As the federal government this month pledged millions of dollars to help address harms related to illicit drug use in British Columbia and the Prairies, a well-known Canadian psychiatrist says the federal drug strategy is failing.
On July 6, federal minister of mental health and addictions Carolyn Bennett announced $20 million for funding of 42 projects to support greater access to prevention, harm reduction and treatment services for people who use drugs, including those disproportionately affected by substance use harms. The money is to be directed to British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan through Health Canada's Substance Use and Addictions Program (SUAP), said a news release.
Dr. Jeremy Devine, a psychiatrist in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences at McMaster University, said this week that the strategy of trying to regulate drug users themselves is not helpful to people who are addicted. His argument was published in an opinion piece in Toronto.
He said Bennett has taken her policy cues primarily from anti drug-prohibition and safe supply activists who view chronic and compulsive drug use as “an integral part of somebody’s life,” said Devine.
Most drug users, let alone their loved ones, do not view their drug use as “integral” to their life, but rather as a terrible affliction from which they desperately want their freedom, he added.
"The core ideological flaw in our drug policy is that it fails to recognize a hard truth: the drug user cannot have both their addiction and a free, safe, and self-determined life," said Devine
His concern is that the safe supply strategy, the idea of providing users with clean drugs as opposed to the "dirtier" street drugs, the hope is this will eliminate the need for those street drugs. Wrong, said Devine.
In an essay for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI), an Ottawa-based public policy think tank, Devine wrote that safe supply is rooted in a "misguided ideology which denies that drug use in the setting of addiction is intrinsically harmful."
"In fact, safe supply is a radical form of harm reduction, one that has pushed this amoral view far beyond its proper limits,” he wrote.
In his op-ed, Devine quoted Bennett as saying the federal government wants a regulated supply of drugs, along with regulated production, distribution and consumption. Devine said this is where the drug strategy has failed.
"To this end, the federal government has removed barriers to drug use, and advanced increasingly extreme harm reduction interventions, which fail to address the drug user’s underlying addiction," Devine wrote.
"Since 2017, the federal government has approved 38 supervised injection sites, decriminalized hard drug use in British Columbia, and generously funded so-called ‘safe supply’ programs which feature the delivery of potent opioids directly to the drug user with minimal oversight," he added.
"However, in attempting to ‘regulate’ the drug user in their addiction, Canada’s drug policy has transformed from being simply ineffective to frankly oppressive. Contrary to the belief of anti drug-prohibition activists, the state of addiction is intrinsically harmful and antithetical to freedom," Devine wrote.
He added that no amount of regulation will wean the user off his or her drug dependency.
Sudbury has a supervised drug consumption site operated by Réseau ACCESS Network at 24 Energy Court, located in a semi-industrial zone behind the Lorne Street Beer Store. The Sudbury site provides harm reduction supplies and education, overdose response, individual case management, supportive counselling, social counselling and referral services.
Len Gillis covers health care and mining for Sudbury.com.
