An open letter to the mayor of medicine Hat Alberta in support of SCS
I grew up in Medicine Hat and consider it my hometown, although I now live and work in BC as a school psychologist. The topic at hand is an issue that no one is immune to – addiction and mental health. More specifically, I am writing in support of the proposed Supervised Consumption Site (SCS) in Medicine Hat based on first-hand lived experience as a sister and daughter of loved ones whose lives were lost to this epidemic, and as a professional who is informed about the science and evidence in support of these sites. I am also an ally of the group Moms Stop the Harm (MSTH), which is a network of Canadian families whose loved ones have died due to substance use or who hope for recovery. MSTH calls for an end to the failed war on drugs, which is a war on the people we love. We envision a new approach based on reducing harm, where people who use drugs are treated with respect, compassion and support.
First, I’d like to say that the landscape and consequences of drug use have changed drastically over the decades with the rise of opiates and methamphetamine use. Speaking as a sister, I have been completely devastated by the suffering that I watched my brother endure that eventually ended in his early death at the age of 36. He spent nearly 25 years in active, severe addiction beginning as a pre-teen, fuelled by complex trauma, untreated mental health and neurodevelopmental challenges, and access to prescription opiates in the household as a teen. Those who knew him would remember his generous, soft-spoken nature, and the love he had for his little dog and for me, his sister. I can’t imagine loving anyone more than I love him. Though there were signs that his drug use had become extremely problematic, I never once entertained the idea that he was injecting drugs…because I believed it was “those people” – the dirty, disgusting ones living under a bridge who would resort to that sort of awful behaviour. Did I ever wake up when I found out that my handsome younger brother had been injecting for almost 10 years, and had by that time destroyed nearly all of the veins in his body through his drug use. He had also suffered a serious case of flesh eating disease that almost resulted in an amputation of his arm that he did not tell me about out of shame that I would find out about the extent of his disorder. I saw my brother deteriorate from a physically healthy young man to a person completely overcome by the devastating physical and mental effects of his addiction from which he saw no possible way out. No one in their right mind would continue self-harming behaviour with such devastating consequences if they were able to simply make a choice to stop. Addiction is a complex brain disorder that affects cognition, behaviour, and impulse control.
It is for him, and for all our affected sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, friends and partners that I write to advocate for the supervised consumption site in Medicine Hat. While I understand and appreciate the concern of the general public about this site, I implore each and every person to consider all of the evidence, statistics and probabilities involved in this particular issue in order to take an informed stance.
If my brother had access to the supervised consumption facility, I believe he would still be alive today. The reasons for this, based on his lived experience, are as follows. 1) Promotion of safe injection behaviours, meaning primarily, for my brother, that his veins would not have been destroyed. He would have been instructed on the proper methods, using the proper equipment and techniques to minimize the physical damage to his veins and skin. He avoided seeking medical help and treatment in general due to the intense shame he felt as multiple people tried repeatedly using fancy lights and techniques to locate veins in his body, all the while turning white and almost vomiting due to the intense anxiety and shame he felt. When a medical emergency arose that threatened his life, which happened multiple times due to the significant health complications associated with his drug use, doctors would have been able to draw blood and administer IV fluids and drugs quicker, an issue that was related to the cause of his death. 2) Increased positive interactions with medical/clinical personnel, meaning that he might not have had such intense fear and aversion to interactions with health care professionals. If he was more willing to engage with the health care system, he would have been much more likely to engage with supports to treat his disorder. 3) Increased likelihood of engaging him in treatment. I encouraged my brother at length in many ways to engage in various treatment options. The only interest he expressed was in connecting with a peer mentor he met in the community who had showed him personal interest and care. This peer did not provoke shame in him because he was kind, compassionate, and had experienced recovery. This peer made him feel like he mattered and that he was cared for. Each and every interaction with staff at the SCS is a relationship building exercise in which the client is treated with respect and dignity, which is often not the case for these individuals in the rest of society at large. It is through that relationship that trust is built, self-worth is discovered, and the chances of engaging in further treatment options is greatly enhanced.
Speaking as a professional who values science and research-based evidence, a recent meta-analysis of 75 studies found that at the population level statistically, supervised consumptions sites 1) enhance access to primary health care and social services, 2) greatly reduce overdose and death, 3) do not increase drug injecting, drug trafficking or crime in the surrounding environments, and 4) reduce public drug injections and dropped syringes (Potier et al., 2014). In Alberta, SCS’s have helped people who use drugs close to 85,000 times. Each of those visits represents a care episode where someone like my brother was treated with compassion and offered an opportunity to move towards positive change. The Alberta sites have saved lives by reversing 1070 overdoses, and the Edmonton site alone has received 5372 referrals to other health and social supports. (The availability of those supports is another issue that we as a society need to collectively tackle!).
Let’s provide our loved ones with dignity rather than shame, and with hope rather than despair. While I understand fears such as increased risks to the neighbourhood or decreases in sales, we are talking about our loved ones’ lives, and their deaths. They deserve access to evidence-based treatment and respect as much as your families and businesses do. Let’s come together in our common humanity and find ways to mitigate the risks that some community members are concerned about, while also providing respect, compassion and evidence-based treatment for those suffering wit substance use disorder. Each of those affected is somebody’s someone.
Dana Dee on behalf of my late brother.
Don Davies – #MSTH #DecriminalizeNow Rally
Victoria, BC June 23, 2018
Just this week, the Government of Canada legalized cannabis.This is a welcome, positive, and long-overdue step.
In listening over the past year to the discussion and debate about the pros and cons of legalizing marijuana, it is apparent to me that the arguments in favour of this measure are overwhelming: it helps with harm reduction; it eliminates the criminal element; it provides safety of product; it protects children and vulnerable Canadians; it unclogs our criminal justice system to deal with real crime; it treats addiction and substance use as a health issue, not a criminal or moral one.
However, it is patently obvious that the arguments in favour of cannabis legalization can be applied with equal force to all drugs. In fact, because other drugs do and have the capacity to cause death, I think the arguments are even stronger for legalizing and properly regulating all drugs.
But this is not just a theoretical position – fortunately, we have real examples and hard evidence to back it up. In 1999, there was a drug crisis in Portugal. Use of hard drugs was rampant and approximately one per cent of their population reported a drug addiction. So in 2001, Portugal decided to treat the possession and use of small quantities of drugs as a public health issue, not a criminal one. They decriminalized the use of all drugs, even heroin and cocaine, and unleashed a major public health campaign to tackle addiction. Though possession is still legally prohibited, violations are treated as administrative infractions and removed completely from the criminal realm. That means getting caught using or possessing drugs could result in a small fine or a referral to treatment where appropriate, but not jail time or a criminal record.
The crisis in Portugal soon stabilized, and the ensuing years saw dramatic drops in problematic drug use, HIV and hepatitis infection rates, overdose deaths, drug-related crime and incarceration rates. Portugal’s mortality rate from drugs is now four times lower than the European average, the number of teenagers who have experimented with drugs has fallen, and the number of people in treatment has increased. 90 percent of public money spent fighting drugs is now channeled toward health-care goals — just 10 per cent is spent on enforcement.
In contrast, in Canada, 70 percent of funding spent combating drug use is spent on enforcement. We have the second highest rates of cannabis use among young people in the world and an opioid overdose crisis that is staggering. 4,000 Canadians lost their lives to overdoses in 2017, up from 3,000 in 2016. We're on track in 2018 to exceed that death toll, with as many as 6,000 Canadians dying from overdoses.
In British Columbia, overdose deaths spiked this March, marking the province's second-highest monthly total in history according to the BC Coroner’s Service.
At the Liberal Party's recent policy convention, delegates voted overwhelmingly to adopt Jagmeet Singh and the NDP’s position on decriminalization and medical regulation as a means of responding to drug overdose deaths.
A coalition of 200 family, friends, organizations, policy experts (including former Liberal leader Bob Rae) impacted by the overdose crisis wrote an open letter urging the Liberals to:
“Be the progressive government you promised to be, choosing human rights and evidence-based policy over ideological relics. We need you to listen to our voices as we call for the essential next step: decriminalization. The example of Portugal and other European countries illustrates that this policy works. We ask you to prevent thousands of more unnecessary deaths by supporting this resolution.”
However, both the Liberal Minister of Health and the Prime Minister responded by unequivocally ruling out action.
Here’s what Liberal Health Minister Petipas-Taylor said this week when confronted with the fact that 4000 Canadians - a new record - died last year from overdoses: “By decriminalizing drugs, we’re certainly not going to fix the problem that’s on the streets right now,” she said.
Instead, she pointed out that in May, Ottawa announced that opioids dispensed in Canada will soon have to carry stickers that warn the drugs can cause dependence, addiction and overdoses. Talk about ignoring the evidence. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns.
The Liberal government has also refused to launch an investigation or initiate legal action to recover damages from opioid manufacturers for the tragic consequences and public costs of this crisis.
Instead, federal government has left victims to seek their own recourse through a private class-action lawsuit. This resulted in a proposed settlement of only $20 million, with a paltry $2 million allocated to all provincial and federal health authorities in Canada. Thankfully, this settlement was rejected because no steps were taken to ensure that past and potential future public health care costs were identified.
Imagine - we have experienced over 10,000 deaths and spent over a billion dollars in public health costs from opioids - and yet our federal government has not so much as launched an investigation into opioid manufacturer practices who themselves have earned billions of dollars in profits from these dangerous and highly addictive products.
This stands in contrast to aggressive action from U.S. authorities, which has led to almost $700 million in damages and criminal convictions of opioid manufacturer executives for improper marketing - with many more lawsuits pending in their courts.
What message does it send when thousands of Canadians die from overdoses and our government fails to seek justice?
What does it say when our government refuses even to consider the demonstrated successes of other nations in reducing drug use and deaths?
What conclusion are we to draw when our federal government flatly refuses to declare the opioid overdose crisis a national public health emergency - even though provinces have and opioid overdose death is now the number one killer of men between the ages of 30 and 39?
We owe it to the memory of those lost to this crisis to hold those who profited to account. We need to stop treating the most vulnerable members of our society like criminals. We need to treat substance use and addiction for what they are: health issues, and social justice issues, not criminal and moral ones.
We need significant, new federal money for addiction prevention, education, treatment, and harm reduction - across all modalities, from abstinence to 12 step to opioid substitution, tailored for every demographic, from youth to women to Indigenous Canadians. And treatment must be available as a fully insured service provided by our public health care system so that individuals and families can get timely access at quality facilities regardless of income or ability to pay.
My friends – you have felt the pain of substance use like no others. You have experienced the frustration, the powerlessness, the heartache, the grief that only those who have lost a loved one to the disease of addiction can know.
I myself lost my father when I was 20 years old to a methadone overdose. I know, feel and share your pain.
Your courage to show up, to share your experiences, to speak up - to demand more in the knowledge that we can do better - is in service of the greatest legacy we can pay to those we have lost: to do everything in our power to prevent the avoidable, unnecessary death of another mother’s child to addiction.
Thank you for your concern for others. Thank you for your commitment to act.
Thank you for your willingness to use your pain in service to others.
Together – as we just did for cannabis this week – we will prevail in making drug policy in Canada more rational, more effective and more compassionate.
Don Davies, MP | député Vancouver Kingsway, Critic for Health | Porte-parole du NPD en matière de santé, New Democratic Party | Nouveau Parti démocratique
Leslie McBain – #MSTH #DecriminalizeNow Rally
Victoria, BC June 23, 2018
We acknowledge in gratitude that our gathering place is within the ancestral, traditional, and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Songhees, the Esquimalt and the Wsanec nations.
Before we begin I would like to bring your attention to the Petition to the House of Commons to address the opioid crisis that we urge you to sign – wave your clipboards volunteers. John and Jenifer Hedican of Comox lost their beloved son Ryan to a fentanyl poisoning. They like us are not only grief stricken, they are angry and passionate. Thank you, John and Jennifer, for this petition and its trajectory.
We are here to demand that our government and all governments of Canada turn their attention to the fact that there have been over 7000 deaths in 4 years and many before that. These people died of the preventable cause of using illicit, unregulated, and toxic substances. We demand the government place the highest priority on ending the war on drugs, which is a war on the people who use drugs.
And specifically, today we ask government to DECRIMINALIZE the people who possess and use illicit drugs. They are not criminals. they are simply using drugs.
Drug use must be treated as a social and health-care issue rather than a criminal matter.
Many people are addicted to drugs - they take drugs out of a great need, a need that most of cannot fathom unless we’ve been there. Some are seeking a respite from the harshness of their lives. Some are kids looking for a new experience. It is not for the government to literally judge an individual based on what they want or need to take into their own bodies. They are not criminals.
And to see them as such, to treat them as such, then to deny them the medicine they need once they are dumped into the criminal justice system is inhumane. It is not befitting of the country of Canada
In comparison, am I arrested for possessing and drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes? No! Why not? Because prohibition on alcohol didn’t work in the early 20th century, the government decided that these potentially very harmful substances are legal, and legal to possess and use as unwisely as we like.
Much of the world has realized that decriminalization necessary to mitigate the problem:
- The Global Commission on Drug Policy, the World Health Organization and both the Canadian and American public health associations support the decriminalization of possessing small quantities of currently illegal psychoactive substances.
- The countries of Portugal, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, the Netherlands, the Czech republic have all decriminalized drugs. They have shown that such policies free up police and the entire criminal justice system for more serious crimes. These policies send people with addictions toward treatment rather than jail.
Framing drug use as a criminal justice issue rather than one of health has simply served to fuel the very lucrative black market in fentanyl and other non-pharmaceutical, divert resources from law enforcement and marginalize those who are already vulnerable
People who use these drugs are my kid and your kid, your brother, your aunt, your partner and maybe you. They are people who live next door, the people beside you in the parking lot. They are not criminals. They may carry trauma, they may live in poverty, they may have mental health challenges, they may have simply become caught by addiction through a doctor’s prescription.
Today we are working on one ask. Decriminalize the possession of and use of illicitly obtained drugs for personal use. It is not a war on drugs that we see, it is a war on the people who use drugs.
Let the government, Mr. Trudeau, see that lives will be improved, tax dollars will be saved and put to use in health care, treatment, education, shelters, harm reduction measures. Mr. Trudeau, your party as well as the NDP and the Green Party wants to decriminalize drugs. What IS the problem here?
Moms Stop the Harm primarily works to support and keep alive people who use drugs. We want them to be alive, we want every kid who experiments with drugs to live through the experience, we want people who are addicted to have a chance to get to treatment and recovery.
We advocate for drug policies that keep users alive and safe. They must not be criminalized, sent to jail, and not treated. They need help not jail. Decriminalize the possession and consumption of all illicit drugs.
Decriminalize those who possess and use illicit drugs NOW!
Leslie McBain, co-founder Moms Stop The Harm, bereaved mother of Jordan Miller
