Adam Zivo: Trudeau defends ‘safer supply’ drugs that are destroying lives

Earlier this week, I reported in great detail how Canada’s “safer supply” strategy is a failure and is making the opioid crisis worse. Unfortunately, safer supply advocates have doubled-down and are continuing to falsely claim that everything is fine.

“Safer supply” programs are designed to reduce drug overdoses by providing free, government-funded alternatives to illicit substances. Canadian safer supply programs typically distribute hydromorphone, a drug which, according to some studies, is more potent than heroin, as a substitute for fentanyl and other opioids.

While safer supply sounds nice in theory, in practice it has been disastrous.

It turns out that hydromorphone is too weak to get fentanyl users high, and, for this reason, many safer supply recipients simply sell (“divert”) their government-provided hydromorphone on the street, at rock-bottom prices, to purchase more street fentanyl. Safer supply doesn’t dissuade illicit fentanyl consumption — it subsidizes it.

Mass safer supply diversion has flooded communities with opioids, allegedly causing the street price of hydromorphone to drop by 70-95 per cent in cities where safer supply is active. Physicians report that this is leading to a rise in new addictions, particularly among youth and individuals in recovery.

READ ADAM’S INVESTIGATION: The Liberal government’s ‘safer supply’ is fuelling a new opioid crisis

When my 10,000 word investigation was published by the Post earlier this week, the response was explosive. Judging by readers’ comments, it seems that, while many suspected that something was amiss with safer supply, they were shocked by the magnitude of harm being hidden from the public.

Predictably, safer supply advocates began a campaign to delegitimize the story.

After Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre shared my research, Associate Health Minister Carolyn Bennett, who is primarily responsible for the federal government’s safer supply strategy, publicly accused him of being “irresponsible and polarizing.” Shortly after, she published a series of Tweets in which she claimed that Poilievre was sharing  “untrue information about harm reduction and safer supply.”

Minister Bennett did not address any of the specific findings in my story, nor did she identify which of these findings she believed were inaccurate. Claiming that something is untrue, and then providing no further details or evidence to back your claim, is lazy politics.

Yet given Bennett’s history of misrepresenting safer supply to the Canadian public, this response was predictable.

As I noted in my story, Bennett has repeatedly claimed that distributing safer supply hydromorphone will meaningfully reduce fentanyl-related harms, even though Health Canada’s own research shows that this is almost certainly not true.

“Even maximal doses of (hydromorphone) have little effect except withdrawal management. This leads people to continue to use street fentanyl, as (hydromorphone does) not approximate the effect they get from fentanyl,” said Health Canada’s 2022 report detailing early findings from Canada’s safer supply programs.

Given her position, it’s hard to imagine that the minister would be unaware of this information, which she has, for some reason, omitted from her public messaging about safer supply — so, really, who here is sharing false information?

In Parliament, Pierre Poilievre questioned Justin Trudeau about my story, but Trudeau, much like Minister Bennett, avoided addressing any specific claims and instead vaguely accused Poilievre of “ideological fear-mongering.”

“We need to stay grounded in what the front-line responders have been telling us,” said Trudeau.

I completely agree with the prime minister here. We absolutely need to listen to front-line responders. That’s why my investigation relied on interviews with over 20 health-care experts, including 14 addiction medicine practitioners. Critically, my research showed that the majority of addiction medicine specialists are actually apprehensive about safer supply.

When it comes to addiction, these specialists are Canada’s leading front-line responders and experts, so I implore the prime minister to follow his own advice and listen to them. If Trudeau feels that addiction medicine practitioners should not be consulted about their own field, I’d love to hear an explanation why.

Harm reduction advocates have also attacked my reporting. For example, drug activist Zoe Dodd accused me of compiling “so many myths in one piece without evidence” and said, “This is an exercise in drug war propaganda that is also puppetted (sic) by addix doctors who have skin in the game.”

While disappointing, this was also entirely unsurprising. As I detailed in my original story, these advocates routinely harass safer supply critics and intimidate them into silence, which is precisely why many addiction medicine practitioners self-censor despite widespread discontent with the program.

The rhetoric used by these activists is not only unsettlingly aggressive and violent (one activist told me to “stab yourself in the face f*ckt*rd”), it is also deeply paranoid.

Harm reduction advocates habitually claim that shadowy conspiracies are to blame for criticism of safer supply. At first, these advocate blamed the “alt-right” (nevermind that Canada’s leading safer supply critic, Dr. Vincent Lam, is a vocal NDP supporter). Then they moved onto vilifying the “recovery industry.”

Shortly after my story was published, I joked with a friend, “How long until the safer supply advocates start claiming that the entire field of addiction medicine is evil.” With Dodd’s comments, it turns out that it took less than two days.

Safer supply advocates can repeat their fairytales all they’d like, but that won’t make them true. The program is a failure — that is simply a fact. Since my story was published, I’ve been contacted by yet another wave of physicians confirming my findings. The dam of silence is breaking and the truth will come out.

National Post

1. Drug fail: The Liberal government's 'safer supply' is fuelling a new opioid crisis

2. Poilievre accuses government of contributing to addiction crisis with drug strategy

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