important questions to ask in order to determine whether investing in expanded police presence is the best response to the increase in violent crime in Canada: 

1. Does expanded police presence effectively address the increase in different types of violent crime (homicide, sexual assault, hates crimes)?

2. What are the social ramifications – especially for BIPOC communities – of expanded police presence?

3. How does policing compare to other options when it comes to addressing violent crime?

Homicide

Although the National Post claims that “Canada’s rising murder rate is the most reliable indicator yet of a Canada that is continuing to experience an across-the-board surge in violent crime,” homicide in Canada is relatively uncommon. While the homicide rate did indeed increase by three per cent, it accounted for only less than 0.2 per cent of all police-reported violent crimes in 2021. In the same article, the National Post concedes that despite the increase, Canada’s homicide rate is amongst the lowest in the Western hemisphere. This ultimately undermines the extent to which the country’s homicide rates may constitute a “reliable indicator” for a “surge” in violence. 

The National Post article goes on to raise the alarm regarding gang violence. According to the summary of the Statistics Canada report on crime in 2021, gang violence accounted for one quarter of the 788 homicides in Canada last year. In the same year, Mayor Plante allocated funding to hire 28 new police officers working specifically to address “gang violence.” The term “gang violence” itself is worthy of further examination. First of all, there is no clear and consistent Canada-wide definition of the term “gang.” Secondly, mobilizing policing on the basis of “gang violence” moves focus away from other factors that contribute to the homicide rate – such as domestic violence and poverty – and risks contributing to racial profiling of Black and Brown youth. Some have questioned whether the term is a dog whistle, much like the phrase “inner city crime” before it. Benoit Décary-Secours, a researcher at the Centre de recherche sur les inégalités sociales à Montréal (CREMIS) found that “for the past 30 years in Quebec, the ‘street gang’ has been used as a type of scapegoat to justify police spending and intensive and aggressive policing of minorities living in poor urban areas.” Finally, the scale of “gang violence” in Canada has not been firmly established. The statistics on gang violence in the Statistics Canada report are inconsistent. While some sections of the report indicate that almost a quarter of all homicides in 2021 were gang related, another table of the same report shows that homicides linked to “criminal relationships,” which include gang violence, accounted for only 10 per cent of all homicides in 2021. The reason for the discrepancy is unclear. 

The vast majority of homicides are interpersonal or the result of domestic violence – committed by either family members or acquaintances, rather than someone with whom they had a criminal relationship. It is therefore not surprising that evidence is mixed regarding the effectiveness of reducing the homicide rate by expanding police presence on the streets. A 2020 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that adding more police officers can reduce the homicide rate, not because of increased arrests, but because police presence acts as a deterrence to street based violence. That said, the research added several caveats. Among other things, researchers concluded that their findings did not hold true in cities with large Black populations. When it comes to preventing street-based crime, police presence is only impactful when “vigilance is linked to articulable behaviours of suspected crimes occurring.” This is to say that crime rates do not go down when police look to scan civilian populations for something specific and identifiable instead of simply patrolling a given area. Stops that were effective were those possessing “probable cause:” where officers observed actions indicative of individuals engaging in drug transactions or violent crimes. Stops were not effective when based on furtive movements, objects carried in plain view, evasive actions, suspicious bulges, or crucially, someone “fitting the description.” The phrase “fits the description” has become shorthand for racial profiling because of the frequency with which it is used by police officers as an excuse to stop Black men in particular.  

Hate Crimes

Compared to the homicide rate, according to Statistics Canada, the rate of hate crimes in Canada rose significantly last year, increasing by 27 per cent. The definition of hate crimes in Canada includes both physical and non-physical aggression aimed on the basis of race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation. Mayor Ken Sim referred specifically to the increase in hate crimes against Asian Canadians in his bid to expand Vancouver’s police force. A survey by the Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter (CCNCTO) and a grassroots organization called Project 1907 found that anti-Asian hate crimes overall went up 47 per cent in 2021. Black Canadians remain the community most likely to be the victims of hate crimes and are targeted more often than any other racial or religious group. 

Regarding hate crimes, analysis done by Arizona State University concluded that law enforcement responses alone do not constitute an effective response. They found that the most effective approaches included a combination of increased police presence and public education but also changes within police departments such as prioritizing hate crimes and offering special training to police officers. Simply deploying more police officers has a limited impact on the prevalence of hate crimes given that they are  motivated by complex social power dynamics rather than financial gain or interpersonal conflict. A police officer in the right place at the right time might be well situated to interrupt public hate-related assaults, but will be ineffective in preventing other types of hate crimes such as workplace harassment. Hate crime prevention is another question altogether requiring a solution that addresses the root causes of these complex crimes. 

Sexual Assault

The single largest contributing factor to the rise in violent crime in 2021 was the increase in the rate of sexual assault. The rate of sexual assault reported to police increased by 18 per cent in 2021. That said, it is only seven per cent higher than in 2019. Women account for 80 per cent of those reporting sexual assault and domestic violence in Canada. Indigenous women, disabled women, queer women and immigrant women are especially likely to experience domestic violence. 

Evidence for the effectiveness of policing as a method of reducing rates of sexual assaults is also mixed. Of sexual assaults reported to police, only one in nine are likely to result in a conviction. Additionally, sexual assault is most often committed indoors and by someone known to the victim in contrast to other crimes which might be deterred by increased police patrols. Whereas a burglary or robbery might be interrupted as part of a probable cause stop, whatever “articulable behaviours” might precede a sexual assault are likely to happen out of public view. The relational context in which sexual assault generally occurs further muddies the water. Eight of ten sexual assault victims are acquainted with their attackers. In a third of all cases, their attacker is a current or former romantic or sexual partner. 

Additionally, the increase in sexual assault rates may be attributable to police behaviour rather than an actual increase in violence. Over the last five years, the number of reports of sexual assault dismissed by police as “unfounded and baseless” (as opposed to “unfounded and false”) has dropped by half. A claim of sexual assault is dismissed as unfounded when police believe a case does not meet the elements of a crime or was improperly coded as a sexual assault. Cases dismissed as unfounded are not included in Statistics Canada reports, meaning that the statistics may not reflect the total number of sexual assaults reported to police but rather the total number of sexual assaults reports that the police agreed to investigate. Therefore, increases in the rate of sexual assault according to Statistics Canada could reflect an actual increase in sexual violence but may also reflect the increase in the number of cases which were not dismissed by police. 

The Potential Ramifications of Increased Police Presence

In determining the effectiveness of increased police presence to address the rise in violent crime, it is important to consider the impact of expanded police presence on the lives of racialized Canadians as well as rate of crimes committed by the police or police on civilian violence. The NBER research found that increased police presence could act as a deterrent to homicide in cities without large Black populations, but also found that more police meant more traffic stops and arrests for “low level” crimes, both of which are deeply harmful to marginalized communities. The association between traffic stops and racial profiling is well established. BIPOC are disproportionately likely to be the subjects of “random” traffic stops. Whether this is the result of conscious or implicit bias is unclear. A recent ruling by a Quebec judge went so far as to say that traffic stops are unconstitutional. A similar relationship has been established between racial profiling and arrests for low level crime – racialized Canadians are disproportionately impacted. 

Black Canadians are the community most likely to be the victims of a hate crime but also the most likely to experience violence at the hands of the police. A 2020 report found that Black Torontonians are twenty times more likely than other residents to be killed by police, accounting for 61 per cent of all police shootings in Canada’s largest city. 

Between 2020 and 2021, the number of Canadians shot by the police went up by 25 per cent. In 2021, police killed 37 Canadians. Of police shooting victims, 40 per cent were Indigenous and another 25 per cent were members of other racialized communities. These statistics had to be compiled by The Canadian Press as Canada does not keep race-based statistics about police violence at a national level. Some of these deaths occurred during violent confrontations with police but civilians have also been killed in cases where police had been sent to check on their safety. For example, Chantel Moore, a young Indigenous woman, was shot to death by police during a wellness check. Furthermore, Statistics Canada data shows that homicides where the victim was a racialized Canadian took longer to solve, particularly if the victim was an Indigenous woman. 

The analysis done by Arizona State University regarding how to reduce the rate of hate crimes also mentioned the importance of monitoring hate groups. This is significant for Canadians as a 2021 report by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism found that highly organized transnational white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups were recruiting active or former military and police officers in Canada. Significant rates of participation by police officers in white supremacist groups calls into question the effectiveness of policing as a response to racially motivated crimes. 

Research from the United States found that sexual violence is the second most common type of reported police violence and that its victims are disproportionately Black women and girls. A national study in the United States found victims of sexual crimes by police were typically minors. Police officers are also disproportionately likely to be perpetrators of domestic violence. Domestic violence occurs in roughly 28 to 40 per cent of police households compared to 10 per cent in the general population. 

It therefore comes as no surprise that calls for police abolition and defunding are led by members of Black and Indigenous communities and advocates for survivors of sexual and domestic violence. These groups argue that there are more effective ways to address the sorts of violence that their communities experience. 

Alternatives to Policing 

There are options other than policing for addressing community violence both as it happens as well as through prevention via upstream approaches which aim to reduce violence by addressing the root causes of community violence such as poverty and trauma.

These approaches are not punitive or carceral in nature and most do not involve law enforcement. Instead they focus on creating opportunities for inter community support through training and education as well as on meeting the basic material needs of the most vulnerable members of society. Given the ubiquitous presence of policing, it is difficult to evaluate alternative approaches but there has been promising research into several upstream interventions. Community-based violence intervention programs, summer jobs programs, raising the minimum age to drop out of school, greening vacant lots, more streetlights, more drug treatment, better gun control, and raising the alcohol tax have all been found to reduce crime rates. So have Medicaid expansion, access to mental health care, and guaranteed basic income programs.  

Many of these programs focus on the prevention of crimes by attempting to address poverty. Addressing the presence of crime at its source is an approach outside the scope of most law enforcement, which is why increasing police budgets is a band-aid solution. Being a victim of or witnessing violence is a major factor in whether one goes on to perpetrate an act of violence oneself. Violence that is associated with property crimes such as mugging is closely associated with poverty; perpetrators are not violent by nature but commit these crimes in order to meet their material needs. Stress and isolation due to poverty also increase the likelihood of domestic violence. Domestic violence in turn contributes to poverty: the fear of physical abuse is a primary cause of homelessness. As a result, it stands to reason that addressing trauma and poverty is an effective way to reduce the rate of violent crime. 

With community support, solutions that address poverty can be wildly successful in reducing community violence. Research done on gang activity in Canada demonstrates that the most effective interventions are not police related but the ones that address childhood abuse and childhood trauma broadly. The youth at the highest risk of gang involvement are those who are in foster care and/or have survived abuse or sexual assault. Programs that offer support rather than punishment such as mental health counseling, youth drop in centers and youth employment programs. One extremely successful example of such a program is social enterprise organization Homeboy Industries, a Los Angeles-based program which offers youth employment in exchange for ending their gang affiliation is the largest gang rehabilitation program in the world. Homeboy Industries has supported thousands of youth in their transition from gang life to employment over the course of the last thirty years and have been an integral part of transforming a city once notorious for gang activity. Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago succeeded in reducing shootings and killings by 30 per cent after implementing Cure Violence programs in which community members are trained to interrupt street violence. Chicago’s CRED program which offers at-risk youth counseling, life coaching and employment saw a 50 per cent reduction in gun-related injuries in its participants. 

Upstream solutions work for other, less street-based, forms of violence as well – specifically in cases involving discriminatory workplace harassment. The CCNCTO report on hate crimes found that more than 80 per cent of the hate crimes victims who responded saw public education, collective action or policy reform as desirable solutions. None of them wanted their aggressors to face punishment. In this way, anti-discrimination policies can help protect marginalized employees while public anti-hate education programs may work to prevent the occurrence of hate crimes in the first place. Programs similar to the ones developed to prevent street violence such as bystander intervention training programs can help equip community members to address street harassment and verbal assaults. 

Finally, regarding sexual assault prevention, one campus-based program called “Enhanced Access, Acknowledge, Act” was developed at the University of Windsor and offered to first-year women. Women who participated in the program were 46 per cent less likely to experience a sexual assault than their peers. The program has since been offered at two other universities. The program focuses on empowering participants by training them to recognize and react to signs of danger. It does not involve law enforcement. Perpetrators of sexual violence are rarely punished by the judicial system and whether or not they are, survivors often require psychological support for the trauma they’ve incurred. That’s why many survivors of sexual assault are disinterested in carceral solutions and advocate instead for mental health support for survivors and funding for organizations such as Take Back the Night which work to prevent sexual violence through activism and education. 

The pattern is clear: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure. Preventing violence before it happens protects potential victims and frees perpetrators from cycles of violence. Until municipalities are prepared to dedicate the same amount of funding to upstream solutions as they do to policing, our options will remain limited. In 2023, the SPVM will possess a budget of $787 million, more than 10 per cent of the total municipal budget for the year. Montreal does have a non-police mobile unit but they are set to receive a total of only $10 million in funding to be spent over the next five years. Meanwhile, the same budget allocated only $480 million to be spent on affordable housing over the next ten years. 

Upstream interventions receive a fraction of the financing dedicated to expanding police presence, which is disappointing considering their relative potential to bolster the well being of residents. Hiring more police officers can be an effective way to address some forms of crime under specific circumstances but comes with major costs both financially and to the safety of BIPOC and other vulnerable Canadians. Without significant action taken to address violence against marginalized communities and women at the hands of the police, expanding police presence in Canadian cities may cause as many problems as it hopes to address. 

Politicians, by virtue of our political system, are not focused on the future. They invest in solutions which will show short term results which can be pointed to during election periods regardless of long term consequences. In the absence of forward thinking political leadership, the responsibility falls on community members to apply pressure to invest in longer term, less destructive and, most importantly, evidence based solutions. This requires engagement – with politicians as well as with each other to advocate for and then implement proactive, preventative responses to violence. We know that upstream solutions which focus on public education, empowering community members and addressing the financial and social needs of vulnerable community members will not only address violence more effectively than policing but will improve the quality of life in Canadian cities across the board. 

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Pierre Poilievre has displayed that he is a master of utilizing social media as a means of promotion, and this video is no exception. In it, he is dressed casually, his posture is relaxed and his tone is concerned. He opens by explaining that the community of unhoused people that occupy the video’s background have lost their homes as the result of addiction. He continues to say that rampant substance use has threatened the lives of unhoused people while separating them from their friends and family. Addiction, he claims, is the driving force behind Canada’s devastating rates of overdose. 

He goes on to say that these taxpayer-funded drugs, supplied by the Canadian government, are to be blamed for major increases in overdoses and violent crime, a practice he insists must be halted immediately. Poilievre claims that we need only to look to Alberta to see an example of how a focus on sobriety-based recovery programs, not harm reduction, can successfully stem the tide of overdoses. He says that if we are serious about saving lives we need to tighten border control and create harsher penalties for drug dealers. Therefore, it only makes sense that the rest of the country should follow suit and put their focus on border control, criminalization, and recovery, not harm reduction. To Poilievre, we need to put an end to safe supply. 

That would make sense, if any of what he was claiming was true. The reality is that Poilievre’s video is a creative mashup of artfully presented half-truths and blatant lies. The brief video contains so many falsehoods that it is difficult to address without dissecting it line by line. Vancouver-based opioid expert Garth Mullins describes Poilievre’s video as a “firehose of bullshit,” and he is not alone. Experts and politicians from both sides of the political divide have come forward to decry Poilievre’s approach. 

Canada has indeed seen an escalation in the rate of fatal overdoses in the past 15 years. These are not, however, attributable to safe supply programs which are limited in size and a fairly recent arrival on the scene. If anything, they can be attributed to exactly the sort of misguided drug policy that Poilievre is advocating for in this video. 

In recent years, Canada’s heroin market has become tainted with an increasingly unpredictable supply of fentanyl. The result is that even if an individual sticks with their usual dose, they have limited information about the actual content of the substance they’re consuming. Imagine buying a drink at a bar and not knowing whether the liquid you’re offered is beer or vodka – it would become difficult to predict the level of your intoxication. Thus, it is this unpredictability, more so than consumption per se, that is responsible for skyrocketing rates of overdose. In British Columbia, where Poilievre’s video was filmed, the number of drug-related deaths per year has risen from 330 in 1993, (which at the time the chief coroner described as an “inordinately high number”) to over 2000 in 2022. Safe supply programs were specifically developed as a response to the increased prevalence of fentanyl. Safe supply is a harm reduction term that describes programs that distribute pharmaceutical grade substances to people with an established history of substance dependence disorder. Their aim is to protect the lives of people who use substances from the toxic drug supply. In order to slow these staggering losses, Canadian activists and healthcare professionals organized a handful of safe supply pilot programs.

How is this related to Canada’s drug laws? The Iron Law of Prohibition, a term coined by Richard Cowan in 1986 to explain the emergence of crack cocaine, describes a phenomenon through which prohibition policies and increased law enforcement result in an illicit substance becoming more potent and therefore more dangerous over time. Simply put, “the harder the enforcement, the harder the drugs.” Heightened law enforcement puts pressure on suppliers to innovate, pushing them towards products that are more potent (and therefore smaller in volume and easier to transport) that evade current detection methods. An increase in drug potency can mean an accompanying increase in risk upon consumption. An example of this occurred during early 20th century attempts to ban the sale of alcohol. Beer and wine were quickly replaced with the far more dangerous home-brewed moonshine. A flask of moonshine that can be hidden in a coat pocket or under the seat of a car might produce the same level of intoxication as a much larger and harder to smuggle bottle of wine. This pattern repeats itself regardless of the substance in question and is what has shifted the opioid market in Canada from being composed primarily of opium to heroin, and from heroin to fentanyl. When opium was made illegal, some smugglers shifted to selling heroin which was both far more powerful than opium and had the added advantage of being odorless and therefore harder to detect. As law enforcement tightened border regulations and increased penalties associated with the sale and possession of heroin, suppliers turned instead to the sale of fentanyl which is both far more potent (and like a flask of moonshine, easier to transport) and synthetic, meaning it can be conveniently produced in a lab. 

It was this progression – and not safe supply programs – which created the toxic supply crisis which has claimed the lives of over 20,000 Canadians since 2016. Safe supply programs are extremely limited in their reach and capacity. Ontario’s longest running safe supply program has only 82 participants. Furthermore, the majority of safe supply programs in Canada were launched between 2020 and 2022. It is therefore unreasonable – and in fact, dishonest – to assert that safe supply programs, mostly created in the last eighteen months and permitting such limited enrollment, could be to blame for the meteoric rise of overdose deaths, now numbering in the tens of thousands, which began nearly two decades ago. 

Not only are safe supply programs not the source of the problem, they are also successful. A study conducted on the aforementioned program in Ontario showed that it reduced both ER visits and healthcare costs. Most of Canada’s programs are too new to have produced extensive data, but the Ontario study is consistent with a study conducted in Halifax as well as with research done in Switzerland in demonstrating that safe supply programs are effective in reducing the risk of fatal overdose and in promoting the overall health of people who use drugs. 

Harm reductionists often repeat the phrase: “you can’t get a dead body into rehab.” By this, they mean that the primary focus of harm reduction is not to use the threat of death to scare people into sobriety, but to mitigate the health impacts of substance use. Advocates argue that addressing the extreme stress and instability caused by poverty and homelessness is a prerequisite to curtailing dependence. This is to say that if someone passes away due to having consumed a toxic illicit substance, then sobriety ceases to be an option altogether. This is why harm reduction advocates focus on the creation of services that extend life and improve health outcomes and contribute to stability, creating the opportunity for an individual to live long enough to choose either sobriety or to achieve a more stable relationship to substance use in the future. These programs therefore measure their success not in terms of how many people have stopped using substances, but how many deaths they have prevented.

Former senator and ex-Ottawa police chief Vernon White is a passionate advocate for safe supply that proposed that all supervised consumption sites in Canada should also be allowed to provide safe supply programs. Supervised consumption sites (SCS), a form of harm reduction more familiar to the general public than safe supply, are spaces where individuals can come consume substances under the supervision of healthcare professionals and/or community workers who can intervene in case the individual experiences adverse effects. SCS first became legal in Canada after a long battle led by the founders of Insite, the continent’s first supervised consumption site, that, in 2011, ultimately went all the way to the Supreme Court. Harper’s Conservative government had no choice but to allow SCSs to exist, although they severely limited their reach. Under the Trudeau government, consumption sites have been opened across the country and have since been responsible for reversing over 40,000 overdoses. To date, not a single person has died at a supervised consumption site in Canada. Those 40,000 reversed overdoses represent 40,000 lives saved that would not have been without the existence of harm reduction services.

The most obvious lie in Poilievre’s video is the claim that Alberta has reduced overdose deaths by half without relying on harm reduction services. Neither of those things are true. Alberta has been successful in reducing overdose deaths, though not by half. In addition, that 50 per cent reduction is directly attributable to the sorts of programs that Poilievre opposes. 

Poilievre has the facts backwards; it is not addiction that is causing people to be unhoused, but rather a lack of affordable housing driving up rates of addiction. Community organizer and harm reduction advocate Karen Ward explains, “You’ve got this backwards. Homelessness leads to mental illness and compulsive use of unregulated substances.” The solution, she adds, is “homes for all,” not law enforcement. A growing number of Canadians are losing their housing amidst a cost of living crisis. Poilievre himself in other media acknowledges the crisis and its impact on “working Canadians.” However, he does not acknowledge that nearly a quarter of homeless people in Vancouver are, in fact, employed and therefore should be counted amongst “working Canadians.” Why then, in this video, does he attribute homelessness to addiction, when he is clearly aware of the role that the lack of affordable housing plays? It is also worth noting that more than half of all fatal overdoses in Canada happen indoors in private residences – yet another reason why homelessness and overdoses need to be addressed separately. 

Given their different causes, conflating the toxic supply crisis and rising rates of homelessness is not likely to result in effective policy. The Conservative approach to reducing the overdose rate ignores the role of poverty altogether. It relies on the idea that the specter of overdose might be enough to scare people into sobriety via rehab programs. It further assumes that such programs are effective and accessible when there is little evidence that either are true.

Conservatives also assume that sobriety alone would be enough to ensure that rehab alumni were able to afford housing. Even if it were true that replacing harm reduction programs with rehabs would result in universal sobriety, said sobriety would do nothing to reduce the cost of rent in Vancouver. Furthermore, while a minority of substance users consume their drug of choice to a self-destructive degree, research has demonstrated that the vast majority of people are able to consume substances stably for years when they have access to a regulated supply. Returning to the example of Prohibition, the legalization of alcohol has not led to the unchecked destruction predicted by temperance advocates. What it has done is create opportunities for people who are concerned about their consumption levels to communicate about them openly without the fear of legal reprisal. Concurrently, the vast majority of the population is able to consume recreationally without encountering major problems. Does the consumption of any substance come with risks to health? Of course. But the government should not exacerbate these risks through prohibition. Instead, support and education must be offered to mitigate the risks in the same way it is with alcohol. If Poilievre were to become the next Prime Minister and follow through on his threat to replace evidence based practice with ideologically motivated policies, he would be putting thousands of lives unnecessarily at risk. 

Poilievre has a history of leveraging controversy in order to boost his popularity. This video is merely the latest example of Poilievre playing fast and loose with the truth. He first came to the attention of the general public as an advocate for the so-called “freedom convoy”. By the time said convoy turned out to be less of a popular uprising and to have been funded by outside interests, Poilievre had moved on and was nowhere to be seen. 

Poilievre’s popularity comes at a time when conservative governments are taking power across the Western world often by leveraging the same themes and tactics: culture war and a fear of outsiders. 

It is important that Canadian health policy be built on a foundation of evidence, not ideology. Regardless of anyone’s personal stance on the question of sobriety, until there is evidence that rehab is a universally effective and accessible solution, it is absurd to propose replacing functional programs that are saving lives based on dubious evidence. 

To once again quote Karen Ward, “If we’re going to turn this around, we need to replace the entire illicit drug supply and replace it with regulated substances that are available to all.”

The post Something May Be Broken in Canada, But It Isn’t Our Safe Supply Programs appeared first on The McGill Daily.

At the time of his brother’s death, Myles Sanderson had been on the run for several days. His evasion of authorities ultimately culminated in a high-speed chase that led to his arrest. Sanderson’s parents pleaded for their son to turn himself in via the media. The chase ended when police forced Mr. Sanderson to drive off the road and into a ditch. Photos show Sanderson standing with his hands behind his back, possibly handcuffed, while being restrained by several RCMP officers. He was arrested on September 7 and was shown alive in photos posted that evening at 6:30 PM EST. His death was announced later the same day. 

Various media outlets reported that Mr. Sanderson’s death was caused by a possible overdose or self-inflicted injuries. Officer Rhonda Blackmore, the spokesperson for the local RCMP who briefed the press, offered no official cause of death. However, Officer Blackmore did share that a knife was found in the car with Sanderson and that he went into “medical distress” some time after his arrest. Blackmore concluded by saying that the results of his autopsy would not be released to the public as they were part of an ongoing investigation.

The term used by Officer Blackmore, “medical distress,” is not a clinical diagnosis. In the last eighteen months, an unnamed 35-year-old man in Alberta and another in British Columbia also went into “medical distress” and died while in RCMP custody. The same phrase was used to describe an incident in late 2021 when an unnamed woman “went into medical distress” while in the custody of the Saskatchewan RCMP. On August 4, 2022, just over a month before Myles Sanderson’s arrest, an unnamed 23-year-old man died hours after being arrested by Morse RCMP. Both incidents prompted an internal investigation whose results have yet to be released. These cases of apparent “medical distress” indicate a possible trend of RCMP personnel exempting themselves from assuming responsibility from medical deaths while possessing someone in custody.

In Canada, people who have been accused of crimes and detained or arrested by police lose some rights but retain many others. These include the right to medical attention, the right to stand trial, and the right to not be killed by the state. As such, any death of a person in Canada while in the custody of the state merits investigation.

The investigation into Myles Sanderson’s death will be conducted by the Saskatoon Police Major Crimes Unit with a civilian organization known as the Serious Incident Report Team (SIRT) serving as an observational watchdog. SIRT is a relatively new project that has two staff members at present and as of July was not considered fully operational. The Saskatoon Police Major Crimes Unit has committed to sharing the results of its investigation into the Saskatchewan police’s management of the Myles Sanderson case with the Ministry of Justice and Attorney General. It is unclear whether there is a plan to make those findings available to the public. Federal Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said simply that the priority at the moment was “the family.” 

A report by the Office of the Correctional Investigator found that in a ten-year period between 2001 and 2011, 530 people died in federal custody from a range of causes, including natural death, suicide, accident, and homicide. Suicides accounted for 94 of those deaths, and another 29 were homicides. The remaining 467 were ruled either natural deaths or accidents by the federally-funded investigation. The UN reports that mortality rates for people in prison are twice what they would be otherwise. Indigenous peoples constitute less than five percent of the population of Canada but 30 per cent of people in Canadian federal prisons. In women’s facilities, the proportion is even higher. Indigenous women constitute almost half the female prison population in Canada. 

There are some clues as to why this may be the case. An investigation conducted by the CBC into the deaths of 61 people who died while in custody after being arrested for public intoxication. They found that, of the cases they reviewed, many of the deaths could be attributed to the person having been left alone or their medical condition having not been addressed. They found that half of all those cases involved Indigenous peoples. 

Canadian institutions, particularly those in which Indigenous peoples are taken into custody, have a long history of violence against Indigenous peoples. Though some truth and reconciliation commissions, such as South Africa’s, are initiated by the state, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation process began as a result of a court case brought by a union of Indigenous survivors of Canada’s residential school system. Canada’s residential school system, which began in the 1880s under Prime Minister John A. Macdonald and which existed until 1996, was a program of family separation and cultural assimilation that has become internationally notorious for its human rights abuses. 

Canada’s treatment of Indigenous peoples has already been decried by several international human rights organizations such as the United Nations and Amnesty International. Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation process ended in 2015. The result was a series of reports detailing the various abuses perpetrated via the residential school system. These included, but were not limited to, physical and sexual abuse as well as the systematic torture of Indigenous children through separation from culture, language, and family. Residents endured physical suffering and humiliation at the behest of the state with the express and stated purpose of breaking their spirits. The report describes these actions in no uncertain terms as “cultural genocide.”  

The system was created to bring to life Canada’s first prime minister’s vision of a European colony in the New World and to address the threat that millions of Indigenous peoples posed to that vision. The report goes into great detail about the lasting impact of these human rights violations on Indigenous peoples in Canada, particularly to those who attended these institutions and their families. To refer to the victims and survivors of those schools as “students” would not be appropriate. The report itself states that the institutions belonged to an educational system in name only. Over four thousand Indigenous children died or went missing while attending residential schools. In many cases, their names were not written on their final resting places. They were buried far away from their families.

The Truth and Reconciliation report includes a section about the “long shadow” that the incidents described therein have had on the lives of Indigenous peoples and communities in Canada. The pain and destruction wrought by family separation, the attempted erasure of cultural practices, and the violence and isolation experienced by the children in the schools themselves is immeasurable and ever-present.

Many consider the scope of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to be too narrow. In terms of the calls to action, reconciliation refers only to reconciliation over the atrocities committed in the residential schools. There remain numerous past human rights abuses perpetrated against Indigenous people that are unaccounted for by the commission, such as forced sterilization and the Saskatoon Police’s infamous Starlight tours. Nor does the publication of this report mean that Canada has changed its ways, which is why it is unsurprising that, as far-reaching as the scope of the commission may have been, Canada has yet to honour even these restrained commitments.

Myles Sanderson was born in 1990. The last residential school in Canada closed in 1996. Approximately 50 percent of all residential school survivors in Canada live in Saskatchewan, where he grew up. Court records show that Mr. Sanderson had a long and painful history of witnessing, experiencing, and participating in violence. During one of his few times outside of jail in recent years, he was on conditional release under particularly strict and isolating terms: no drugs, no alcohol, and no relationships with women without the permission of his parole officer. The Saskatoon police added via press release that “[t]his investigation is complex and there is no timeline for its anticipated completion.”

His remaining family mourn a man accused of a horrific crime and about whom little is known by the public except that he had black hair, brown eyes, and a troubled past. And that he, like too many Indigenous peoples in Canada, died while in the custody of the state and behind closed doors.

The post How the RCMP Perpetuates Canada’s Colonial Legacy appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The alert stated that naloxone had been administered, but it did not specify whether the seized marijuana sample had been tested or whether test results confirmed that the individual had, in fact, experienced an opioid overdose. These details are important to establishing the presence of fentanyl on the sample and that said fentanyl led to the individual’s experiencing respiratory arrest. 

The DRSP, which deals with public health concerns, is responsible for mounting Montreal’s response to the opioid overdose crisis. The overdose crisis refers to the rapid increase in opioid-related fatal overdoses that began across North America in the mid-2010s. Many overdoses during the crisis were linked to fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid. The degree of a substance’s effects on an individual are influenced, among other things, by its percentage concentration in the blood at a given time and by  a person’s tolerance. The level of concentration itself is determined partly by the amount of fentanyl consumed and the ingestion method employed. Consuming an excessive dose can lead to respiratory arrest. 

One of the driving factors in the overdose crisis has been contamination of other substances – mostly other opioids – with fentanyl. Fentanyl’s potency means that even a habitual user of other opioids, such as morphine or heroin, would risk exceeding their tolerance if they consumed a similar dose of fentanyl instead. Although fentanyl has been found in a variety of other drugs consumed as pills and powders, there has yet to be a confirmed case of fentanyl-tainted marijuana in Canada. 

The email was a version of a “bad dope alert.” Bad dope alerts are a harm reduction practice in which people who use drugs share messages alerting community members when a batch of drugs is contaminated or especially dangerous. They contain identifying details to let people know what to look for, such as any distinguishing marks or colours. In theory, the email from the DRSP was an attempt to protect the public from a dangerous batch of marijuana. However, the information contained in the email was incomplete and its central claim unlikely.

The different temperatures at which marijuana and fentanyl begin to degrade make it unlikely that someone could overdose from trace amounts of fentanyl in a joint. Smoking marijuana consists of burning the substance (combustion) and inhaling the resulting smoke. Fentanyl and marijuana have different combustion points. At the intense heat necessary to burn marijuana and create smoke all of the fentanyl would already have decomposed or been destroyed. Therefore it is highly implausible that someone could overdose on opioids by unintentionally consuming them in a joint. Dr. Ryan Marino, a harm reduction activist and physician devoted to combating misinformation about fentanyl compared the likelihood of overdosing by smoking fentanyl-laced weed to the likelihood of “a piano falling on your head.” 

This story may be an example of fentanyl panic. Ever since the increase in public awareness of opioid overdoses, there has been a rise in the amount of false reports in the media relating to fentanyl-tainted marijuana as well as fentanyl “touch overdoses.” You cannot overdose by touching fentanyl. Despite the fact that doctors and scientists have repeatedly taken to social media or the press to explain why these things are not possible, the stories persist.

The latter half of the email, where the DRSP offers the SQDC as a safer alternative to marijuana purchased by unlicensed sellers, is also troubling. Since consuming the non-SQDC marijuana is unlikely to result in a fentanyl overdose, the DRSP is promoting the Government store based on an unproven premise. 

There are a number of limitations to Quebec’s approach to marijuana legalization: excessive packaging, inconvenient locations, underpaid staff, and the creation of a government monopoly among them. Unlike in other provinces, marijuana in Quebec is exclusively purchased from the provincial government, whereas unlicensed sellers risk a million-dollar fine. Perpetuating the myth of dangerous fentanyl-laced weed also demonizes unlicensed sellers, putting them, or anyone suspected, at risk of violent interactions with the police. 

There is an ongoing public health crisis related to fentanyl which has ended many people’s lives. In some areas of Canada during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were more people dying from opioid overdoses than from COVID. This crisis was created in part by “bad dope,” but it was mostly created by bad policy. As a plethora of scientists, activists, and scientist-activists have pointed out, there are a wide range of actionable options on the table when it comes to reducing the number of fatal overdoses in Canada. These include, but are not limited to, expanded access to safe supply programs and supervised consumption sites, accessible housing programs, and, of course, the decriminalization of substance use. 

The macro – Canada’s refusal to make the policy changes necessary to significantly reduce overdose deaths – and the micro – the DRSP’s misleading email – illustrate an important fault line in Canadian society: How can a government both provide effective public health care and criminalize substance use? People who use drugs should always exercise discernment and caution when choosing a source, but we should be equally considerate about where we source our science and health information and, therefore, our bad dope alerts. 

If you live in Montreal and would like to get your substances tested, you can bring them to GRIP or Checkpoint. You can also order your own testing supplies from Dance Safe. Naloxone, an opioid antagonist that can be useful in responding to opioid overdoses, is available at the pharmacy without a prescription or at community organizations like Cactus or Head & Hands. 

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