The current safe supply is a half-measure

In a recent op-ed (Safe supply is no answer, Think Tank, Feb. 3) writer Lori Regenstreif decries British Columbia’s “safe supply” program as a failure.

She correctly points out that participants of the program are not adequately served by the drugs they are given, as a heroin user is not typically going to be satisfied when prescribed a pill of Dilaudid, either biochemically or psychically.

Unfortunately, she fails to acknowledge that the reason the program is a failure is because it’s a watered-down half-measure nobody asked for. Of course drug users aren’t satisfied being supplied with substitute versions of the drugs they use.

Proponents of a safe-supply policy were quite vocal about this problem from the very beginning, and warned that it would result in users selling off the drugs they received in order to get the drugs they were actually addicted to.

Proponents of the program were still willing to celebrate this faux safe supply as a little step in the right direction, in hopes that it would eventually lead us to the real solution. Where people can get safe access to clean versions of the drugs they actually want. Because that is the only way you remove underground drug-selling from the situation.

That is the only way that you remove this massive revenue stream from organized crime, while also protecting users from a toxic drug supply.

Unsurprisingly, that tiny incremental first step seems to be all we are getting. As the B.C. safe supply languishes, the politicians who once championed it seem happy to let it thrash in its death throes.

After barely taking the first step of this battle, they gutlessly raise the white flag, while perpetual critics like federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre get to go without challenge as he disingenuously claims that we tried safe supply and it failed. And drug users are left to suffer, disillusioned, as they are shuffled back to the margins of a society that seems more than happy to revel in the lie that we simply have no mechanisms with which to alleviate their suffering.

In reality, safe supply was destined to fail, not only because it was a bad-faith half-measure, but because it was yet another example of us treating drugs as some pathological problem that needs a purely medical solution. But the problem with drugs is how we treat them as a culture. In his book Drug Use For Grown Ups, Dr. Carl Hart lays out some groundbreaking research that should fundamentally rattle our perceptions of what we consider hard drugs.

For one thing, even evidenced in this discussion of safe supply, our discussion of drugs entirely centres around addicts.

Yet research shows that addicts only account for about 10 to 30 per cent of users, depending on the drug in question.

This means the vast majority of people who use drugs have a functional relationship with them. And there is a strong argument to be made that our policy of criminalizing drugs leads to higher drug prices, a tainted drug supply, and stigmatization of users, all of which exacerbate materials conditions that can lead to a user becoming an addict.

We decry the main problem of drugs as addiction, yet our culture lends to viewing every user as, if not actively turning them into, an addict.

But the truth is that there are millions of high functioning drug users, including Hart himself, who is quite open about his own healthy relationship with hard drugs and how it has in no way impeded his ability to reach the heights of his professional field.

But Hart was also wise enough to not become publicly open about that drug use until he had already reached those heights.

He doubtlessly recognized that we are still a long way away from shedding our puritanical views of drug use as an inherent personal failure that needs to pathologized, if not outright criminalized.

The truth is that most of our society’s problems with drugs are our own doing. People with a reliable supply of the clean drug they desire rarely overdose. Users free of stigma, with their material needs met and a strong social safety net are far less likely to become unhealthy addicts.

A social climate more accepting of drug use leads to users having a healthier relationship with drugs, while able to seek help if it becomes unhealthy, and also freeing up criminal justice system resources from being entangled in the process.

And a regulated drug supply limits the capacity for organized crime to fund their predatory operations.

It’s long been clear what needs to be done from a policy perspective. But how long will users have to suffer before we find the strength to change our culture?

Alex Passey is a Winnipeg writer.