Canadas drug crisis has killed at least 23,000. What has Justin Trudeau done about it? – Maclean’s

More than 23,000 people have died in this country from drug overdose and drug poisoning in just the last five years.

Weve lost more people to this drug crisis than to COVID-19. Our life expectancy has stalled due to the scores of lives, particularly young ones, lost to the epidemic. Its likely 2021 will be the deadliest year on recordbeating last years record, which in turn beat 2018s record high, which surpassed 2017s horrifying death toll.

And its time we stop pretending Justin Trudeau is taking this crisis seriously. At every turn, his Liberal government has offered half-measures. Worse yet, they find themselves largely unchallenged on it. The indifference can only be explained by political expediency.

Canadas opposition leaders, to their credit, are at least rowing in the right direction.

On Tuesday, International Overdose Awareness Day, Trudeau was asked by reporter David Akin whether he would follow expert advice and take the first step of decriminalizing opioids for personal use and regulate the supply of the deadly drug.

In a roundabout answer the Liberal leader said: No.

Even if those policies would seem unthinkable just years ago, they are measures that experts say need to happen for every other harm reduction tactic to be fully efficient, to bring drug users out of the shadows and into society, and to end the costly and ineffective war on drugs.

But Trudeau has refused to go down that road. His former health minister and attorney general, Jane Philpott and Jody Wilson-Raybould, advocated for decriminalization around the cabinet table and got a blunt response.

Decriminalization is not popular when you poll it, Philpott told me, after she and her colleague were pushed out of the Liberal Party caucus.

***

In order to understand an epidemic, you must be able to measure ita lesson weve learned all too well recently, glued to our computers and televisions awaiting updated COVID-19 data. But Canadas indifference to the opioid epidemic means we have a criminally incomplete picture of it.

According to the Public Health Agency of Canada 21,174 people have died from opiods. That data, however, only stretches from January 2016 to December 2020: The agency wont release data from the first quarter of 2021 until the end of September. Manitoba still hasnt supplied its data from the last quarter of 2020. Quebec and British Columbia report non-opioid overdose deaths, but other provinces do not.

The Trudeau government promised repeatedly to improve national overdose reporting. It failed to do that. Health Minister Patty Hajdus talking points, posted online, even note that in order to have an effective response to the ever-changing crisis, a strong understanding and evidence-base is required to make informed and timely decisions. The talking points laud their own outdated, underreported, and inconsistent work.

The hardest-hit provinces are reporting this data, even if Ottawa wont deign to collect it. And the numbers show things are getting worse. Much worse.

British Columbia has reported that 1,011 people died between January and June of this year (a 33 per cent increase over last year.) Saskatchewan reported 221 deaths between January and August (already two-thirds of last years total deaths.) Ontario counted 638 deaths between January and March. (57 per cent higher than the same period last year.)

These numbers would be even more gruesome if not for the drug Naloxone, which is remarkably effective in reversing the effects of drug poisonings. Yet the United States is experiencing an acute shortage of the drug, and there are signs its coming to Canada: Harm reduction advocates in Winnipeg say they have received incomplete shipments in recent weeks. A lack of Naloxone could send deaths skyrocketing.

Even with Naloxone, there are tens of thousands more injuries and permanent disabilities that have come as a result of this endemic problem.

Its important to understand why these people are dying. For a long time, we exclusively referred to overdoses. But that word papers over a much more insidious reality of this crisis: Deaths rarely come from simply taking too much.

Its not an addiction problem, Donald MacPherson, director of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, once told me. This is a supply-side problem.

I looked over MacPhersons shoulder, in his office at Simon Fraser University, as he showed me graphs charting heroin use and drug poisoning deaths in Vancouver. The drug use would stay relatively steady, but deaths would rocket up and downup in the 1990s, then back down; way up in 2015, and it hasnt come back down since.

Because there is no quality control, consistency in potency, or purity testing, its nearly impossible to guarantee that the drug a user uses one week is the same drug theyre using the next.

This governments strategy is actively making that problem worse, as it focuses on busts, arrests and prosecutions to disrupt a remarkably resilient supply chain.Police interdiction and supply chain busts means even ones long-time dealer may change their supply with little notice. Or when a dealer is taken off the street, a user in crisis may turn to someone new and less trustworthy.

The advent of fentanyl, and its hyper-potent cousin carfentanil, have driven scores of deaths. But increasingly potent methamphetamine and other synthetic opiates are increasingly driving poisonings.

Governments have talked endlessly about addressing addiction and ending users reliance on drugsbut no country, not even those which imprison drug users and publicly execute drug dealers, have found a solution to that problem.

Plenty of governments, including Trudeaus, have obsessed with clamping down on the supply of drugs, especially the more potent types. They have been complete and total failures. This government cant even restrict the ample supply of fentanyl and heroin in federal prisons, where they control everything that goes in-and-out of the institutions.

The consensus is mounting that the solution will not be ending demand, but ensuring a safe supply.

And behind that consensus is an unlikely coalition of medical experts, police officers, harm reduction experts and grassroots activists.

Together and separately, they have called for treating this crisis like a health issue, not a criminal one. Virtually every expert in this space has called for a serious expansion in the supply of safe, regulated drugs. Many have called for outright regulation, production and cultivation of some of these drugsperhaps emulating the legalization of cannabis, or in a more controlled, regulated manner.

They include:

Not on that list: Justin Trudeau.

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Were treating it as a medical problem, Trudeau said on Tuesday.

But that isnt true.

In 2020, police in Canada laid more than 30,000 charges for drug possession (not including cannabis), a number that remained largely unchanged from 2019.

More than 4,000 people are in federal prison on drug offences alone.

To his credit, Trudeau has proposed removing all mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. But, to his detriment: That bill is not law, because it was killed when he triggered an early election nobody wanted.

We have moved forward significantly on measures around safe supply to fight the opioid epidemic, Trudeau said Tuesday. That, too, stretches the truth.

In his party platform, released Wednesday, Trudeau boasts spending $600 million to date on the drug poisoning crisis. (By contrast, the federal government budgeted about $160 billion on the COVID-19 pandemic over a year-and-a-half.) Little of that money, however, is targeted to the measures that are most effective.

Canada has only committed $50 million to safe supply projects in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. (With half the money going to Ontario.)

A set of talking points for the health minister even notes that some of the $600 million spent includes money for law enforcementnot exactly in keeping with a health focus.

Its indisputable that some of the measures Ottawa has fundedwhether they be to provide a regulated, controlled and tested supply of heroin or fentanyl; or to offer pharmaceutical analogueswork. Study after study have confirmed that they save lives, vastly reduce overdoses, and deny profit for criminal enterprise. As one study put it bluntly: The availability of a safer, unadulterated supply of opioids decreased [users] need to access the illicit drug market, significantly reducing their overdose risk.

But its becoming abundantly clear that these programs Ottawa is funding are running up against barriers that Ottawa itself refuses to bring down. Study after study has found that barriers, particularly criminalization, have limited the efficacy of these programs that Trudeau keeps touting.

A November 2020 review, commissioned by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (a government agency) found that restrictive laws and fear of discipline by professional bodies appear to limit access to safe supply. The health experts cited the immediate need to scale up these programs and rectify the barriers. The Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange reported recently that, when it comes to these safe supply programs, uptake has been limited across Canada.

British Columbia, which offers far-and-away the most support and services for drug users of any province or territory, estimates that some 50,000 drug users are not being reached by any of the current programming. Only about 3,300 people are on the kind of safe supply programs Trudeau keeps bragging about. Its a tragically small number, and yet it is far and away better than every other province.

B.Cs relative success has only been enabled because of a consensus from every authority involvedexcept Ottawato fully commit to the public health approach. The premier, mayor, and chief of police are all on the same page in rejecting the criminalization of drug possession.

Last year, Premier John Horgan and Mayor Kennedy Stewart called on Ottawa to issue a total exemption from the criminal prohibition on drugs for the city of Vancouver. To date, Ottawa has dragged its heels on the request.

Other cities are stepping up, too. Interim Toronto Police Chief James Ramer told me earlier this summer that our officers do not lay simple possession charges. I provided that direction last fall, and were not doing that.

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Capping off his self-congratulatory answer on Tuesday, Trudeau tried to score political points on his competitors.

I was pleased to see many other parties, including the Conservatives, talk about the opioid epidemic, but they wont go as far as safe supply and that is certainly something that we have invested in and will continue to stand for, Trudeau said.

Pointing fingers is a bold strategy from a Prime Minister on whose watch more than 30,000 have died.

Whats more, the Liberal platform offers no new course of action or strategy. It commits $500 million to the provinces and territories on treatment, and not much else.

And Trudeau is rightthe other party leaders have talked seriously about the epidemic. Erin OToole told reporters recently: People with addiction should not be the focus of the criminal justice system. People that are dealing and that are preying on people with addiction should be the focus. (Thats a far cry from 2019, when then-leader Andrew Scheer told me the focus of government should be getting people off dangerous and harmful narcotics, not on maintaining a life of addiction.)

While its true OToole hasnt committed to decriminalization, per se, nor a safe supply programwhich he should be rightfully vilified forhis platform does cement his position that the last thing that those suffering from addiction should have to worry about is being arrested.

Its worth noting the kilometers he has travelled, away from the Conservatives past policies of mass incarceration to fight drug use. He has dragged his party from doggedly regressive to modestly progressive, and deserves some credit for it.

Whats more, OToole would revise Canadas addictions and substance abuse strategies to reorient them to treatment and recovery and devote $325 million to expanding treatment capacity.

And its conspicuous who Trudeau doesnt mention, of course: Jagmeet Singh has endorsed drug decriminalization since first throwing his hat in the ring to lead the NDP.

I asked Singh recently what exactly differentiates his position from Trudeaus record. Hes been in power for six years, and this crisis has only gotten worse, Singh said. He called it a waste of resources to continue throwing criminal justice measures after drug users. The party confirmed to me that he would decriminalize drugs if elected, making him the only one of the three with a serious plan to avoid thousands of more deaths.

Green Party leader Annamie Paul, similarly, supports drug decriminalization. I do not understand the governments rationale for not immediately decriminalizing possession and working with the provinces to ensure a safe supply of drugs, and increased social and health supports for users, Paul said in a statement.

I do not understand either.

***

For the past year, Trudeau has bent over backwards to laud and celebrate public health experts. On the campaign trail, he has admonished his competitors for their supposed distrust of science and expert advice.

Yet, when it comes to Canadas other public health crisis, he constantly ignores and dismisses that advice: Stop arresting people for drug possession. Stop trying to use police and courts to end an epidemic. Find ways to vastly expand the access to a safe supply, in order to supplant more deadly or contaminated sources of these drugs. And find legal, regulatory, avenues to allow users to source and share safer drugs to reduce overdoses, poisonings and deaths.

Whenever he is asked about the crisiseach and every timehe offers an insulting platitude: There is no one silver bullet to counter the opioid epidemic. Yet to look at his record on the crisis: Justin Trudeau is talking about silver and offering us brass.

So lets stop pretending. Lets stop pretending that the status quo will result in anything but another 10,000 dead. Lets stop pretending that this government is proposing any new or serious solutions. Lets stop pretending that Trudeau and his Liberal Party would prioritize these people over their own electoral fortune. Lets stop pretending anything short of drastic action is necessary.

Lets stop pretending.

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Canadas drug crisis has killed at least 23,000. What has Justin Trudeau done about it? - Maclean's