Harm reduction programs have become a target of right-wing “culture war” attacks that paint “big city liberals” as enabling drug use. In West Coast cities, residents and local politicians often see the overdose crisis as intertwined and exclusive to the housing crisis. Local media coverage paints that picture in pieces like “Seattle is Dying,” using…

Part 6 of Safe Supply Saves Lives: a look beyond the deadly war on drugs, a 7-part series. History of Safe Supply in the US An apt comparison to a safe supply of substances is legal alcohol and its own history of prohibition. Since 1933, people with alcohol use disorder have had access to a…

Part 5 of Safe Supply Saves Lives: a look beyond the deadly war on drugs, a 7-part series. Having ostensibly moved away from mass incarceration for simple use, politicians laud “addiction treatment” as the silver-bullet solution for chronic pain patients, unsheltered homelessness, and the overdose crisis alike, but they don’t typically define what methods of…

US States have predictably responded to worsening drug supply with the same “tough on crime” drug war approach as decades past. Part 2 of Safe Supply Saves Lives: a look beyond the deadly war on drugs, a 7-part series. Colorado’s Democrat-majority legislature passed HB22-1326 this spring, setting the felony line for simple possession of fentanyl…

Part 1 of a 7-part series. Introduction Over 108,000 people died in the US last year from a drug overdose. British Columbia’s coroner data puts the sheer scale of the North American illicit drug overdose crisis into perspective: beginning around 2015, illicit drug deaths began towering over every other unnatural cause of death, including motor…