...cont'd from IN AFGHAN FIELDS

...These programs claim to reduce overdoses and deaths by distributing free hydromorphone, an opioid as potent as heroin, as an alternative to potentially tainted illicit substances. However, addiction experts have said that, as hydromorphone generally does not get fentanyl users high, recipients routinely resell ("divert") their safe supply on the black market. This has caused the drug's street price to collapse by up to 95% in some markets and fuelled new addictions, including among teenagers... Althought Mark lost thousands of dollars to scammers, he also bought thousands of authentic hydromorphone pills -- typically in packages of 500. He said these pills often arrived inside safer supply prescription bottles with patients' and doctors' names and addresses still clearly visible... To verify Mark's claims, I went on Reddit and inputted several slang terms for hydromorphone (ie "Dillies", "D8s) into the platform's search bar. I immediately found dozens of posts selling astonishing sums of safer supply hydromorphone pills...

In the comments sections of these posts, Reddit users openly discussed how safer supply recipients would sell their hydromorphone for "dirt cheap" to buy fentanyl... Drug users marvelled at how the Canadian government was giving away hydromorphone "like candy" and "throwing these f**kers around like tic tacs" and that drug dealers were buying "literally buckets" of safer supply opioids... One user asked other Redditors to stop "posting thousands of hydromorphone pills and flaunting their scripts "as doing so might cause the public to "push for the end of safer supply"...

I contacted several police departments, but they either did not reply or referred me to the RCMP. However a detective sergeant from the Toronto Police Service's drug squad, said his team has confirmed, using a variety of investigative techniques, that drugs are being sold on Reddit and that safer supply is being trafficked online... Through conversations with his suppliers, Jacob learned that drug traffickers in B.C. would assemble teams of 5 or 6 safer supply clients who would receive 32 hydromorphone pills a day. These clients would sell their pills to the dealer "pretty much like right outside the pharmacy" for 50 cents to $1 per pill, allowing dealers to easily procure 1,000 pills per week. The dealers would then sell in bulk to buyers in other provinces at around $3 per pill, and those buyers would then sell hydromorphone on the street for $5-10 per pill... Jacob said that many "quite young" teenagers have approached him online and "begged" to purchase dillies. Although he personally refuses to sell to teens, he did not feel that others, including the government, should feel bad about selling to youth, as "no one is forcing it up their nose or up their veins or anything like that. They actively search out the drug that's available for them".

In n a recent open letter to the federal government, 17 addiction physicians asked Ya'ara Saks, the federal minister of mental health and addictions, to reform or abolish safer supply. They argued that, if left unchecked, safer supply could create harms similar to those of the OxyContin crisis of the 2000s. Yet the federal and BC governments, both of which are politically invested in safer supply' success, continue to deny that diversion is a real problem. What else is needed to open their eyes?

British Columbia's new drug protocols allow doctors throughout the province to prescribe "safer supply" drugs in a reckless manner. In a new report titled RECKLESS: BRITISH COLUMBIA'S "SAFE SUPPLY" FENTANYL TABLET EXPERIMENT, Adam Zivo reviews the newest drug protocols adopted by the BC government, documenting the evolution of "safe supply" opioid programs in Canada since 2020. Zivo reports on the concerning lack of evidence behind the protocols, how they undermine recovery, drive diversion to the black market, and ruin the lives of young Canadians.

The new protocols not only avoid any requirement for drug users to first try evidence-based recovery programs before receiving high-potency opioids, but also allow minors to receive them, with no reference to the rights and roles of parents or even a minimum age for safer supply clients. Of deep concern is also the BC government's approach of continually increasing access to "safe" opioids despite openly admitting that there is no evidence of proven benefits or safety. The protocols also require that clients be told that their access to free fentanyl and sufentanil will almost certainly be cut off if they are hospitalized, or if they attend withdrawal management or substance use treatment facilities.

Zivo explains: "The prospect of free fentanyl and sufentanil creates powerful incentives to sign away one's rights to evidence based treatment, so the province is essentially exploiting clients' addictions so that it can experiment on them without taking legal responsibility for potential harms". Zivo adds that "one can reasonably expect that a significant portion of the fentanyl tablets being distributed by the BC government will end up being traded or resold on the black market", explaining how mass diversion is already a major issue for weaker "safer supply" opioids like hydromorphone. While addiction experts have been overwhelmingly critical of unsupervised safer supply, Zivo notes that many believe that the solution is not to abolish but to reform the program so that drugs can be provided more responsibly. By receiving safer supply as a temporary intervention, addicted users can transition to recovery-oriented treatments such as opioid agonist therapy (OAT.) "It would not take much to reshape BC's safer supply fentanyl and sufentanil programs into something more responsible and genuinely safe", concludes Zivo. "There is nothing preventing the province from redesigning safer supply as a recovery-oriented intervention".

ORWELLIAN WAR BY DRUGS

35.Big Brother's Brotherhood (Members of the Brotherhood are prepared to: give one's life; commit murder; commit acts of sabotage; betray one's country to foreign powers; cheat, forge, and blackmail; corrupt the minds of children; distribute habit-forming drugs; encourage prostitution; disseminate venereal diseases; do anything which is likely to cause demoralization of society...)