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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Nadelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production

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Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the show

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Speaker 1: where we talk about all things drugs. But any of

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Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of iHeart Media,

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Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed, as

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Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not

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Speaker 1: even represent my own and nothing contained in this show

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Speaker 1: should be used his medical advice or encouragement to use

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Speaker 1: any type of drug. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. My guest today

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Speaker 1: is someone I don't think I've ever met, but he's

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Speaker 1: doing remarkable work in the city of Vancouver and province

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Speaker 1: of British Columbia and Canada. His name is Garth Mullins

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Speaker 1: and he's become well known as host of an award

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Speaker 1: winning podcast called Crackdown. What makes his podcast somewhat unique

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Speaker 1: is that he and his co producers are themselves drug

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Speaker 1: users and drug user organizers and activists. They're mostly working

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Speaker 1: with Van DOW, which is an acronym for the Vancouver

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Speaker 1: Area Network of Drug Users, perhaps the longest standing drug

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Speaker 1: user organization in North America. So, Garth, thank you ever

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Speaker 1: so much for joining me today on Psychoactive Ethan. It's

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Speaker 1: a great privilege to be here. I've been an admirer

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Speaker 1: of your work for a long time and that's nice

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Speaker 1: to talk to you. Okay, well, thank you, thank you

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Speaker 1: very much. Garth. Let me just start by asking why

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Speaker 1: did you start this podcast a few years ago. I'm

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Speaker 1: an old school dope fain. You know, that's the story

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Speaker 1: of my life is I've been on some kind of

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Speaker 1: opioid pretty much every day of my adult life. For

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Speaker 1: most of them, and for a long time that was Heroin,

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Speaker 1: and for a while now it's been methodone and uh,

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Speaker 1: everything in between. And I came to under stand our

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Speaker 1: struggle just through my own personal experience with police, the

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Speaker 1: different institutions that you run into if you're a drug user,

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Speaker 1: and also with losing so many people across my whole life,

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Speaker 1: like maybe half the people I came up with are gone.

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Speaker 1: And I saw the way that the world looked at

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Speaker 1: us and saw us in popular culture and journalism, and

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Speaker 1: I was like, those aren't the people around me. Those

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Speaker 1: aren't the people that I know. The people that I

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Speaker 1: know are actually, most of the time pretty rational and

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Speaker 1: smart and kind of trying to make their way and

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Speaker 1: then trying to look out for each other. And I

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Speaker 1: knew a little bit about how to make podcasts and

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Speaker 1: make radio because I played in punk bands for a

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Speaker 1: long time. When you do that, you've got to kind

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Speaker 1: of fix your own gear and run your own sound

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Speaker 1: and sometimes make your own records. So, um, it seemed

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Speaker 1: like this could be my contribution. We don't ever really

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Speaker 1: talk about the drugs themselves very much. So if you

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Speaker 1: want to tune in and hear what it's like to

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Speaker 1: get high on um LSD or what it's like to be,

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Speaker 1: you know, not in on heroin, we don't really get

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Speaker 1: there exactly. Our podcast is like about the war, you know,

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Speaker 1: So it's it's if we're talking about a drug war,

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Speaker 1: we really talk about the war part of it, I

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Speaker 1: guess a lot more, and what our side is doing

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Speaker 1: to organize ourselves in that war. This is a podcast

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Speaker 1: about this giant, terrible conflict that spans the world, which

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Speaker 1: is an impossibly large subject, but it's actually just about

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Speaker 1: me and a few of my friends and what's going

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Speaker 1: on with them and how we're trying to organize in

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Speaker 1: our little part of it, and I always think, why

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Speaker 1: would people care very much about Vancouver. We should be

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Speaker 1: making this more universal or something. But what I have

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Speaker 1: noticed is what happens in this town will happen everywhere

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Speaker 1: else eventually. And I'm not quite sure why that is yet.

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Speaker 1: But we had fent and all contaminated drugs. That was

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Speaker 1: the first time I was noticing it. You know, we

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Speaker 1: had massive waves of heroin and stuff before a lot

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Speaker 1: of other places in Canada, in the US, you know,

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Speaker 1: And we're getting stuff now benzo diazepine contamination into the

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Speaker 1: stuff that sold as opioids over the last couple of years,

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Speaker 1: and I'm starting to hear reports of that from other

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Speaker 1: places in the US. Two first So, for some reason

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Speaker 1: to do with supply chain or trade patterns or something,

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Speaker 1: what happens to us here is going to happen to

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Speaker 1: other people. There's a good chance of it. I mean,

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Speaker 1: this is a collective enterprise with people at Van do

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Speaker 1: other drug users. I know. It went award for, you know,

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Speaker 1: basically an investigative journalism that exposed the fact if the

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Speaker 1: government had replaced the traditional effective form of method on

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Speaker 1: with another form of method on that was cheaper but

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Speaker 1: wasn't working as well, and they denied it wasn't working

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Speaker 1: as well. So Garth, I mean when you launched this podcast,

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Speaker 1: was it the emergence of fentanyl and the and the

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Speaker 1: gross increase in over those fatalities that prompted you to

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Speaker 1: do this or something else? It was just a coincidence

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Speaker 1: of different events, you know. Um, I was just an

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Speaker 1: activist at van Do. I met this Dr Ryan McNeil,

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Speaker 1: who's in Yale now, but it was UBC at the time. Um.

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Speaker 1: We were going around to lobby government on small changes

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Speaker 1: to methodon policy, and you know, we'd go into these

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Speaker 1: rooms with government and try and tell them this or that.

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Speaker 1: Me and other people from the BC Association people on

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Speaker 1: Methodon would say our piece. Ryan would present the research

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Speaker 1: and we leave the rooms and we go, wow, this

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Speaker 1: is not convincing them. We're not really getting anywhere, but

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Speaker 1: maybe it'd make an interesting podcast. And Ryan's like, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we could do that. I think we could do that.

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Speaker 1: And so, uh, you know, we got ahold of a

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Speaker 1: few of our favorite activists, people that I've worked with

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Speaker 1: for a long time, and we sat down and said

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Speaker 1: do we want to do this? Do we need this?

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Speaker 1: Is this something the drug user movement wants. And the

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Speaker 1: very first question was what the funk is a podcast?

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Speaker 1: I said, It's just like radio shoved in the computer,

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Speaker 1: you know, And they're like, yeah, we I mean, we've

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Speaker 1: always want to tell our story and we always want

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Speaker 1: to embrace whatever technology gets it out the door that way. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And so the that we listened to a few different

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Speaker 1: ways that we could do it. We had this discussions

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Speaker 1: on the kind of topics we wanted to cover and

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Speaker 1: the kind of research we wanted to mobilize. I found

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Speaker 1: some people in Vancouver who who had also done um

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Speaker 1: some audio reporting on the heroin prescription Heroin project, and

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Speaker 1: we got all got together and started making the podcast.

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Speaker 1: But man, the thing that really I realized is I

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Speaker 1: couldn't just like stand in the sidelines and hold the

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Speaker 1: mic and interview people and stuff. I just share some

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Speaker 1: of myself too, you know, Like that's the job of

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Speaker 1: the host. And I kind of maybe I didn't think

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Speaker 1: about that very much starting out, because I didn't have

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Speaker 1: like this ability to explain my life or whatever, because I,

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Speaker 1: like I said, I've been like really carrying a lot

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Speaker 1: of shame about it. So the podcast helped me understand

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Speaker 1: a little bit more who I am and be okay

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Speaker 1: to talk about myself and those parts of my life.

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Speaker 1: And that's been a real great gift, you know, Like

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Speaker 1: I I never thought that would come out of it.

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Speaker 1: You know, I thought, oh, this would be great. I'll

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Speaker 1: get to interview all these cool people. I'll get to

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Speaker 1: profile a bunch of activists that I know who really

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Speaker 1: deserved the spotlight. But I never thought I'd be talking

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Speaker 1: these little vignettes and anecdotes from my own life, you know. Um,

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Speaker 1: And it's been good that way. Yeah. I think we're

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Speaker 1: having very similar experiences hosting our podcast. And I'll tell

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Speaker 1: you that your answer to the question what's the podcast

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Speaker 1: is the exact thing that I get to old mom. Well,

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Speaker 1: that's good, you know, I mean it is. It is funny, right,

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Speaker 1: But in Canada, one in five people doesn't really have

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Speaker 1: good internet access. So like we do listening parties, and

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Speaker 1: so it's really legit that lots of people don't know

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Speaker 1: what a podcast is, because why would you. Um, So

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Speaker 1: we just play episodes of the podcast out loud at

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Speaker 1: Van Deu and people can come and listen and then

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Speaker 1: have a discussion afterwards. And I found out from people

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Speaker 1: just writing me that people all over the place are

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Speaker 1: doing that and I didn't even know about it. Like

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Speaker 1: someone into Ana was having I think they were calling

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Speaker 1: it crafts and crackdown where they have snacks and do

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Speaker 1: knitting or like glue things and and listen and then

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Speaker 1: have conversations. So like, yeah, I mean, if if people

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Speaker 1: want to do that, we and we did create it

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Speaker 1: to be an organizing tool and and that seems like

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Speaker 1: a good use of it to me. So let me

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Speaker 1: tell me how old are you now? A middle age

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Speaker 1: I am like on the wrong side of fifty now,

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Speaker 1: but only just the wrong side of fifty. I take

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Speaker 1: that means north of okay, Okay, so that means born

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Speaker 1: in the early seventies. Even is my policy to never

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Speaker 1: give out the date of birth. Okay, the police have

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Speaker 1: asked me to. So I'm not being I'm not trying

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Speaker 1: to be coy, like, oh, you're trying to make you

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Speaker 1: think I'm younger than I am. No, I'm fucking middle

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Speaker 1: age guy. Okay, Okay. Well, so when you reflect back, like,

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Speaker 1: you know, how did Garth mullins land up getting involved

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Speaker 1: in Heroin? It was as a teenager in your twenties?

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Speaker 1: Was it in Vancouver? Or elsewhere, you know, where'd you

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Speaker 1: grow up? What's your own thoughts reflecting back on all

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Speaker 1: this about how and why you landed up? Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean I reckon it's like so many other people, you

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Speaker 1: have some bad experiences, you're kind of alienated from your

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Speaker 1: family and your community as a kid, and you start

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Speaker 1: looking for what's the way back into that? And you know,

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Speaker 1: so I was, like lots of other people, just drinking

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Speaker 1: and trying different drugs when I was you know, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,

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Speaker 1: and then eventually, you know, I come to opioids and

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Speaker 1: that seems the right thing. And then I might have

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Speaker 1: even been when I was in San Francisco when I

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Speaker 1: was nineteen where I first tried the opioid that was

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Speaker 1: just like ah Chef's kiss. It was black tar heroin,

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Speaker 1: and I just thought, fuck me, this is what everybody

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Speaker 1: else is feeling all the time. Like I just felt like, uh,

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Speaker 1: like this constant sort of howling of ghosts around me.

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Speaker 1: You know, like like from from Raiders, that lost arc.

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Speaker 1: You know, you got the little the little arc and

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Speaker 1: when they take the lid off, all the face melting

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Speaker 1: ghosts fly everywhere and get everybody. But this is like

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Speaker 1: this puts the lid on the arc. Very nice. Sleean

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Speaker 1: keeps all the face melt and ghosts safely inside. And

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Speaker 1: so yeah, I mean I was I was going to

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Speaker 1: come back to that for sure, and I did. Did

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Speaker 1: you have this kind of addiction issues like running in

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Speaker 1: the family before you or were you sort of the

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Speaker 1: first in the family to be I think we probably

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Speaker 1: got it in the family, you know. I mean, I'm

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Speaker 1: not sure. I'm not sure how it gets characterized my

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Speaker 1: I mean, my family doesn't have a history that I

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Speaker 1: know of with hard drugs, but maybe maybe drinking is

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Speaker 1: more common. But I don't know that that's where I

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Speaker 1: get it from. You know, I think, uh, it's it's

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Speaker 1: so hard to find the root causes. But I I

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Speaker 1: sometimes think of it like this, right, like the world

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Speaker 1: as I've known it has been getting shittier and shittier

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Speaker 1: and shittier until we're almost at the end of it now,

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Speaker 1: Like we got a guy in Russia with his finger

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Speaker 1: on nuclear button. Climate change is killing a lot of

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Speaker 1: people here in British Columbia. Five people died in the

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Speaker 1: heat wave last summer. And we're not that bigger province.

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Speaker 1: We got thousands of people from toxic drugs. It's just

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Speaker 1: like the whole place is going to hell. My question

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Speaker 1: to other people is not why why do I Drew

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Speaker 1: do drugs? It's like, why don't you do drugs? How

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Speaker 1: are you getting away without this nice cushion of opioids

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Speaker 1: to sort of take the edge off of the apocalypse.

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Speaker 1: So that's what I wonder. It's I kind of have

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Speaker 1: given up trying to figure out what my issue is,

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Speaker 1: But what's everybody else's. You know, I read that you

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Speaker 1: had grown up initially like not in Vancouver, a greater

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Speaker 1: Vancouver area, but like in the Northwest Territory, I mean

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Speaker 1: a sort of remote part of North America. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean I was. I was a kid in the seventies

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Speaker 1: in in Yellowknife, which is north of sixty you know,

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Speaker 1: it's almost it's the Subarctic. But I loved it there,

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Speaker 1: you know, I had really I had a good childhood there.

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Speaker 1: You know, I did like it. Yeah, So that was

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Speaker 1: That's definitely. It's definitely a It's a good place for

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Speaker 1: a kid, you know, a small town before where you

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Speaker 1: get too old, you can like ride your bike all

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Speaker 1: over the place with the other kids, and and uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, as a mining town, so there's lots of

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Speaker 1: different kind of characters in that place. I liked it, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but I ALWASO also think of those kind of places,

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Speaker 1: Like if you think about where, generally speaking, are the

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Speaker 1: worst alcohol problems in the world, the worst relationships with booze,

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Speaker 1: and it's typically the closly are of the Arctic, the

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Speaker 1: worst of the problems with booze. Right, you look at Russia, Scandinavia, Alaska,

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Speaker 1: Northern Canada, you know, wherever it's kind of light twenty

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Speaker 1: two hours a day and then dark twenty two hours

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Speaker 1: a day, and alcohol just seems to play some particular

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Speaker 1: role in societies like that. I mean I think that's true. Um, Like,

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Speaker 1: like once colonialism got ahold of northern Canada in the

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Speaker 1: early twentieth century and brought booze in in a big way,

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Speaker 1: I think that was probably true. I don't think there's

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Speaker 1: anything necessarily like linked to the environment or anything like that.

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Speaker 1: Like people managed without for thousands of years. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: maybe there's maybe white people are maladapted to long polar

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Speaker 1: nights or something. I don't know, but um, definitely, when

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Speaker 1: I was a kid, there was lots of lots of

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Speaker 1: booze in that town for sure. Yeah, yeah, I mean

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Speaker 1: I just think about the history of alcohol prohibition. You know,

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Speaker 1: we had in the US, you had two consideration in Canada,

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Speaker 1: and especially it was popular I think in the North

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Speaker 1: Scandinavian Russia or the other places that flirted with it,

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Speaker 1: and they seemed to be the places where people's relationship

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Speaker 1: with alcohol was different than it was saying places like

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Speaker 1: Southern Europe or Latin America. Right, You know that you

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Speaker 1: basically consumed alcohol to get drunk, and you know, the

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Speaker 1: association with how light or dark. It's kind of I

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Speaker 1: don't know if it's my own theory, probably other people

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Speaker 1: think that as well, but it's sort of set a

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Speaker 1: frame for kind of thinking about the use of maybe

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Speaker 1: what was oftentimes the only popular psychoactive substance available, about

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Speaker 1: using in a way which was different than a more

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Speaker 1: kind of normalized consumed booze with food this sort of thing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that that could be. That could be. I haven't really traveled,

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Speaker 1: um all that much in Southern Europe, but I know

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Speaker 1: what you're talking about, like having a nice dinner with

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Speaker 1: wine and all that kind of thing. Yeah, it could be.

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Speaker 1: And you're also a bit different, right, I mean you're

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Speaker 1: I mean just you know, I mean, just say a

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Speaker 1: little more about that getting picked on and bullied for

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Speaker 1: for different reasons. Yeah, I mean I got albinism and

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Speaker 1: almost no eyesight, so that means like like albino, like uh,

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Speaker 1: platinum hair, pale skin, almost blind kind of thing. So

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Speaker 1: it definitely made uh, school and bullying and all that

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Speaker 1: like part of my story for sure. Yeah. When I was, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, when I was in elementary school and stuff,

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Speaker 1: they called me Ghost and Casper the Ghosts and stuff

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Speaker 1: like that, and I hated it, you know. But now

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Speaker 1: ghost is a pre cool street name, so I'm okay.

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Speaker 1: I'm okay with it now. But it's just like back

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Speaker 1: in the day, you know, I was like, no, so

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Speaker 1: you were one of those like the first time you

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Speaker 1: used heroin, it was like, wow, I like this stuff.

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Speaker 1: It makes me feel I don't know, normal at ease.

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Speaker 1: I'm coming back to it, Yeah, for sure, you know,

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Speaker 1: And I was, I was a depressed kid, you know,

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Speaker 1: I was. I think I was a suicidal kid, you know.

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Speaker 1: I I certainly dreamed of not being alive, and uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, I never I never really tried to hurt

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Speaker 1: myself like that, but I did. I can look back

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Speaker 1: in my notebooks and journals and I'm like, Wow, that

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Speaker 1: kid was fucked up and it stopped that, you know.

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Speaker 1: So I was one of those people who I guess

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Speaker 1: I was self medicating, but I'm not sure what the

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Speaker 1: outcomes would have been for me, but for the refuge

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Speaker 1: that heroin provided, you know. So, I think even though

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Speaker 1: it didn't maybe look like it from the outside, at

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Speaker 1: the time, I was reaching for a rational choice, you know,

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Speaker 1: I was reaching for a kind of a survival, a

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Speaker 1: kind of a way to feel a little better. And

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Speaker 1: did it put you into a kind of community of

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Speaker 1: fellow drug users or were you kind of using heroin

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Speaker 1: but otherwise spending a fair bit of your life and

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Speaker 1: sort of non drug, non heroin using world, shall we say? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: I was always in both. So I always knew a

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Speaker 1: crew of people who were wired and was connected like that.

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Speaker 1: But I often, you know, had a workplace that I

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Speaker 1: was going to where people didn't know. I mean, I

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Speaker 1: think my family had some idea, but I tried to

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Speaker 1: you know, minimize it and kind of tone it down

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Speaker 1: a little bit. And I certainly didn't advertise, you know,

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Speaker 1: like only only a consience. It seems like a funny

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Speaker 1: thing to say being on a podcast. It's like, Hey,

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Speaker 1: I'm a dope fiend. But uh, that's this is kind

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Speaker 1: of new for me, at least it's only been a

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Speaker 1: few years maybe, you know, or something, when I started

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Speaker 1: saying beyond a small group of frenzy ad this is

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Speaker 1: my story. Oh is that right? It's really recently, the

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Speaker 1: kind of coming out about the past like that and

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Speaker 1: through the podcast and such. Yeah. I mean I was

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Speaker 1: an activist for sure with Van du for longer than that,

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Speaker 1: the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, but um, you know,

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Speaker 1: I didn't really cop to it. If I ever did

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Speaker 1: an interview or something, I would be kind of nebulous

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Speaker 1: about it. And so I was very ashamed. You know.

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Speaker 1: I did try to keep it to myself or at

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Speaker 1: least not advertise. And I learned from the activists at

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Speaker 1: Van Dew the power of like owning your own truth

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Speaker 1: and not being ashamed of it. And it's like, finally

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Speaker 1: you get to relieve yourself of carrying this big backpack

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Speaker 1: full of secrets and bullshit and shame and all of that.

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Speaker 1: And so that's been a lovely gift of activism. So garth.

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Speaker 1: I mean you're you're in you're using heroin, I guess

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Speaker 1: from your late teens for uh ten twenty years. I

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Speaker 1: mean basically during that time, are you smoking or injecting it?

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Speaker 1: Are you housed all the time? Are you having legal

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Speaker 1: jobs all the time? Do you get involved in criminal

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Speaker 1: other criminal activity apart from obtaining your drugs? I mean,

341
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Speaker 1: what's your life like during this period. It's a little

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Speaker 1: bit of everything. So, yeah, I had periods where I

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Speaker 1: was pretty poorly slash not housed. Um. Mostly I had places, UM,

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Speaker 1: I was working sometimes sometimes white collar jobs, sometimes blue

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Speaker 1: collar jobs, sometimes no jobs, you know, getting welfare. Sometimes

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Speaker 1: I was going to school, uh, you know, like post

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Speaker 1: secondary and sometimes I guess what you would call nickel

348
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Speaker 1: and dime criminal activities outside of outside of the obtaining drugs, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and injecting all the time. I was one of those

350
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Speaker 1: ivy drug users, and I kind of thought it was

351
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Speaker 1: like a waste of time or a waste of drugs

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Speaker 1: to do it any other way, like to smoke it

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Speaker 1: or something like that, you know. So I was definitely

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Speaker 1: just like get that right to the brain. And you're

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Speaker 1: pretty loyal to heroin or you're mixing it with cocaine

356
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Speaker 1: or other stimulants or benzos or things like that. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: definitely liked speedballs. I you know, heroin and crack together.

358
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Speaker 1: That was pretty good. But yeah, heroin was the main

359
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Speaker 1: thing for me, and other opioids if I couldn't get heroin.

360
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Speaker 1: And in terms of taking precautions around HIV A TEPS

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Speaker 1: using a needle exchange program, what was your relationship to

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Speaker 1: all that sort of sort of self involvement in harm reduction, Well,

363
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Speaker 1: I guess, you know, like back in it was still

364
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Speaker 1: not easy always get a new syringe. So I did

365
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Speaker 1: share with people on occasion, on desperate occasion, and we

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Speaker 1: did bleach the needle. And that's you know, only so effective,

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Speaker 1: but that was the harm reduction protocol at the time.

368
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Speaker 1: And um, you know, because the police would take needles

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Speaker 1: off you if they found them, and this and that.

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Speaker 1: So I mean back in the day, you had one

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Speaker 1: needle for like a month or whatever, and you'd keep

372
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Speaker 1: stabbing that blunt thing into you and you'd have to

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Speaker 1: sharpen it on a match striker and that, you know,

374
00:19:31,359 --> 00:19:34,040
Speaker 1: the rubber would wear down inside and you'd be like, oh,

375
00:19:34,200 --> 00:19:36,440
Speaker 1: this isn't gonna be good. The numbers would wear off

376
00:19:36,480 --> 00:19:39,399
Speaker 1: the barrel like it was bad. I mean, now in

377
00:19:39,480 --> 00:19:43,440
Speaker 1: Vancouver there's enough syringes that most people or a lot

378
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Speaker 1: of people can use a new one every time they inject,

379
00:19:46,440 --> 00:19:49,120
Speaker 1: which is the preferred practice, which is smart because when

380
00:19:49,119 --> 00:19:51,800
Speaker 1: you look under a microscope, those things get blunt really fast.

381
00:19:52,480 --> 00:19:56,919
Speaker 1: And also it's like not not sterile anymore, um importantly.

382
00:19:57,720 --> 00:20:00,399
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean doing all that definitely sucked up

383
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Speaker 1: my veins, like they're all collapsed. But um, I picked

384
00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:06,520
Speaker 1: up harm reduction. I think the first time I really

385
00:20:06,600 --> 00:20:08,720
Speaker 1: figured out what this was all about was in a

386
00:20:08,800 --> 00:20:11,240
Speaker 1: civic center park in San Francisco when there was a

387
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Speaker 1: big tent encampment there and these people came around with

388
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Speaker 1: buckets and it was a guerrilla needle exchange, like you

389
00:20:18,680 --> 00:20:20,359
Speaker 1: turn in your needle and they give you a new one.

390
00:20:20,400 --> 00:20:22,800
Speaker 1: It was illegal, and these people were risking or asked

391
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Speaker 1: to do this, and when I you know, everyone lined

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Speaker 1: up and exchanged their needles pretty quick. But the guy,

393
00:20:29,720 --> 00:20:32,399
Speaker 1: I remember, she is just like stay safe, man. He

394
00:20:32,440 --> 00:20:35,359
Speaker 1: wasn't giving me some lecture about twelve step or quitting

395
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Speaker 1: or nothing like that. And it's the first time I'd

396
00:20:37,440 --> 00:20:40,399
Speaker 1: run into anything like that. I was completely amazed. I

397
00:20:40,440 --> 00:20:42,720
Speaker 1: was like, that is a lot of respect for that.

398
00:20:42,760 --> 00:20:46,000
Speaker 1: I think it was people from prevention point in San Francisco. Yeah, no,

399
00:20:46,040 --> 00:20:48,119
Speaker 1: I remember those days, the late eighties, early nineties in

400
00:20:48,119 --> 00:20:51,280
Speaker 1: New York, San Francisco, people doing little forms of harmonducts

401
00:20:51,280 --> 00:20:53,560
Speaker 1: and civil disobedience and kind of modeled on what the

402
00:20:53,680 --> 00:20:56,880
Speaker 1: Dutch and others in Europe have been doing even years earlier,

403
00:20:56,960 --> 00:20:59,840
Speaker 1: but not facing quite the same threat of sanction from

404
00:20:59,880 --> 00:21:02,760
Speaker 1: the cops and others. So your early years doing this,

405
00:21:02,800 --> 00:21:05,560
Speaker 1: then we're more San Francisco and then moving back to

406
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Speaker 1: Vancouver at some point. Yeah, there's a bunch of like, uh,

407
00:21:09,000 --> 00:21:11,919
Speaker 1: little ship punk kids like me who kind of circulated

408
00:21:12,000 --> 00:21:14,400
Speaker 1: up and down the I five cord or like that.

409
00:21:14,440 --> 00:21:16,000
Speaker 1: I was was one of those kids, you know as

410
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Speaker 1: planning bands and visiting friends and and that sort of thing.

411
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Speaker 1: So I was there mostly Vancouver, mostly in Canada, and yeah,

412
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Speaker 1: just like a lot of years of just using heroin

413
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Speaker 1: and when I would have a nice stable connect that

414
00:21:31,560 --> 00:21:34,880
Speaker 1: could drop off like a product that I knew how

415
00:21:34,920 --> 00:21:37,159
Speaker 1: strong it was and I knew it would be. In

416
00:21:37,160 --> 00:21:39,960
Speaker 1: the nineties, there was quite strong heroine in Vancouver. In fact,

417
00:21:40,040 --> 00:21:42,560
Speaker 1: we had a big overdose crisis then because of it,

418
00:21:43,320 --> 00:21:45,880
Speaker 1: But it also meant that, like some of us, were

419
00:21:45,920 --> 00:21:50,560
Speaker 1: able to find a pretty stable way to conduct ourselves,

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Speaker 1: and and those led to long periods of my life

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00:21:53,400 --> 00:21:56,520
Speaker 1: where things were very calm, and I did try to

422
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Speaker 1: be careful, so I always if I in the very

423
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Speaker 1: few times I shared needles, I did bleach them. But

424
00:22:03,760 --> 00:22:07,000
Speaker 1: there was things I didn't know, like that the virus

425
00:22:07,040 --> 00:22:10,040
Speaker 1: could live in the cotton, you know, the filter that

426
00:22:10,080 --> 00:22:14,960
Speaker 1: you use, and we shared those completely, and it could

427
00:22:14,960 --> 00:22:17,360
Speaker 1: live on the spoon, it could live on the paraphernalia.

428
00:22:17,440 --> 00:22:18,920
Speaker 1: And I didn't know any of that. In fact, I

429
00:22:18,960 --> 00:22:23,040
Speaker 1: didn't know that until I tried to be careful. But

430
00:22:23,160 --> 00:22:27,360
Speaker 1: really I was just very lucky. We'll be talking more

431
00:22:27,520 --> 00:22:44,639
Speaker 1: after we hear this ad. And so when's the first

432
00:22:44,720 --> 00:22:47,719
Speaker 1: time you try method on? And when's the point at

433
00:22:47,720 --> 00:22:50,080
Speaker 1: which you finally begin to stick with that as your

434
00:22:50,600 --> 00:22:54,160
Speaker 1: your principal drug? Basically, m I think I had taken

435
00:22:54,240 --> 00:22:57,480
Speaker 1: method on, like just when I, you know, bought it

436
00:22:57,520 --> 00:22:59,479
Speaker 1: off the street or something when there was no heroin,

437
00:23:00,280 --> 00:23:03,159
Speaker 1: you know, I can't even remember pretty early on. And

438
00:23:03,200 --> 00:23:06,000
Speaker 1: then I remember my when my hair and a dealer

439
00:23:06,040 --> 00:23:09,399
Speaker 1: lived across the hall. I was just like it was

440
00:23:09,560 --> 00:23:11,800
Speaker 1: very convenient, but I was also like, I came to

441
00:23:11,840 --> 00:23:13,800
Speaker 1: this point where it's like, okay, I gotta quit, And

442
00:23:13,800 --> 00:23:16,000
Speaker 1: I said, where can I get Methodon? He goes, oh, hey,

443
00:23:16,040 --> 00:23:19,840
Speaker 1: no problem. I sell the cure as well as the disease,

444
00:23:20,359 --> 00:23:23,000
Speaker 1: by which he meant he sells methodon as well as heroin.

445
00:23:23,240 --> 00:23:25,840
Speaker 1: And he because he was on Methodon, he was just

446
00:23:25,920 --> 00:23:29,320
Speaker 1: he was just a guy wired to opioids as well.

447
00:23:29,720 --> 00:23:32,119
Speaker 1: So he sold me, you know, like a hundred mills

448
00:23:32,119 --> 00:23:35,199
Speaker 1: of his methodon for twenty five bucks. And so I

449
00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:38,080
Speaker 1: went and locked the door, you know, like train spotting style,

450
00:23:38,160 --> 00:23:41,119
Speaker 1: and like hunkered down for like what turned out to

451
00:23:41,160 --> 00:23:43,439
Speaker 1: be forty eight hours or so before I was opening

452
00:23:43,440 --> 00:23:46,160
Speaker 1: the door and like admitting defeat that I had taken

453
00:23:46,200 --> 00:23:48,520
Speaker 1: all the method and there's no way it was gonna work.

454
00:23:48,560 --> 00:23:50,800
Speaker 1: So a couple of years after that, I guess I

455
00:23:50,880 --> 00:23:54,600
Speaker 1: tried to get on a formal Methodon program and it

456
00:23:54,720 --> 00:23:57,440
Speaker 1: was so rationed um that they wouldn't let me. They

457
00:23:57,520 --> 00:23:59,280
Speaker 1: just said, oh, we only have so many slots and

458
00:23:59,359 --> 00:24:01,879
Speaker 1: you can't you can't come on. And so then it

459
00:24:01,960 --> 00:24:04,000
Speaker 1: was a couple of years after that I guess. So

460
00:24:04,960 --> 00:24:07,639
Speaker 1: I got on the program that I'm now on in

461
00:24:07,720 --> 00:24:10,920
Speaker 1: two thousand two, and then there was a bunch of

462
00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:15,840
Speaker 1: years of still using heroin, and then uh, kind of

463
00:24:16,680 --> 00:24:18,120
Speaker 1: I felt like it was a step in the right

464
00:24:18,119 --> 00:24:22,920
Speaker 1: direction to be using uh, you know, prescription not prescribed

465
00:24:22,960 --> 00:24:26,560
Speaker 1: to me, but prescription opioids uh and methodon. And then

466
00:24:26,760 --> 00:24:29,040
Speaker 1: eventually I got to this place where it's you know,

467
00:24:29,119 --> 00:24:32,080
Speaker 1: mostly just methadone. And so it was like it was

468
00:24:32,119 --> 00:24:35,040
Speaker 1: a long it was a long process. So let me

469
00:24:35,119 --> 00:24:38,760
Speaker 1: bring you and the audience back to Vancouver. Now. I

470
00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:40,800
Speaker 1: remember going up there a bunch of times in the

471
00:24:40,920 --> 00:24:44,400
Speaker 1: late nineties. I had met Philip Owen, a somewhat conservative

472
00:24:44,480 --> 00:24:48,719
Speaker 1: mayor of Vancouver. He had come to a conference we

473
00:24:48,800 --> 00:24:51,960
Speaker 1: had organized, my organization organized to Hoover, the very conservative

474
00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:55,040
Speaker 1: Hoover Institution at Stanford, California, and I remember sitting there

475
00:24:55,040 --> 00:24:58,680
Speaker 1: was a conference for mostly police chiefs and deputy police chiefs,

476
00:24:58,760 --> 00:25:00,439
Speaker 1: but there was this guy sitting there just kind of

477
00:25:00,440 --> 00:25:02,720
Speaker 1: taking notes and taking notes, and I remember going over

478
00:25:02,720 --> 00:25:05,119
Speaker 1: to him and introducing myself and ask him, well, who

479
00:25:05,119 --> 00:25:07,000
Speaker 1: are you? And he goes on Philip ball and from Vancouver.

480
00:25:07,080 --> 00:25:08,200
Speaker 1: I said, what do you do there, he goes on

481
00:25:08,320 --> 00:25:11,560
Speaker 1: the mayor. I said, huh, and here's a guy, a mayor.

482
00:25:11,760 --> 00:25:15,520
Speaker 1: He had not been invited to speak. He was incredibly modest,

483
00:25:15,840 --> 00:25:18,560
Speaker 1: and he's sitting there taking notes, you know, for like

484
00:25:18,600 --> 00:25:21,080
Speaker 1: two days. I mean I was just blowing away that

485
00:25:21,119 --> 00:25:23,880
Speaker 1: a sitting politician could do such a thing, and never

486
00:25:23,880 --> 00:25:25,879
Speaker 1: that somebody who sort of came from the more conservative

487
00:25:25,880 --> 00:25:28,560
Speaker 1: side of the spectrum. And so about you know, six

488
00:25:28,640 --> 00:25:31,280
Speaker 1: nine months later that I went to see Philip in

489
00:25:31,320 --> 00:25:33,280
Speaker 1: his office and he was saying, well, what should I do?

490
00:25:33,359 --> 00:25:35,840
Speaker 1: We got this growing HIV problem. It's over those problems,

491
00:25:35,840 --> 00:25:38,280
Speaker 1: new powerful heroin. And I talked to him about what

492
00:25:38,320 --> 00:25:40,520
Speaker 1: they were doing in Europe, about the Frankfurt and a

493
00:25:40,600 --> 00:25:43,760
Speaker 1: kind of integrated approach harm reduction approach, and he was

494
00:25:43,840 --> 00:25:47,200
Speaker 1: intrigued by that. And you had this sense of dynamism

495
00:25:47,240 --> 00:25:50,479
Speaker 1: in Vancouver that really things were maybe going to open up.

496
00:25:50,520 --> 00:25:52,960
Speaker 1: You know, there was resistance, you know, national governments, the

497
00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:55,600
Speaker 1: provincial government, but it looked like there was real promise.

498
00:25:55,680 --> 00:25:58,320
Speaker 1: And at that point the fight was over over whether

499
00:25:58,400 --> 00:26:00,400
Speaker 1: or not to open up a safe inject in sight.

500
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:02,360
Speaker 1: You know, I think Vancouver was one of the first

501
00:26:02,400 --> 00:26:05,199
Speaker 1: places to really get you deeply in that debate, and

502
00:26:05,280 --> 00:26:08,320
Speaker 1: Philippo and the mayor sort of bravely began to take

503
00:26:08,359 --> 00:26:10,240
Speaker 1: the right side on that. And so when I look

504
00:26:10,320 --> 00:26:14,280
Speaker 1: at Vancouver, right, I think of God, Vancouver's took the

505
00:26:14,400 --> 00:26:17,480
Speaker 1: lead and opening up the safe injection site, took the

506
00:26:17,600 --> 00:26:20,760
Speaker 1: lead and opening up the kind of heroin prescription programs

507
00:26:20,800 --> 00:26:23,360
Speaker 1: that Switzerland pioneer thirty years ago and that you now

508
00:26:23,440 --> 00:26:27,000
Speaker 1: find and Germany and Denmark and the Netherlands and and

509
00:26:27,040 --> 00:26:29,879
Speaker 1: which had been very successful. They're there. Heroin problems are

510
00:26:29,880 --> 00:26:33,080
Speaker 1: a dramatic fraction of what we see generally speaking in

511
00:26:33,359 --> 00:26:36,359
Speaker 1: North America. Um, you know, those programs spread not just

512
00:26:36,440 --> 00:26:39,119
Speaker 1: from Van Covercouver, British Columbia, but they go to other

513
00:26:39,160 --> 00:26:41,480
Speaker 1: parts of British Columbia. They go to Ontario, they go

514
00:26:41,560 --> 00:26:44,520
Speaker 1: to Quebec. They even managed to get into conservative province

515
00:26:44,520 --> 00:26:48,440
Speaker 1: of Alberta. But in amidst all this progressive policy, and

516
00:26:48,560 --> 00:26:52,000
Speaker 1: in a country that, unlike the United States, has national

517
00:26:52,040 --> 00:26:55,720
Speaker 1: health insurance, has some measure of a social safety net,

518
00:26:56,359 --> 00:27:01,720
Speaker 1: nonetheless you have an overdose fatality eight that is basically

519
00:27:01,760 --> 00:27:04,679
Speaker 1: comparable or almost comparable to waters in the US. And

520
00:27:04,680 --> 00:27:07,439
Speaker 1: and here we're talking in in the second week of March,

521
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:11,560
Speaker 1: and just yesterday the Corner's Office in British Columbia comes

522
00:27:11,560 --> 00:27:14,280
Speaker 1: out with a report, you know, on the fact that

523
00:27:14,400 --> 00:27:16,720
Speaker 1: seven eight thousand people have died the province. You know

524
00:27:16,800 --> 00:27:19,960
Speaker 1: in just the last few years, that two hundred people

525
00:27:20,080 --> 00:27:22,280
Speaker 1: died in British Columbia last year and you only have

526
00:27:22,520 --> 00:27:24,600
Speaker 1: a little over five million in the entire province. So

527
00:27:24,640 --> 00:27:28,040
Speaker 1: you're talking about very high rates. And the thing I'm

528
00:27:28,040 --> 00:27:33,120
Speaker 1: trying to understand is, how does one explain the fact

529
00:27:33,320 --> 00:27:36,840
Speaker 1: that Vancouver and BC and other parts of Canada, even

530
00:27:36,920 --> 00:27:39,560
Speaker 1: though you're more advanced than the US in terms of

531
00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:43,360
Speaker 1: embracing harm reduction, why are you not attaining the kind

532
00:27:43,359 --> 00:27:46,199
Speaker 1: of successes we've seen in much, if not all, of

533
00:27:46,240 --> 00:27:48,880
Speaker 1: Europe and and sort of suffering more like we are

534
00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:53,560
Speaker 1: in the US. Here's the key for understanding Canada. Canada

535
00:27:53,720 --> 00:27:57,840
Speaker 1: has a great um pr sense of itself. We like

536
00:27:57,920 --> 00:28:01,280
Speaker 1: to broadcast at ten thousand walk into the world that

537
00:28:01,359 --> 00:28:05,200
Speaker 1: we're Canada, the good, that we're different, we're progressive, we're special.

538
00:28:05,880 --> 00:28:10,080
Speaker 1: But this country was actually founded as a resource extraction

539
00:28:10,200 --> 00:28:13,040
Speaker 1: branch plant for the United Kingdom, right, so we were

540
00:28:13,080 --> 00:28:16,480
Speaker 1: we were started because rich people in London liked to

541
00:28:16,520 --> 00:28:19,480
Speaker 1: wear beaver hats. And I'm serious, that's what this place

542
00:28:19,560 --> 00:28:22,360
Speaker 1: was all about at the beginning. So the colonial process

543
00:28:22,400 --> 00:28:24,720
Speaker 1: of stealing the land off the people, the indigenous people

544
00:28:24,800 --> 00:28:28,480
Speaker 1: already lived here, was because of this, and then forestry, mining,

545
00:28:28,600 --> 00:28:31,199
Speaker 1: oil and gas. But that's still what the country is

546
00:28:31,200 --> 00:28:36,000
Speaker 1: all about. And we are um a country that's figured

547
00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:40,280
Speaker 1: out that it's easier to talk nice and do the

548
00:28:40,360 --> 00:28:45,160
Speaker 1: dirty than it is to just advertise that we're mean. Right,

549
00:28:45,200 --> 00:28:47,240
Speaker 1: So we will talk a lot about the great harm

550
00:28:47,280 --> 00:28:49,880
Speaker 1: reduction programs we have in Vancouver, and we have talked

551
00:28:49,920 --> 00:28:52,200
Speaker 1: for twenty years about it, but really there's a few

552
00:28:52,240 --> 00:28:55,720
Speaker 1: pilot projects in twelve square blocks of the city. We

553
00:28:55,840 --> 00:28:59,120
Speaker 1: have not rolled out harm reduction thoroughly. The heroin program

554
00:28:59,120 --> 00:29:02,320
Speaker 1: you talked about was a study fifteen years ago, and

555
00:29:02,320 --> 00:29:04,479
Speaker 1: so right now there's a hundred people that can get

556
00:29:04,520 --> 00:29:07,880
Speaker 1: access to it and no more. The study proved, Wow,

557
00:29:07,920 --> 00:29:11,200
Speaker 1: prescription heroin is great. Really does wonders imagine if they

558
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:13,640
Speaker 1: had taken that study and made a prescription heroin program

559
00:29:13,680 --> 00:29:16,360
Speaker 1: so that anybody who wanted it could get it. Um,

560
00:29:16,400 --> 00:29:18,080
Speaker 1: we would never have had vent in all here. We

561
00:29:18,120 --> 00:29:20,600
Speaker 1: would never have had the overdose crisis, but we didn't

562
00:29:20,600 --> 00:29:23,320
Speaker 1: do that. We just talked a good game, like we all,

563
00:29:23,320 --> 00:29:26,160
Speaker 1: look how progressive we are with this program, never mentioning

564
00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:28,920
Speaker 1: that it's a tiny pilot, never mentioning that we froze

565
00:29:28,920 --> 00:29:32,160
Speaker 1: it and restricted it so much so we allow there

566
00:29:32,160 --> 00:29:36,040
Speaker 1: to be just enough to advertise but not enough to

567
00:29:36,120 --> 00:29:39,600
Speaker 1: really make a dent in it. And everything we get

568
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:43,760
Speaker 1: we get by civil disobedience and fighting. For our politicians,

569
00:29:43,760 --> 00:29:47,640
Speaker 1: they may talk progressively, they may have crocodile tears for

570
00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:50,400
Speaker 1: all of the dead drug users, but truly it takes

571
00:29:50,440 --> 00:29:53,400
Speaker 1: civil disobedience to move the needle on this stuff. So

572
00:29:53,600 --> 00:29:55,760
Speaker 1: when we had insight the first safe injection site in

573
00:29:55,760 --> 00:29:59,520
Speaker 1: North America open jeez, fifteen years ago now maybe more

574
00:29:59,560 --> 00:30:02,320
Speaker 1: almost one of years ago, that was because people were

575
00:30:02,360 --> 00:30:07,080
Speaker 1: involved in opening underground, not even underground, just illegal, unsanctioned

576
00:30:07,120 --> 00:30:09,440
Speaker 1: safe injection sites first and saying to the government, look,

577
00:30:09,480 --> 00:30:12,000
Speaker 1: come and arrest us, or do it yourself, you open it.

578
00:30:12,280 --> 00:30:15,000
Speaker 1: We did the same thing with syringes, and right now

579
00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:17,280
Speaker 1: in the last year year and a half, we've been

580
00:30:17,320 --> 00:30:23,240
Speaker 1: doing the same thing with distributing tested clean heroin, methamphetamine

581
00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:27,560
Speaker 1: and cocaine to people in very small, little direct action events,

582
00:30:27,560 --> 00:30:30,200
Speaker 1: but saying, look, this is what post drug war world

583
00:30:30,200 --> 00:30:32,560
Speaker 1: could look like, where people could obtain the drugs they

584
00:30:32,560 --> 00:30:35,000
Speaker 1: need that had been tested and we're pure and we're

585
00:30:35,040 --> 00:30:37,880
Speaker 1: not going to cause them to fatally overdose. Is the

586
00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:41,200
Speaker 1: issue that it's a lack of commitment or is it

587
00:30:41,320 --> 00:30:46,480
Speaker 1: that it's just between federal bureaucracy, provincial bureaucracy, the pharmacist

588
00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:50,800
Speaker 1: that doctors, that there's just all this resistance to embracing

589
00:30:50,800 --> 00:30:53,560
Speaker 1: a kind of radical new way of dealing with a

590
00:30:53,680 --> 00:30:56,600
Speaker 1: tainted drugs supply that's killing large numbers of people. Well,

591
00:30:56,640 --> 00:31:01,040
Speaker 1: I mean the reason that politicians speak progressive is because

592
00:31:01,040 --> 00:31:04,560
Speaker 1: we forced them to. The secret ingredient in Canadian drug

593
00:31:04,640 --> 00:31:07,760
Speaker 1: policy is the drug user union, is the drug user movement.

594
00:31:08,120 --> 00:31:10,600
Speaker 1: Is that we have a strong, militant drug user movement

595
00:31:10,640 --> 00:31:13,560
Speaker 1: that will break unjust laws when we need to. That's

596
00:31:13,600 --> 00:31:17,880
Speaker 1: why we have drug policy the way it is in Vancouver. Definitely,

597
00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:21,160
Speaker 1: some politicians have heard us, but you know, Philip Owen

598
00:31:21,360 --> 00:31:24,280
Speaker 1: heard us after his city hall was occupied and stuff

599
00:31:24,320 --> 00:31:27,560
Speaker 1: like that, Right, So, I mean the militancy plays a

600
00:31:27,680 --> 00:31:30,600
Speaker 1: role in getting to these people and part of getting

601
00:31:30,640 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 1: to them is they hear it and they realize, oh,

602
00:31:33,040 --> 00:31:35,040
Speaker 1: we better get ahead of this, so they start talking

603
00:31:35,080 --> 00:31:37,400
Speaker 1: a good game without actually doing it. This is how

604
00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:41,200
Speaker 1: every movement for social justice, every movement for civil rights works.

605
00:31:41,240 --> 00:31:43,480
Speaker 1: This is how all of it works. Is you have

606
00:31:43,560 --> 00:31:45,800
Speaker 1: to you have to demand this from your government. You

607
00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:48,200
Speaker 1: have to arm twist, you have to force it, because

608
00:31:48,200 --> 00:31:50,720
Speaker 1: they just don't. They don't give you things out of

609
00:31:50,760 --> 00:31:53,280
Speaker 1: the goodness of their heart or even when they're nice people,

610
00:31:53,320 --> 00:31:54,920
Speaker 1: they don't really do it. I mean, if you think

611
00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:57,600
Speaker 1: about how did we get the eight hour day or

612
00:31:57,920 --> 00:32:00,440
Speaker 1: days off on the weekend, or votes for women or

613
00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:02,800
Speaker 1: any of that stuff going back a hundred and fifty years,

614
00:32:02,800 --> 00:32:05,000
Speaker 1: it all works like this. So me, that is the

615
00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:08,520
Speaker 1: engine that moves history. That's that's what I know. So listen,

616
00:32:08,560 --> 00:32:13,040
Speaker 1: when it comes to safe supply, Um, maybe give me

617
00:32:13,720 --> 00:32:19,680
Speaker 1: your definition of safe supply, your mob, what would the

618
00:32:19,840 --> 00:32:24,040
Speaker 1: ideal safe supply situation look like? And then talk about

619
00:32:24,120 --> 00:32:28,120
Speaker 1: to what extent is safe supply actually operationalized on the

620
00:32:28,160 --> 00:32:31,600
Speaker 1: ground today. What are the small examples of it happening right? Well,

621
00:32:31,640 --> 00:32:34,240
Speaker 1: I mean people are dying here and have been dying

622
00:32:34,280 --> 00:32:36,360
Speaker 1: my whole life because we don't know what's in the

623
00:32:36,400 --> 00:32:39,880
Speaker 1: drugs that we're buying, and we don't know because they're illegal, right,

624
00:32:40,200 --> 00:32:44,760
Speaker 1: that's the problem. And to my mind, say you're doing

625
00:32:44,800 --> 00:32:47,160
Speaker 1: heroin and you don't know, so it could kill you.

626
00:32:47,640 --> 00:32:51,680
Speaker 1: Safe supply is just being able to access pharmaceutical grade diocetomorphine,

627
00:32:51,680 --> 00:32:54,480
Speaker 1: you know, pharmaceutical heroine. So just the same thing that

628
00:32:54,520 --> 00:32:56,520
Speaker 1: you were going to do anyway, but you can get

629
00:32:56,560 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 1: your hands on a pharmaceutical version because all the red

630
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:01,040
Speaker 1: tape and whatever is out of the way and you

631
00:33:01,080 --> 00:33:02,600
Speaker 1: can do it. You can go home and shoot it

632
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:05,360
Speaker 1: or whatever you want. Like. That's that's safe supply. It's

633
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:09,440
Speaker 1: replacing the toxic supply with the pharmaceutical version or the

634
00:33:09,520 --> 00:33:11,640
Speaker 1: version that's been tested and you know what's in it,

635
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:13,720
Speaker 1: and you can tell people and guarantee what's in it.

636
00:33:14,160 --> 00:33:17,040
Speaker 1: And that's it. That we're not trying to get people

637
00:33:17,040 --> 00:33:19,800
Speaker 1: to stop using or change using, or do anything or

638
00:33:19,800 --> 00:33:23,200
Speaker 1: come to some meeting or go to a twelve step no, no,

639
00:33:23,400 --> 00:33:26,040
Speaker 1: nothing like that. That's the only thing. It has the

640
00:33:26,080 --> 00:33:28,800
Speaker 1: biggest effect in the world because it can stop people

641
00:33:28,840 --> 00:33:31,440
Speaker 1: from dying. And that, to me, that is the key

642
00:33:31,600 --> 00:33:34,120
Speaker 1: question that's before us, not whether people are using or

643
00:33:34,160 --> 00:33:38,360
Speaker 1: are people wired or have whatever substance use disorder. It's

644
00:33:39,320 --> 00:33:42,040
Speaker 1: is people alive or not. So that's safe supply is

645
00:33:42,040 --> 00:33:44,280
Speaker 1: a demand that came out of the drug user movement

646
00:33:44,320 --> 00:33:47,160
Speaker 1: here in Vancouver. But the idea was, I mean, we've

647
00:33:47,160 --> 00:33:49,640
Speaker 1: been calling for an end to the drug war, decriminalization,

648
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:52,280
Speaker 1: legalization for a generation, for a very long time here,

649
00:33:52,640 --> 00:33:54,760
Speaker 1: but safe supplies like a reform. You know, it's like

650
00:33:54,800 --> 00:33:57,040
Speaker 1: if we if we haven't won yet the revolution to

651
00:33:57,160 --> 00:34:00,320
Speaker 1: end the drug war, then at least let us find

652
00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:03,800
Speaker 1: the most vulnerable people and replace the supply of drugs

653
00:34:03,800 --> 00:34:08,239
Speaker 1: that they're using with the pharmaceutical version. So basically, and

654
00:34:08,320 --> 00:34:11,759
Speaker 1: there's the heroin prescription program that you know that Vancouver

655
00:34:11,880 --> 00:34:14,520
Speaker 1: and now some other places had. That's a very limited

656
00:34:14,600 --> 00:34:17,040
Speaker 1: version of safe supply because it is providing the clean

657
00:34:17,239 --> 00:34:20,480
Speaker 1: version of heroin. Where then there's this other drug, hydromorphone,

658
00:34:20,520 --> 00:34:22,359
Speaker 1: which we know in the US is allowed it, which

659
00:34:22,400 --> 00:34:24,560
Speaker 1: is quite similar, but it's done it where you have

660
00:34:24,640 --> 00:34:26,560
Speaker 1: to use it on site. You could come three times

661
00:34:26,560 --> 00:34:29,080
Speaker 1: a day, can't take it home, all this sort of stuff.

662
00:34:29,120 --> 00:34:31,600
Speaker 1: So it's very different than when you're talking about On

663
00:34:31,640 --> 00:34:34,280
Speaker 1: the other hand, you're also not talking about just simply

664
00:34:34,320 --> 00:34:37,040
Speaker 1: selling these drugs over the counter, right and making it

665
00:34:37,080 --> 00:34:39,799
Speaker 1: available to the water public. It's really about setting up

666
00:34:39,800 --> 00:34:44,520
Speaker 1: a process whereby people who are already obtaining these drugs

667
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:47,880
Speaker 1: from the illicit market, from the criminal market, can instead

668
00:34:47,880 --> 00:34:50,879
Speaker 1: obtain them from a legal source. Is that right? Yeah?

669
00:34:50,960 --> 00:34:53,880
Speaker 1: I mean the Heroin pilot project here in Vancouver that

670
00:34:53,920 --> 00:34:56,799
Speaker 1: serves a little over a hundred people and that's it.

671
00:34:57,239 --> 00:34:59,760
Speaker 1: No more can get in, and and the small pilot

672
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:04,719
Speaker 1: objects that serve a few more with delatted, So that's

673
00:35:04,719 --> 00:35:06,719
Speaker 1: like a couple hundred people getting that stuff. And we

674
00:35:06,840 --> 00:35:09,640
Speaker 1: have at least a hundred thousand people in British Columbia

675
00:35:09,640 --> 00:35:13,120
Speaker 1: that would qualify as having being wired like like daily

676
00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:16,319
Speaker 1: opioid user or whatever whatever you wanna call it. And

677
00:35:16,320 --> 00:35:18,759
Speaker 1: then way more who are like weekend warriors and people

678
00:35:18,760 --> 00:35:20,840
Speaker 1: who would just encounter it. And and that's half the

679
00:35:20,840 --> 00:35:23,319
Speaker 1: people who are dying are like we can warriors who

680
00:35:23,320 --> 00:35:25,759
Speaker 1: don't have a habit or whatever. There's a very small

681
00:35:25,800 --> 00:35:28,680
Speaker 1: amount of people who can get that prescribed version. And

682
00:35:29,120 --> 00:35:32,239
Speaker 1: what we're talking about is the you know, asking the

683
00:35:32,280 --> 00:35:34,799
Speaker 1: government to not kick in the door if we were

684
00:35:34,840 --> 00:35:37,040
Speaker 1: to start a co op or a buyer's club or

685
00:35:37,080 --> 00:35:39,840
Speaker 1: a compassion club where we can just obtain the stuff

686
00:35:39,880 --> 00:35:43,759
Speaker 1: for ourselves legally and distributed among our members. That's the

687
00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:46,319
Speaker 1: ask that we're putting on government right now. And when

688
00:35:46,320 --> 00:35:48,279
Speaker 1: you say compassion club, I mean that, I think was

689
00:35:48,320 --> 00:35:50,560
Speaker 1: the language that was used in the medical marijuana community

690
00:35:50,560 --> 00:35:53,600
Speaker 1: exactly right, So it really is the It is a

691
00:35:53,640 --> 00:35:56,719
Speaker 1: medical marijuana model that we saw in Vancouver that we've

692
00:35:56,760 --> 00:35:59,920
Speaker 1: also seen with kind of broader marijuana in Spain, right,

693
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:03,560
Speaker 1: a kind of cooperative collective model where members can get

694
00:36:03,600 --> 00:36:05,719
Speaker 1: these drugs and there's a kind of group participation in

695
00:36:05,840 --> 00:36:10,239
Speaker 1: procuring them and then and sharing and distributing them. Now

696
00:36:10,360 --> 00:36:12,600
Speaker 1: as I understand it, though, right in the last day

697
00:36:12,680 --> 00:36:15,040
Speaker 1: or two, I talked to a couple of guys in Vancouver,

698
00:36:15,120 --> 00:36:20,680
Speaker 1: ones Donald McPherson, who was the drug policy coordinator under

699
00:36:20,680 --> 00:36:24,800
Speaker 1: four different mayors from the late nineties till I think eleven,

700
00:36:25,280 --> 00:36:28,200
Speaker 1: and very connected I think with the drug user unions

701
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:30,080
Speaker 1: in that world. And the other one was Mark Tindall,

702
00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:32,320
Speaker 1: a doctor I think used to head the Center of

703
00:36:32,360 --> 00:36:35,760
Speaker 1: Disease Control in British Columbia and who seems very aligned

704
00:36:35,800 --> 00:36:37,480
Speaker 1: with this and with both of them, said to me,

705
00:36:37,920 --> 00:36:39,640
Speaker 1: I sort of pressed them on this and sort of

706
00:36:39,680 --> 00:36:42,200
Speaker 1: preparing for my discussion with you carth and I said, so,

707
00:36:42,560 --> 00:36:44,360
Speaker 1: you know, if you look at where the problem is,

708
00:36:44,400 --> 00:36:46,600
Speaker 1: like how much it's a problem getting the federal government

709
00:36:46,640 --> 00:36:49,400
Speaker 1: to give permission, you know, even though it's basically in

710
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:53,000
Speaker 1: Canada to the provinces how they do healthcare. But both

711
00:36:53,000 --> 00:36:55,960
Speaker 1: of them sort of almost intimated that the fundamental problem

712
00:36:56,200 --> 00:37:00,520
Speaker 1: is that they're doing this safe supply through a medical model,

713
00:37:01,040 --> 00:37:04,880
Speaker 1: and the medical model is inhera inherently constrictive, and that

714
00:37:05,000 --> 00:37:08,080
Speaker 1: it's hard to find all that many doctors, and even

715
00:37:08,160 --> 00:37:11,239
Speaker 1: Vancouver never mind brought to British Columbia, who are all

716
00:37:11,239 --> 00:37:17,560
Speaker 1: that sympathetic, right, I mean definitely, it's it's difficult. The

717
00:37:17,600 --> 00:37:21,160
Speaker 1: province can can do it, you know, Um, I think

718
00:37:21,160 --> 00:37:24,640
Speaker 1: of what happens since COVID. Just in the year the

719
00:37:24,680 --> 00:37:28,360
Speaker 1: province got two or maybe three COVID vaccines into the

720
00:37:28,480 --> 00:37:31,880
Speaker 1: arms of almost five million people in a year. Right,

721
00:37:31,960 --> 00:37:36,440
Speaker 1: that's a massive public health initiative. And why do we

722
00:37:36,480 --> 00:37:39,839
Speaker 1: need to have the individual doctor and have to find

723
00:37:39,840 --> 00:37:42,560
Speaker 1: a willing doctor And most doctors, it's true, don't want

724
00:37:42,560 --> 00:37:44,760
Speaker 1: to do this. So that's why we have such few

725
00:37:44,800 --> 00:37:47,759
Speaker 1: people able to find any kind of even prescription for

726
00:37:47,840 --> 00:37:51,000
Speaker 1: delauded for example, So we we do need to move

727
00:37:51,080 --> 00:37:54,319
Speaker 1: outside of the strictures of that medical model, you know,

728
00:37:54,400 --> 00:37:58,600
Speaker 1: that doctor patient prescription. It just seems like the doctors

729
00:37:58,600 --> 00:38:00,799
Speaker 1: have said, we're not really willing to do this. A

730
00:38:00,840 --> 00:38:03,520
Speaker 1: few are. There's a few courageous doctors and they don't

731
00:38:03,520 --> 00:38:06,560
Speaker 1: have to break the rules. There's a little channel to do, uh,

732
00:38:06,600 --> 00:38:09,879
Speaker 1: you know, a reasonable version of of prescribing. But this

733
00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:12,120
Speaker 1: is a problem, Like I was saying, that's at least

734
00:38:12,160 --> 00:38:15,400
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand people in our little province, probably a

735
00:38:15,400 --> 00:38:17,839
Speaker 1: lot more. So it's going to take a real sort

736
00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:21,439
Speaker 1: of mass rollout program, not a one by one by one.

737
00:38:22,200 --> 00:38:24,640
Speaker 1: It seems to me that you must be running into

738
00:38:24,719 --> 00:38:27,760
Speaker 1: resistance on a few counts, right. One is the basic idea,

739
00:38:27,880 --> 00:38:29,800
Speaker 1: I mean, you're just giving going to give drugs to junkies,

740
00:38:29,800 --> 00:38:31,319
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah. You know what what are

741
00:38:31,360 --> 00:38:33,120
Speaker 1: you doing expecting you know, government to pay for it.

742
00:38:33,400 --> 00:38:36,520
Speaker 1: The second is that Canada did have a problem, not

743
00:38:36,640 --> 00:38:38,520
Speaker 1: maybe not quite as bad as the US, but the

744
00:38:38,560 --> 00:38:42,600
Speaker 1: whole problem of the over prescribing of opioid. You know, medications.

745
00:38:42,640 --> 00:38:45,400
Speaker 1: The oxycontent oxy code on that sort of stuff was

746
00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:47,560
Speaker 1: an issue in Canada as well, And so the pendulum

747
00:38:47,600 --> 00:38:50,319
Speaker 1: has swung so far back the other way where you

748
00:38:50,360 --> 00:38:54,320
Speaker 1: had this kind of broader societal fear of opioids generally,

749
00:38:54,440 --> 00:38:58,120
Speaker 1: and as certainly opioids getting out there. And when one's

750
00:38:58,120 --> 00:39:01,799
Speaker 1: talking safe supply, you're not talking about making available over

751
00:39:01,840 --> 00:39:04,800
Speaker 1: the counter. But is there a great fear among people

752
00:39:04,960 --> 00:39:08,000
Speaker 1: on the other side of this, the opposition about diversion,

753
00:39:08,040 --> 00:39:10,920
Speaker 1: about making opioids too readily available to people who are

754
00:39:10,920 --> 00:39:14,920
Speaker 1: not otherwise already using illicit opioids, sir, I mean people

755
00:39:14,960 --> 00:39:17,200
Speaker 1: in popular culture have been scaring the ship out of

756
00:39:17,200 --> 00:39:20,640
Speaker 1: everybody about heroin for decades and decades and vent and

757
00:39:20,719 --> 00:39:22,920
Speaker 1: all all of it for a long time. And for

758
00:39:23,080 --> 00:39:27,680
Speaker 1: prescription opioids, I mean, we didn't have mass overdoses because

759
00:39:27,719 --> 00:39:31,400
Speaker 1: of prescription opioids in Canada. We all of our overdose

760
00:39:31,440 --> 00:39:35,520
Speaker 1: crisises have been because of the illegal market and what's

761
00:39:35,520 --> 00:39:37,959
Speaker 1: not known. In fact, some places where they didn't cut

762
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:41,480
Speaker 1: off the prescription pills so hard seemed to be a

763
00:39:41,520 --> 00:39:44,360
Speaker 1: little immune to the deaths, at least in the numbers

764
00:39:44,400 --> 00:39:48,640
Speaker 1: of places like Vancouver, but they went hardcore on us here,

765
00:39:48,680 --> 00:39:51,200
Speaker 1: following the model in the US of cutting everybody off.

766
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:54,080
Speaker 1: And of course people don't just go, oh, my prescription

767
00:39:54,160 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 1: for oxy's is gone. I guess I'll just go home now.

768
00:39:57,000 --> 00:39:59,320
Speaker 1: They're like, no, I'm going to go score off the street.

769
00:39:59,480 --> 00:40:02,680
Speaker 1: You know. So every time you all make a like

770
00:40:02,719 --> 00:40:07,319
Speaker 1: a scary Netflix show about about prescription opioids, we all

771
00:40:07,360 --> 00:40:10,279
Speaker 1: watch it up here, right, We mostly watch American TV

772
00:40:10,600 --> 00:40:14,439
Speaker 1: in Canada, and you know, we get freaked out. That's

773
00:40:14,560 --> 00:40:16,279
Speaker 1: that's where we get a lot of ideas, you know,

774
00:40:16,760 --> 00:40:20,680
Speaker 1: our if you can believe this, one of our leading

775
00:40:20,719 --> 00:40:23,520
Speaker 1: politicians in this province got all of his ideas about

776
00:40:23,520 --> 00:40:26,680
Speaker 1: the overdose crisis from watching a segment on John Oliver

777
00:40:27,200 --> 00:40:31,480
Speaker 1: which pinned it right on pills. And I'm just like, dude,

778
00:40:31,560 --> 00:40:34,640
Speaker 1: please please fucking come to the neighborhood or come back,

779
00:40:34,680 --> 00:40:36,960
Speaker 1: because he used to even work near the neighborhood and

780
00:40:37,320 --> 00:40:41,600
Speaker 1: opened your eyes to what's going on. Prescription opioids are

781
00:40:41,719 --> 00:40:46,839
Speaker 1: the solution to this. We need more because people get

782
00:40:46,880 --> 00:40:50,000
Speaker 1: it all twisted here. They say it's an opioid crisis,

783
00:40:50,040 --> 00:40:53,160
Speaker 1: it's an addiction crisis, but it's not for me. It's

784
00:40:53,200 --> 00:40:56,480
Speaker 1: a death crisis. It's a toxic drug supply crisis. It's

785
00:40:56,600 --> 00:40:59,759
Speaker 1: what they identify as the problem, you know, whether it's

786
00:40:59,800 --> 00:41:03,080
Speaker 1: some being wired to a substance or someone dying, And

787
00:41:03,200 --> 00:41:07,200
Speaker 1: these are completely different things that require different solutions. I mean,

788
00:41:07,280 --> 00:41:11,840
Speaker 1: I'm completely wired to method On right now. I'm an addict.

789
00:41:11,920 --> 00:41:15,520
Speaker 1: I'm an opioid addict right this second. If I stopped

790
00:41:15,560 --> 00:41:17,840
Speaker 1: using method On, I'd be puking out my mouth and

791
00:41:17,880 --> 00:41:20,719
Speaker 1: my ass tomorrow morning. So I ain't gonna do that.

792
00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:22,640
Speaker 1: I'll probably be using it for the rest of my life,

793
00:41:22,680 --> 00:41:24,799
Speaker 1: and I'll be filing my taxes and going to work

794
00:41:24,800 --> 00:41:27,840
Speaker 1: and doing all that ship. So what So what the

795
00:41:27,920 --> 00:41:30,840
Speaker 1: problem Isn't that I'm wired too, That's not the problem.

796
00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:34,680
Speaker 1: My life is completely fine right now. Um. But the

797
00:41:34,800 --> 00:41:37,560
Speaker 1: problem is in my life is when I was wired

798
00:41:37,560 --> 00:41:41,240
Speaker 1: to a very similar molecule that happened to be illegal

799
00:41:41,480 --> 00:41:44,799
Speaker 1: and so therefore was subject to the police all up

800
00:41:44,800 --> 00:41:47,400
Speaker 1: my ass, in my life, subject to all kinds of

801
00:41:47,440 --> 00:41:51,480
Speaker 1: different changes in potency and potential overdoses and all that stuff.

802
00:41:51,520 --> 00:41:54,000
Speaker 1: So when people say, oh, it's addiction crisis and addiction

803
00:41:54,320 --> 00:41:56,760
Speaker 1: now that's a law problem. That's a problem with laws

804
00:41:56,800 --> 00:41:59,600
Speaker 1: and policies. That's a social problem, not a health problem.

805
00:41:59,719 --> 00:42:02,360
Speaker 1: And right now we have a death people dying problems,

806
00:42:02,360 --> 00:42:05,080
Speaker 1: so sorting out what even problem we're talking about and

807
00:42:05,200 --> 00:42:08,520
Speaker 1: Canadian politicians have not got the message on that, even

808
00:42:08,600 --> 00:42:12,560
Speaker 1: the most progressive sounding If you go and listen careful,

809
00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:15,120
Speaker 1: you'll hear what they're trying to do at the end

810
00:42:15,120 --> 00:42:17,800
Speaker 1: of it. What they really want to announces more treatment beds.

811
00:42:18,120 --> 00:42:21,400
Speaker 1: We have this privatized recovery industry. We love. This is

812
00:42:21,440 --> 00:42:23,440
Speaker 1: also another thing about Canada, the good We love to

813
00:42:23,480 --> 00:42:26,719
Speaker 1: tell you and lecture you Americans about our beautiful socialized

814
00:42:26,760 --> 00:42:29,280
Speaker 1: health care system. And you should have that, by the way.

815
00:42:29,400 --> 00:42:32,280
Speaker 1: But if you're a dope feine, you're in the private sector.

816
00:42:32,400 --> 00:42:35,279
Speaker 1: You're going to a private, unregulated recovery house run by

817
00:42:35,320 --> 00:42:38,360
Speaker 1: some fanatic, or you're going to a private, for profit

818
00:42:38,440 --> 00:42:41,640
Speaker 1: method on clinic where you're paying extra fees, like I

819
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:44,360
Speaker 1: pay fees every month to go to a method own clinic.

820
00:42:44,680 --> 00:42:48,800
Speaker 1: So these are like the secret things, right, But that's

821
00:42:48,800 --> 00:42:51,000
Speaker 1: that's true. Well, let me just step back for our

822
00:42:51,040 --> 00:42:53,640
Speaker 1: audience because never will be so conversing with this issue.

823
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:57,359
Speaker 1: But just so people understand, you know that heroin um

824
00:42:57,520 --> 00:43:00,880
Speaker 1: sometimes called dia morphine. When it enters the human body,

825
00:43:00,920 --> 00:43:04,359
Speaker 1: it essentially becomes morphine. It feels a little different going in,

826
00:43:04,440 --> 00:43:08,040
Speaker 1: but essentially in the body it's like morphine. Methodon is

827
00:43:08,160 --> 00:43:12,319
Speaker 1: a synthetic opioid, and it's one that basically is like

828
00:43:12,440 --> 00:43:16,040
Speaker 1: replacing heroin use or fentinel use with methodon or another

829
00:43:16,080 --> 00:43:20,920
Speaker 1: drug called groupern Orphine is basically like replacing smoking cigarettes

830
00:43:20,960 --> 00:43:23,040
Speaker 1: in which you're getting you know, you know, you're hooked

831
00:43:23,040 --> 00:43:25,480
Speaker 1: on the nicotine, but getting killed by the other other

832
00:43:25,560 --> 00:43:28,120
Speaker 1: crap that's in a cigarette and replacing it with a

833
00:43:28,200 --> 00:43:30,680
Speaker 1: nicotine patch or a gum or an east cigarette or

834
00:43:30,719 --> 00:43:33,319
Speaker 1: a pouch or snuff or something like that takes away

835
00:43:33,320 --> 00:43:36,239
Speaker 1: the craving. Helps people manage their lives. I mean, would

836
00:43:36,280 --> 00:43:38,040
Speaker 1: you would you agree with that basic description I just

837
00:43:38,120 --> 00:43:41,480
Speaker 1: laid out karth or add or change anything to yeah. Yeah.

838
00:43:41,600 --> 00:43:43,840
Speaker 1: I remember when I was at a twelve step program

839
00:43:43,840 --> 00:43:45,960
Speaker 1: and they said methodon is just trading a drug for

840
00:43:46,000 --> 00:43:49,680
Speaker 1: a drug, and I said, yes, so what you know,

841
00:43:49,880 --> 00:43:54,279
Speaker 1: Like it's true, they're both opioids, right, But like my

842
00:43:54,360 --> 00:43:57,560
Speaker 1: life is, you know, I'm a fully functional, working all

843
00:43:57,560 --> 00:44:00,600
Speaker 1: the time, have great relationships with my family, not in

844
00:44:00,640 --> 00:44:03,440
Speaker 1: trouble with the law. But it's all because that molecule,

845
00:44:03,680 --> 00:44:06,040
Speaker 1: that opioid, happens to be on the right side of

846
00:44:06,080 --> 00:44:10,359
Speaker 1: the law by by complete ideological reasons. You know, right,

847
00:44:10,600 --> 00:44:12,840
Speaker 1: and I know you're doing it for dramatic effect. But

848
00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:14,640
Speaker 1: you know, some people listening to this week going would

849
00:44:14,680 --> 00:44:17,680
Speaker 1: be saying, don't talk about yourself as a methodon addict,

850
00:44:17,880 --> 00:44:21,200
Speaker 1: your method on depend You're only an addict if your

851
00:44:21,200 --> 00:44:24,960
Speaker 1: dependence is actually causing harmful consequences in your life. And

852
00:44:25,000 --> 00:44:27,800
Speaker 1: you're being dependent upon methodon is no difference than somebody

853
00:44:27,800 --> 00:44:30,160
Speaker 1: else being depending on a drug for their heart, or

854
00:44:30,160 --> 00:44:33,160
Speaker 1: for their cholesterol, or for their coffee in the morning. Right,

855
00:44:33,800 --> 00:44:35,960
Speaker 1: good point, And then that and I would say, yes,

856
00:44:36,120 --> 00:44:38,360
Speaker 1: it's true. My the person who prescribes in a method

857
00:44:38,360 --> 00:44:41,000
Speaker 1: on would say exactly what you just said, and I'd say, well, then,

858
00:44:41,480 --> 00:44:44,680
Speaker 1: addiction is a description of social and legal conditions as

859
00:44:44,680 --> 00:44:47,960
Speaker 1: opposed to a description of something that's medical. Right, like

860
00:44:48,680 --> 00:44:52,080
Speaker 1: if you if you cause problems in your life because

861
00:44:52,320 --> 00:44:55,560
Speaker 1: you're broke, or because you're doing something illegal, or because

862
00:44:55,560 --> 00:44:59,680
Speaker 1: you're having to score something illegal. But almost the same

863
00:44:59,760 --> 00:45:01,840
Speaker 1: mall fuel, if it's prescribed to you, you don't have

864
00:45:01,880 --> 00:45:03,279
Speaker 1: to do any of that stuff. Then all of a

865
00:45:03,280 --> 00:45:08,759
Speaker 1: sudden we're describing effects which are not biochemical effects, they're

866
00:45:08,760 --> 00:45:12,600
Speaker 1: not mental health effects. There effects to do with the

867
00:45:12,719 --> 00:45:15,680
Speaker 1: law and the organization of society. And this is a

868
00:45:15,719 --> 00:45:18,120
Speaker 1: real piece of gas lighting that gets fitted up onto

869
00:45:18,160 --> 00:45:20,879
Speaker 1: drug users. Is that. And I was told for years

870
00:45:20,920 --> 00:45:23,719
Speaker 1: and years, you know, his chronic relapsing brain disorder, it's

871
00:45:23,760 --> 00:45:26,200
Speaker 1: your brain that's all messed up, and we got to

872
00:45:26,239 --> 00:45:29,000
Speaker 1: fix you. And and actually, you know, it may be

873
00:45:29,120 --> 00:45:31,239
Speaker 1: true that there's things in my brain that are messed up,

874
00:45:31,280 --> 00:45:37,160
Speaker 1: you know, like for sure, but that's not one of them.

875
00:45:37,239 --> 00:45:39,160
Speaker 1: Let's take a break here and go to an ad

876
00:45:52,480 --> 00:45:56,399
Speaker 1: you know. I sometimes have had conversations with people who

877
00:45:56,480 --> 00:45:59,560
Speaker 1: have a relative, a child, the cousin, whatever, my husband,

878
00:45:59,760 --> 00:46:02,880
Speaker 1: who are in a method On program and they're pushing

879
00:46:02,960 --> 00:46:05,120
Speaker 1: them to get off. And I say, why you're pushing

880
00:46:05,200 --> 00:46:06,880
Speaker 1: to get off because they're on Methodon, because they're on

881
00:46:06,880 --> 00:46:09,800
Speaker 1: a drug, because da you know, And I say, stopped

882
00:46:09,840 --> 00:46:11,920
Speaker 1: that right now, because you could be killing them right

883
00:46:11,960 --> 00:46:14,440
Speaker 1: that for many people's for some people in methodons a

884
00:46:14,480 --> 00:46:16,399
Speaker 1: way to get off at heroin and then stop using

885
00:46:16,440 --> 00:46:20,680
Speaker 1: all opioids. But for other people, methodon becomes like a

886
00:46:20,719 --> 00:46:23,520
Speaker 1: lifelong medication, the same way say insulin. You know, there

887
00:46:23,560 --> 00:46:26,200
Speaker 1: are diabetics who could learn to control their diabetes through

888
00:46:26,280 --> 00:46:30,319
Speaker 1: diet and exercise and life changes, but for many of them,

889
00:46:30,360 --> 00:46:33,680
Speaker 1: insulin is going to be a long term or lifelong medication.

890
00:46:34,040 --> 00:46:36,200
Speaker 1: How do you, Garth, How do you feel about your

891
00:46:36,200 --> 00:46:38,799
Speaker 1: relationship with method I mean, obviously you're grateful there it's

892
00:46:38,800 --> 00:46:42,319
Speaker 1: helped you stabilize your life. Are you content with the

893
00:46:42,400 --> 00:46:43,879
Speaker 1: idea of being on it for the rest of your

894
00:46:43,920 --> 00:46:46,320
Speaker 1: life and that this is gonna be your daily medication

895
00:46:46,440 --> 00:46:49,200
Speaker 1: just like a diabetic on insulin or or do you

896
00:46:49,239 --> 00:46:51,680
Speaker 1: feel that it's it's somehow undermining your health or you're

897
00:46:51,719 --> 00:46:54,520
Speaker 1: worried about long term consequences. What's what's your own feeling

898
00:46:54,520 --> 00:46:56,759
Speaker 1: about that. I don't even think about it. Yeah, sure,

899
00:46:56,760 --> 00:46:58,680
Speaker 1: I'll probably be on it for my life. That's okay.

900
00:46:58,920 --> 00:47:00,680
Speaker 1: It doesn't bother me. But it did take me a

901
00:47:00,719 --> 00:47:02,560
Speaker 1: long time to get over that. You know. I was

902
00:47:02,600 --> 00:47:05,359
Speaker 1: always I used to be super aware of like how

903
00:47:05,400 --> 00:47:07,719
Speaker 1: many mills am I taking? Can I grind it down

904
00:47:07,719 --> 00:47:09,239
Speaker 1: a little? When am I going to be off? But

905
00:47:09,320 --> 00:47:12,359
Speaker 1: now I'm just like, I don't care this works. I'm

906
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:15,080
Speaker 1: just fine with it, you know, and I think the

907
00:47:15,120 --> 00:47:21,440
Speaker 1: health consequences of stopping taking it are much worse. Oh yeah, yeah, no, definitely.

908
00:47:21,560 --> 00:47:23,800
Speaker 1: And I'm curious, like, if you look at two different

909
00:47:23,840 --> 00:47:26,640
Speaker 1: parts of your worlds. Right on the one hand, people

910
00:47:26,680 --> 00:47:29,279
Speaker 1: who are not really part of the drug world in

911
00:47:29,320 --> 00:47:33,879
Speaker 1: a significant way, do you still encounter some stigma from them?

912
00:47:34,440 --> 00:47:38,000
Speaker 1: And conversely, is there an element of the heroin or

913
00:47:38,040 --> 00:47:41,359
Speaker 1: federal using world that sometimes looks down on people who

914
00:47:41,440 --> 00:47:43,520
Speaker 1: have turned to Method on, Like, you know, you've kind

915
00:47:43,520 --> 00:47:46,280
Speaker 1: of sold out, or you've gotten the man, you're taking

916
00:47:46,280 --> 00:47:49,560
Speaker 1: the you know, the man's chemical bracelet, you're you know,

917
00:47:49,640 --> 00:47:51,359
Speaker 1: this sort of thing. Do you get it from both

918
00:47:51,360 --> 00:47:54,279
Speaker 1: sides or not? Really? People people ask me like, how

919
00:47:54,480 --> 00:47:57,320
Speaker 1: how did you make that work? You know, like really

920
00:47:57,360 --> 00:47:59,680
Speaker 1: from both both of those worlds? How on earth did

921
00:47:59,719 --> 00:48:01,400
Speaker 1: you make that work? And I said, well, it's just

922
00:48:01,440 --> 00:48:03,840
Speaker 1: a function of when I got wired, right, And I

923
00:48:03,920 --> 00:48:05,960
Speaker 1: told you earlier in the interview how many years it

924
00:48:05,960 --> 00:48:07,960
Speaker 1: took me to sort of get across the bridge from

925
00:48:07,960 --> 00:48:11,760
Speaker 1: Heroin to methodone. Heroin and methodone are a lot closer

926
00:48:11,800 --> 00:48:14,600
Speaker 1: to each other than fentol on methodon art. That's a

927
00:48:14,640 --> 00:48:17,239
Speaker 1: lot further of a bridge to go. I don't think

928
00:48:17,280 --> 00:48:19,279
Speaker 1: I would be making it so well. You know, I

929
00:48:19,320 --> 00:48:22,000
Speaker 1: really struggled to get across. My doctor told me not

930
00:48:22,040 --> 00:48:24,239
Speaker 1: so long ago. I never thought you would do it

931
00:48:24,320 --> 00:48:25,759
Speaker 1: like I never thought you would just be a guy

932
00:48:25,760 --> 00:48:28,920
Speaker 1: on methodon. I thought you'd be using everything forever. You know,

933
00:48:28,960 --> 00:48:31,799
Speaker 1: if I was twenty years younger, I don't know that

934
00:48:31,880 --> 00:48:34,440
Speaker 1: i'd be able to use ventenol and then get across

935
00:48:34,480 --> 00:48:38,120
Speaker 1: to methodon. And then of course the drug contamination isn't

936
00:48:38,120 --> 00:48:39,759
Speaker 1: even stopping at fent and all. There's lots of other

937
00:48:39,760 --> 00:48:42,000
Speaker 1: stuff going on car fent and al benzos and everything.

938
00:48:42,040 --> 00:48:44,799
Speaker 1: It's it's making it very complicated. So that's mostly what

939
00:48:44,840 --> 00:48:47,400
Speaker 1: I get from people is just like, how did you

940
00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:49,919
Speaker 1: manage that? You know? And I was just like, it's

941
00:48:49,920 --> 00:48:52,880
Speaker 1: just the luck. It really is a little bit of

942
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:56,800
Speaker 1: luck um of when I was born. You know. It's interesting.

943
00:48:56,840 --> 00:48:58,600
Speaker 1: I mean, you think that they're in the United States,

944
00:48:58,600 --> 00:49:00,560
Speaker 1: there must be close to three thousand people now on

945
00:49:00,680 --> 00:49:02,480
Speaker 1: method on, or or maybe even more if you put

946
00:49:02,480 --> 00:49:05,040
Speaker 1: all together method on and bupreneurphane, and you know, a

947
00:49:05,120 --> 00:49:07,560
Speaker 1: large number them the ones that you have this paradox

948
00:49:08,040 --> 00:49:10,759
Speaker 1: where the people who are where it's working best, for

949
00:49:10,960 --> 00:49:13,279
Speaker 1: the ones for whom has become a daily medication has

950
00:49:13,320 --> 00:49:16,359
Speaker 1: removed the the issue of drugs from their lives effectively.

951
00:49:16,560 --> 00:49:19,439
Speaker 1: You know, they're having stable jobs, family, the whole thing.

952
00:49:19,920 --> 00:49:22,719
Speaker 1: They're the ones who are least likely to tell other

953
00:49:22,840 --> 00:49:26,719
Speaker 1: people that they're using METHODOL because of this stigma associated

954
00:49:26,760 --> 00:49:30,239
Speaker 1: with it, right, and and and conversely, the people who

955
00:49:30,280 --> 00:49:33,279
Speaker 1: are using method on but also involved still in a

956
00:49:33,400 --> 00:49:35,880
Speaker 1: drug scene and a criminal scene whatever, those are the

957
00:49:35,880 --> 00:49:38,560
Speaker 1: ones who the media focuses on. The one people may

958
00:49:38,600 --> 00:49:41,440
Speaker 1: see lingering around a method on clinic, this sort of stuff,

959
00:49:41,560 --> 00:49:43,080
Speaker 1: and it's part of what's given a method on a

960
00:49:43,120 --> 00:49:45,280
Speaker 1: bad rap. And and I'm not sure what the answer

961
00:49:45,360 --> 00:49:49,200
Speaker 1: is because I'm not sure how one persuades large numbers

962
00:49:49,239 --> 00:49:52,680
Speaker 1: of people who are successfully stabilized in Methodon to become

963
00:49:52,760 --> 00:49:55,000
Speaker 1: more open or to be able to tell their story

964
00:49:55,080 --> 00:49:58,000
Speaker 1: to the broader population so that people get it. I mean,

965
00:49:58,480 --> 00:50:01,439
Speaker 1: up here, I know that method runs on the same

966
00:50:01,560 --> 00:50:03,920
Speaker 1: rules as it did a long time ago. You know that,

967
00:50:04,000 --> 00:50:06,840
Speaker 1: you um, most people have to go to the pharmacy

968
00:50:06,880 --> 00:50:09,839
Speaker 1: every day or a clinic and have it witnessed their

969
00:50:09,960 --> 00:50:13,760
Speaker 1: ingestionally someone watches them drink it, you get piss tested

970
00:50:13,800 --> 00:50:16,600
Speaker 1: a lot. You know. They're that's why people call it

971
00:50:16,640 --> 00:50:19,960
Speaker 1: liquid handcuffs, because all these rules, because you can't travel

972
00:50:20,080 --> 00:50:22,279
Speaker 1: very easily, you can't really go very far away from

973
00:50:22,280 --> 00:50:24,400
Speaker 1: where the place where you get your mouth downe is.

974
00:50:25,080 --> 00:50:26,880
Speaker 1: And so I think they need to free that up

975
00:50:26,880 --> 00:50:28,640
Speaker 1: a lot, and they have in a lot of other countries,

976
00:50:28,680 --> 00:50:31,440
Speaker 1: there's just a lot more liberal with that stuff. And

977
00:50:31,480 --> 00:50:33,760
Speaker 1: they just rolled out. Like when I was in Portugal

978
00:50:33,800 --> 00:50:36,480
Speaker 1: for the last harm Reduction conference in nineteen, I went

979
00:50:36,560 --> 00:50:38,640
Speaker 1: to see their little methanon van. You know, they just

980
00:50:38,719 --> 00:50:41,560
Speaker 1: drive it around, and so I was like lining up

981
00:50:41,600 --> 00:50:43,799
Speaker 1: to just check it out, and the guy hands me

982
00:50:43,840 --> 00:50:47,680
Speaker 1: a cup and like, oh, no, I'm not from here, man,

983
00:50:47,719 --> 00:50:50,440
Speaker 1: I don't even I don't speak Portuguese, you know. And

984
00:50:50,520 --> 00:50:53,640
Speaker 1: he's like, I'm alright, sure, takes it back. So I

985
00:50:53,680 --> 00:50:57,200
Speaker 1: said to the doctor, don't ever worry about people about

986
00:50:57,200 --> 00:50:59,399
Speaker 1: this making its way out from the people who are

987
00:50:59,400 --> 00:51:02,319
Speaker 1: prescribed it. And he's like, not really, because if you

988
00:51:02,400 --> 00:51:05,240
Speaker 1: hold onto it too tight, you create this black market

989
00:51:05,320 --> 00:51:08,360
Speaker 1: for it, and this way more people get it. And

990
00:51:08,400 --> 00:51:10,560
Speaker 1: I just thought that's a very enlightened way to look

991
00:51:10,600 --> 00:51:12,800
Speaker 1: at it. We should do more of that in Canada.

992
00:51:12,880 --> 00:51:15,160
Speaker 1: We should like free that stuff out to get to

993
00:51:15,239 --> 00:51:19,160
Speaker 1: more people. You know, yeah, I mean, Garth, I mean

994
00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:21,920
Speaker 1: I always struck me that the whole preoccupation of the

995
00:51:22,040 --> 00:51:24,720
Speaker 1: d e A and others about the diversion of method

996
00:51:24,719 --> 00:51:29,160
Speaker 1: on it always seemed preposterous because from a public health perspective,

997
00:51:29,680 --> 00:51:32,440
Speaker 1: if people are in a methodon program and they are

998
00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:35,360
Speaker 1: diverting some of their methodon and giving it or selling

999
00:51:35,400 --> 00:51:37,680
Speaker 1: it to other people who cannot or will not get

1000
00:51:37,719 --> 00:51:40,840
Speaker 1: into a method on program, that basically that's a net

1001
00:51:40,880 --> 00:51:44,399
Speaker 1: positive from a public health perspective, right. And meanwhile, there's

1002
00:51:44,400 --> 00:51:47,360
Speaker 1: almost no market for method on, you know, among people

1003
00:51:47,400 --> 00:51:50,640
Speaker 1: who are not already involved with illicit opioins. But when

1004
00:51:50,680 --> 00:51:53,759
Speaker 1: it's it's really true, say, everybody I know pretty much

1005
00:51:53,800 --> 00:51:57,560
Speaker 1: started on diverted methodon. Like very few people that I

1006
00:51:57,560 --> 00:51:59,719
Speaker 1: know have gone into the clinics signed up in their

1007
00:51:59,719 --> 00:52:02,759
Speaker 1: first taste of methodon comes from the official source. This

1008
00:52:02,800 --> 00:52:06,600
Speaker 1: is how everybody finds their way there, and it's it's

1009
00:52:06,680 --> 00:52:09,960
Speaker 1: great harm. Actually, even you know people worry about diversion

1010
00:52:09,960 --> 00:52:12,560
Speaker 1: of prescription pills, it's the same thing. There's a real

1011
00:52:12,880 --> 00:52:16,279
Speaker 1: harm reduction benefit to diversion. And I never realized this.

1012
00:52:16,320 --> 00:52:18,319
Speaker 1: I just thought of it as this shameful, illegal thing

1013
00:52:18,360 --> 00:52:20,200
Speaker 1: that me and my friends did. And then I started

1014
00:52:20,239 --> 00:52:23,120
Speaker 1: reading into the research, and it shows that people are

1015
00:52:23,120 --> 00:52:25,040
Speaker 1: trying to help and take care of each other, and

1016
00:52:25,080 --> 00:52:28,480
Speaker 1: that if you're using something like methanone or maybe a

1017
00:52:28,640 --> 00:52:33,040
Speaker 1: prescribed pill that isn't yours, you're not using street supply

1018
00:52:33,160 --> 00:52:35,840
Speaker 1: that day or that afternoon, and so it reduces the

1019
00:52:35,920 --> 00:52:39,080
Speaker 1: likelihood that you'll die. Yeah, it reduces that. It also

1020
00:52:39,120 --> 00:52:42,000
Speaker 1: reduces the black market, reduces the market for you know,

1021
00:52:42,040 --> 00:52:45,080
Speaker 1: the gangsters and the traffickers. I mean, it reduces you know,

1022
00:52:45,200 --> 00:52:47,760
Speaker 1: whole a whole lot of things that could be positive.

1023
00:52:48,080 --> 00:52:51,520
Speaker 1: But the thing is this mark. And there's with safe supply.

1024
00:52:51,760 --> 00:52:54,080
Speaker 1: You're talking that's just about method on where people can

1025
00:52:54,120 --> 00:52:56,640
Speaker 1: get high from method on and you can overdose from methanon.

1026
00:52:57,040 --> 00:53:00,080
Speaker 1: But basically, you know, it's a relatively safer drug. If

1027
00:53:00,120 --> 00:53:03,840
Speaker 1: you've been involved with illidopiois before. When you're talking about

1028
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:10,120
Speaker 1: making pharmaceutical grade heroine or amphetamy or a cocaine or

1029
00:53:10,160 --> 00:53:14,680
Speaker 1: even you know, low dose fentanel available, the issue is there.

1030
00:53:14,719 --> 00:53:19,000
Speaker 1: It seems like the potential for diversion to others who

1031
00:53:19,040 --> 00:53:21,360
Speaker 1: may not be current users or who may just be

1032
00:53:21,440 --> 00:53:23,960
Speaker 1: playing around, and there's the risk of it getting out

1033
00:53:24,000 --> 00:53:25,919
Speaker 1: there broadly in a way that you know, we hold

1034
00:53:25,960 --> 00:53:29,200
Speaker 1: out produce pharma for you know, over promoting. I mean,

1035
00:53:29,360 --> 00:53:32,040
Speaker 1: isn't there a risk there? And how does one control

1036
00:53:32,080 --> 00:53:33,560
Speaker 1: for that or do you just not worry about it?

1037
00:53:33,600 --> 00:53:37,719
Speaker 1: I mean, everybody can already get drugs really easily, right Like,

1038
00:53:39,200 --> 00:53:41,440
Speaker 1: you know, I was able to get drugs back in

1039
00:53:41,480 --> 00:53:45,080
Speaker 1: the day underage, before I could go legally by booze,

1040
00:53:45,640 --> 00:53:48,959
Speaker 1: you know, Like you can get drugs anywhere in North

1041
00:53:49,000 --> 00:53:51,600
Speaker 1: America really easily. You can order them over the internet.

1042
00:53:51,680 --> 00:53:55,799
Speaker 1: You know, it's like it's already the genies out of

1043
00:53:55,800 --> 00:53:59,200
Speaker 1: the bottle. This is already out there. So if you

1044
00:53:59,280 --> 00:54:02,920
Speaker 1: have a safe supply, a clean supply, and it gets diverted,

1045
00:54:03,280 --> 00:54:06,560
Speaker 1: then maybe the person who would otherwise be taking the

1046
00:54:07,760 --> 00:54:10,440
Speaker 1: dodgy thing is getting something that's safer for them. You know,

1047
00:54:10,520 --> 00:54:14,080
Speaker 1: the same rules apply. But if if a country is

1048
00:54:14,120 --> 00:54:16,920
Speaker 1: going to go to um a safe supply or a

1049
00:54:17,000 --> 00:54:20,040
Speaker 1: regulated market instead of a black market, right like we

1050
00:54:20,080 --> 00:54:22,960
Speaker 1: have an unregulated drug market now, so anyone can get

1051
00:54:23,280 --> 00:54:26,600
Speaker 1: unknown substances at any time if you regulate it, Like

1052
00:54:26,680 --> 00:54:30,600
Speaker 1: the liquor store near me um they check your I D.

1053
00:54:31,160 --> 00:54:34,279
Speaker 1: They only run certain hours, They can't sell stuff over

1054
00:54:34,320 --> 00:54:36,719
Speaker 1: a certain alcohol proof, you know what I mean, Like

1055
00:54:37,120 --> 00:54:40,640
Speaker 1: the government puts rules on it. And so if you

1056
00:54:40,719 --> 00:54:45,640
Speaker 1: had just illegal anything goes on a moonshine being sold

1057
00:54:45,680 --> 00:54:48,200
Speaker 1: by the guy in the alley, it would be more dangerous,

1058
00:54:48,360 --> 00:54:51,480
Speaker 1: and kids or anybody else who is I don't know

1059
00:54:51,520 --> 00:54:54,120
Speaker 1: moonshine naive would be able to get ahold of it

1060
00:54:54,320 --> 00:54:59,240
Speaker 1: more easily. So it's like regulation gives the community, the public,

1061
00:54:59,400 --> 00:55:02,520
Speaker 1: the societ idy more control over these substances because right

1062
00:55:02,560 --> 00:55:05,880
Speaker 1: now they're completely everywhere and uncontrolled. I mean, it's not

1063
00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:08,200
Speaker 1: it doesn't solve the problem entirely right because I mean

1064
00:55:08,200 --> 00:55:10,880
Speaker 1: the great problem now it involves fentinel, which it is

1065
00:55:10,920 --> 00:55:13,640
Speaker 1: so easy. You know, it's overdose and die from I

1066
00:55:13,680 --> 00:55:16,040
Speaker 1: mean with heroin. I think most people who died of

1067
00:55:16,080 --> 00:55:18,960
Speaker 1: a quote unquote heroin overdose, it was typically really a

1068
00:55:19,000 --> 00:55:22,880
Speaker 1: fatal drug combination evolving other drugs combining you know, heroin

1069
00:55:23,000 --> 00:55:26,200
Speaker 1: with booze or with benzos with fentanyl. Even though most

1070
00:55:26,239 --> 00:55:29,960
Speaker 1: fentinel is now combined with you know, other drugs as well.

1071
00:55:30,360 --> 00:55:33,200
Speaker 1: It's typically the fentanyl I think is as my understanding

1072
00:55:33,440 --> 00:55:35,560
Speaker 1: is that the you know, it can in fact kill

1073
00:55:35,600 --> 00:55:37,359
Speaker 1: you all by itself in a way that no other

1074
00:55:37,400 --> 00:55:40,239
Speaker 1: opioid that was previously out there would do. And then

1075
00:55:40,280 --> 00:55:42,800
Speaker 1: of course you just had people you know, mixing drugs,

1076
00:55:42,840 --> 00:55:46,200
Speaker 1: doing dumb stuff, you know, not taking precautions. So obviously

1077
00:55:46,239 --> 00:55:48,680
Speaker 1: cleaning up the drug supply and making it legit in

1078
00:55:48,680 --> 00:55:52,040
Speaker 1: that respect it would solve a big and probably a

1079
00:55:52,080 --> 00:55:56,240
Speaker 1: majority of this problem, but it would not eliminate the problem.

1080
00:55:56,320 --> 00:55:59,280
Speaker 1: You know, I was doing fentanyl. I was doing fentanyl

1081
00:55:59,320 --> 00:56:02,240
Speaker 1: before it was well, you know, I was doing fentanyl

1082
00:56:02,320 --> 00:56:04,400
Speaker 1: before it was on the street. Like we did it

1083
00:56:04,480 --> 00:56:07,680
Speaker 1: from the patches, the Dermo patches, and you can break

1084
00:56:07,719 --> 00:56:10,560
Speaker 1: them down and do them however you want. You don't

1085
00:56:10,560 --> 00:56:13,839
Speaker 1: have to do them as directed, right, but we get

1086
00:56:13,840 --> 00:56:16,520
Speaker 1: a hold of these things. And when I very first

1087
00:56:16,560 --> 00:56:18,839
Speaker 1: heard about it, like this is a long time ago now,

1088
00:56:18,840 --> 00:56:21,400
Speaker 1: and everyone said, wow, it's like supposedly ten times stronger

1089
00:56:21,440 --> 00:56:24,520
Speaker 1: than heroin or something. I was like, great, sign me up,

1090
00:56:24,640 --> 00:56:27,640
Speaker 1: let's dry it. But nobody was overdosing on that because

1091
00:56:27,640 --> 00:56:30,680
Speaker 1: you knew, uh, you knew what you were getting. The

1092
00:56:30,719 --> 00:56:34,040
Speaker 1: way that people are overdosing on fentanyl now is because

1093
00:56:34,360 --> 00:56:37,560
Speaker 1: very small quantities of it can cause a big effect.

1094
00:56:37,840 --> 00:56:40,680
Speaker 1: So if you're making up a batch, maybe you haven't

1095
00:56:40,880 --> 00:56:44,520
Speaker 1: distributed all the grains of fentanyl evenly through your drug batch.

1096
00:56:44,560 --> 00:56:47,120
Speaker 1: So you sell someone to flap a dope has got

1097
00:56:47,200 --> 00:56:49,600
Speaker 1: more fentanyl in it than the rest of the batch

1098
00:56:49,719 --> 00:56:54,279
Speaker 1: or whatever. Right, it's like the concentration and the potency,

1099
00:56:54,760 --> 00:56:57,560
Speaker 1: those together are the problem. Ventanyl in and of itself

1100
00:56:58,400 --> 00:57:02,319
Speaker 1: is albeit powerful, it's an opioid, right, So like if

1101
00:57:02,320 --> 00:57:07,040
Speaker 1: we could assure people, um, here's here's what's in it,

1102
00:57:07,120 --> 00:57:09,319
Speaker 1: here's vent and all, there's no one cut, there's nothing else,

1103
00:57:09,440 --> 00:57:12,400
Speaker 1: and here's the potency and here's how much, then you

1104
00:57:12,520 --> 00:57:15,520
Speaker 1: have a much less likelihood of these kind of venting

1105
00:57:15,560 --> 00:57:18,120
Speaker 1: all overdoses. And still what you see right now is

1106
00:57:18,200 --> 00:57:21,280
Speaker 1: mostly poly drug overdoses. Like a big amount of overdoses

1107
00:57:21,280 --> 00:57:24,560
Speaker 1: that are recorded by the coroner in Vancouver are people

1108
00:57:24,680 --> 00:57:27,080
Speaker 1: who have been drinking at the same time, you know,

1109
00:57:27,280 --> 00:57:30,000
Speaker 1: or people who for whom there's venting all in the

1110
00:57:30,160 --> 00:57:33,919
Speaker 1: rock or something else. M So in your models, say,

1111
00:57:34,000 --> 00:57:37,200
Speaker 1: supply who's paying for the drugs? I mean when drug

1112
00:57:37,280 --> 00:57:39,040
Speaker 1: users are buying on the street, they have to raise

1113
00:57:39,080 --> 00:57:40,880
Speaker 1: the money one way or another to pay for it.

1114
00:57:41,120 --> 00:57:43,760
Speaker 1: Would they still be paying for inderstafe supply or would

1115
00:57:43,800 --> 00:57:46,439
Speaker 1: it be free or how would that work? The most

1116
00:57:46,480 --> 00:57:49,880
Speaker 1: immediate thing, the compassion club model of the co op

1117
00:57:50,000 --> 00:57:52,560
Speaker 1: that we're looking to build, it would be us we

1118
00:57:52,640 --> 00:57:56,520
Speaker 1: pool our money or raise it and uh supply ourselves.

1119
00:57:56,600 --> 00:57:59,880
Speaker 1: Because we just don't think yet that the government's inter

1120
00:58:00,000 --> 00:58:03,560
Speaker 1: ha didn't doing that. Um so, I mean not that's

1121
00:58:03,600 --> 00:58:06,160
Speaker 1: what that's what we're trying to do right now. And

1122
00:58:06,320 --> 00:58:09,040
Speaker 1: maybe it depends on how it's applied for, Like if

1123
00:58:09,040 --> 00:58:12,000
Speaker 1: you're doing a prescription heroin program, Yeah, the government should

1124
00:58:12,000 --> 00:58:14,240
Speaker 1: pay for that, you know, like the government. I believe

1125
00:58:14,440 --> 00:58:18,960
Speaker 1: governments should everywhere should pay for pharmaceuticals. I believe pharmaceutical

1126
00:58:19,000 --> 00:58:23,160
Speaker 1: companies should be nationalized because their strategic national interest a

1127
00:58:23,240 --> 00:58:26,600
Speaker 1: public interest to health thing, and they shouldn't have cartoon

1128
00:58:26,760 --> 00:58:30,360
Speaker 1: villains at the top of them profiteering off everybody. I

1129
00:58:30,400 --> 00:58:32,960
Speaker 1: think we would have avoided all of the big panic

1130
00:58:33,000 --> 00:58:35,800
Speaker 1: and response of the last twenty years on Boxy's if

1131
00:58:35,800 --> 00:58:38,960
Speaker 1: we had been able to have national control instead of

1132
00:58:39,040 --> 00:58:44,120
Speaker 1: just wild West free market style pharmacy. But Garthon, with

1133
00:58:44,200 --> 00:58:46,560
Speaker 1: your Compassion Club model, I mean, I presume you're buying

1134
00:58:46,600 --> 00:58:49,160
Speaker 1: the drugs on the darknet you're testing in before you're

1135
00:58:49,200 --> 00:58:51,600
Speaker 1: making them available to the members. Yeah, I mean that's

1136
00:58:51,640 --> 00:58:54,320
Speaker 1: what's happening now. But if if we have applied the

1137
00:58:54,640 --> 00:58:56,959
Speaker 1: Drug User Liberation Front, which is the one the group

1138
00:58:57,000 --> 00:59:00,240
Speaker 1: that has put on five of these give a ways,

1139
00:59:00,240 --> 00:59:04,800
Speaker 1: these little events where a very small amount of heroin,

1140
00:59:05,000 --> 00:59:07,600
Speaker 1: coke or math is given to a very small amount

1141
00:59:07,600 --> 00:59:09,960
Speaker 1: of people that are in our groups as a sort

1142
00:59:10,000 --> 00:59:12,240
Speaker 1: of active civil disobedience as a as a sort of

1143
00:59:12,280 --> 00:59:14,600
Speaker 1: like a little here's what a possible future could look like.

1144
00:59:14,880 --> 00:59:17,280
Speaker 1: So yeah, those are sourced from the dark web by

1145
00:59:17,360 --> 00:59:21,640
Speaker 1: a couple of very courageous people. But the um Compassion

1146
00:59:21,680 --> 00:59:24,840
Speaker 1: Club model, if if the governments would deign to permit

1147
00:59:24,920 --> 00:59:27,920
Speaker 1: this to occur, you would legally be able to purchase

1148
00:59:28,240 --> 00:59:31,960
Speaker 1: uh diocetyl morphine or whatever off of some pharmaceutical company,

1149
00:59:31,960 --> 00:59:34,560
Speaker 1: because you now you'd be you'd be into what's something

1150
00:59:34,680 --> 00:59:37,880
Speaker 1: that's legal? You know? But I mean that's also the question,

1151
00:59:37,920 --> 00:59:40,280
Speaker 1: right because I think you know, the libertarian model right

1152
00:59:40,280 --> 00:59:44,960
Speaker 1: basically says let people adults by whatever they want from

1153
00:59:45,080 --> 00:59:47,480
Speaker 1: the company that produces it, and there will be no

1154
00:59:47,560 --> 00:59:50,640
Speaker 1: criminal laws involved, except maybe if you're selling the kids,

1155
00:59:51,120 --> 00:59:53,880
Speaker 1: and you'd have civil liabilities. So you know, the companies

1156
00:59:53,920 --> 00:59:56,439
Speaker 1: would only be responsible if they were selling something other

1157
00:59:56,440 --> 00:59:59,160
Speaker 1: than what they claimed it to be. And I thought

1158
00:59:59,160 --> 01:00:01,600
Speaker 1: with with safe apply, we're talking about something a little

1159
01:00:01,640 --> 01:00:04,440
Speaker 1: more limited than that, where the people who are accessing it,

1160
01:00:04,760 --> 01:00:07,720
Speaker 1: even if one's not using a medical model where doctors

1161
01:00:07,720 --> 01:00:11,640
Speaker 1: are prescribing, at the very least, there's some constraints. It's

1162
01:00:11,640 --> 01:00:14,200
Speaker 1: not just go on the not the dark web, but

1163
01:00:14,280 --> 01:00:16,240
Speaker 1: go on the internet and get it. Or are you

1164
01:00:16,240 --> 01:00:18,480
Speaker 1: actually saying go all the way? Like are you closer

1165
01:00:18,520 --> 01:00:21,560
Speaker 1: to being a libertarian in your approach when it comes

1166
01:00:21,560 --> 01:00:25,400
Speaker 1: to safe supply? Well, I mean safe supply is a

1167
01:00:25,400 --> 01:00:28,080
Speaker 1: form of triage, right, Like, ultimately we want to end

1168
01:00:28,080 --> 01:00:32,720
Speaker 1: the drug war and you have like regulated access to

1169
01:00:32,800 --> 01:00:36,120
Speaker 1: the substances in the same way, you know, not necessarily

1170
01:00:36,160 --> 01:00:38,840
Speaker 1: the exact identical mechanisms, but in the same way that

1171
01:00:39,040 --> 01:00:43,680
Speaker 1: we ended alcohol prohibition and now you have alcohol. Personally,

1172
01:00:44,080 --> 01:00:47,680
Speaker 1: I don't like the libertarian model of companies can just

1173
01:00:47,720 --> 01:00:51,040
Speaker 1: make a fortune marketing alcohol to everybody, Like I think

1174
01:00:51,640 --> 01:00:55,680
Speaker 1: the hugely pro capitalist marketing of the way that we

1175
01:00:55,840 --> 01:00:58,480
Speaker 1: and you came out of prohibition to the enrichment of

1176
01:00:58,520 --> 01:01:01,520
Speaker 1: a few. Yeah, that's not for the public good. So

1177
01:01:01,680 --> 01:01:04,000
Speaker 1: we don't need to make all those same mistakes again,

1178
01:01:04,600 --> 01:01:06,880
Speaker 1: you know. And I think there's needs to be like

1179
01:01:06,920 --> 01:01:10,400
Speaker 1: a really adult society wide conversation about how we want

1180
01:01:10,400 --> 01:01:11,920
Speaker 1: to come out of it and who we want the

1181
01:01:11,920 --> 01:01:15,439
Speaker 1: winners and losers to be. Yeah, I mean, because it's funny,

1182
01:01:15,680 --> 01:01:18,080
Speaker 1: I find myself wing people ask me if if I support,

1183
01:01:18,080 --> 01:01:20,040
Speaker 1: you know, full legalization, and I'll typically say, look, I'm

1184
01:01:20,040 --> 01:01:22,600
Speaker 1: not a libertarian, I'm not a free market guy. I

1185
01:01:22,680 --> 01:01:26,000
Speaker 1: actually do worry about opioids becoming or or some other

1186
01:01:26,040 --> 01:01:30,080
Speaker 1: drugs becoming so widely available or potentially promoted in ways

1187
01:01:30,200 --> 01:01:33,000
Speaker 1: that you actually increase the number of people in the

1188
01:01:33,000 --> 01:01:37,280
Speaker 1: country who are addicted by some significant percentage. I don't

1189
01:01:37,280 --> 01:01:39,840
Speaker 1: think it's at the level that our opponents fear, you know,

1190
01:01:39,880 --> 01:01:41,520
Speaker 1: the sort of settlement go more of the you know,

1191
01:01:41,600 --> 01:01:44,880
Speaker 1: the skies falling. But I do think it's it's problematic.

1192
01:01:44,920 --> 01:01:47,600
Speaker 1: Look what's happened with food, you know, with with you know,

1193
01:01:47,800 --> 01:01:50,960
Speaker 1: powerful corporations, you know, combining sugar, fat, salt into all

1194
01:01:51,000 --> 01:01:53,720
Speaker 1: these you know, types of you know, very attractive uh

1195
01:01:54,080 --> 01:01:56,600
Speaker 1: uh and not very healthy food products that and you

1196
01:01:56,640 --> 01:02:00,280
Speaker 1: have this extraordinary transformation, you know, an obese city in

1197
01:02:00,280 --> 01:02:04,240
Speaker 1: the human body and oh man, opioid McNuggets. Bring on

1198
01:02:04,320 --> 01:02:09,560
Speaker 1: the opioid McNuggets. Ean, Yeah, you know, I hear you

1199
01:02:09,600 --> 01:02:11,680
Speaker 1: know what I mean, But I mean that you hear

1200
01:02:11,800 --> 01:02:14,200
Speaker 1: me so and so you know that's the thing about

1201
01:02:14,240 --> 01:02:15,960
Speaker 1: how I mean, it's always seems to me the sixty

1202
01:02:16,000 --> 01:02:20,040
Speaker 1: four question of legalization debate is how do you get

1203
01:02:20,040 --> 01:02:23,080
Speaker 1: as many people who are currently engaged in the illicit

1204
01:02:23,120 --> 01:02:25,720
Speaker 1: market and the criminal market, how do you get them

1205
01:02:25,720 --> 01:02:28,840
Speaker 1: to shift into a legal supply situation as much as

1206
01:02:28,880 --> 01:02:32,960
Speaker 1: possible without making these substances much more broadly available to

1207
01:02:32,960 --> 01:02:36,800
Speaker 1: the broader society, including a people who you know, might

1208
01:02:37,120 --> 01:02:39,320
Speaker 1: because it's always a matter of a spectrum of degree.

1209
01:02:39,440 --> 01:02:41,160
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, it's true that if you really want

1210
01:02:41,160 --> 01:02:43,520
Speaker 1: to get these things today, you can, but lots of

1211
01:02:43,520 --> 01:02:47,440
Speaker 1: people aren't, just because they're illegal, or they're less available

1212
01:02:47,560 --> 01:02:50,440
Speaker 1: because you need a prescription or what have you. Right, sure,

1213
01:02:50,520 --> 01:02:53,160
Speaker 1: and don't you know, I mean, I think there's a

1214
01:02:53,200 --> 01:02:55,720
Speaker 1: whole bunch of possible outcomes of this, right and I

1215
01:02:56,320 --> 01:02:59,600
Speaker 1: roll back the tape and think, Um, the drug war

1216
01:02:59,760 --> 01:03:03,640
Speaker 1: is brought us really strong opioids, right, that's from the

1217
01:03:03,720 --> 01:03:06,720
Speaker 1: drug war. And in Canada, the first drug arrest was

1218
01:03:06,760 --> 01:03:10,160
Speaker 1: in and it was for opium. And that's what people

1219
01:03:10,240 --> 01:03:12,720
Speaker 1: used to do is smoke opium. And as they've been

1220
01:03:12,800 --> 01:03:15,480
Speaker 1: arresting and chasing drug users for all the you know,

1221
01:03:15,600 --> 01:03:19,200
Speaker 1: hundred and fourteen years or whatever since then, Um, they've

1222
01:03:19,240 --> 01:03:22,160
Speaker 1: just created this arms race of stronger and stronger and

1223
01:03:22,240 --> 01:03:24,600
Speaker 1: stronger drugs. So the very first thing we have to

1224
01:03:24,640 --> 01:03:26,760
Speaker 1: do is stop the arms race or we're gonna have

1225
01:03:26,920 --> 01:03:30,200
Speaker 1: like space astro dope any moment, now, you know what

1226
01:03:30,240 --> 01:03:32,720
Speaker 1: I mean. It won't stop here, It'll keep going and going.

1227
01:03:32,720 --> 01:03:37,240
Speaker 1: So it's like we're now in a trade off of harms, right.

1228
01:03:37,280 --> 01:03:40,720
Speaker 1: So like we have to organize ourselves so that we

1229
01:03:40,960 --> 01:03:44,680
Speaker 1: stopped giving the police this excuse to inflate their budgets,

1230
01:03:44,680 --> 01:03:48,480
Speaker 1: get this paramilitary equipment going occupy black neighborhoods all over

1231
01:03:48,520 --> 01:03:51,840
Speaker 1: North America and all that, and we have to stop

1232
01:03:51,880 --> 01:03:55,920
Speaker 1: the escalation of the potency and the body count. So

1233
01:03:56,520 --> 01:03:58,600
Speaker 1: what do we get in trade of that? Do do

1234
01:03:58,640 --> 01:04:01,640
Speaker 1: we get more people wired? I don't know. We're getting

1235
01:04:01,640 --> 01:04:04,520
Speaker 1: more people wired right now with the illegal market because

1236
01:04:04,560 --> 01:04:07,480
Speaker 1: something that we're doing in our society, something about how

1237
01:04:07,480 --> 01:04:12,680
Speaker 1: we're organizing this late stage capitalist apocalypse, is really alienating

1238
01:04:12,720 --> 01:04:15,120
Speaker 1: and traumatizing to people. And a lot of people find

1239
01:04:15,120 --> 01:04:18,440
Speaker 1: a little solace in opioid. So if we're really worried

1240
01:04:18,520 --> 01:04:21,720
Speaker 1: about not getting more people wired, then we're gonna have

1241
01:04:21,760 --> 01:04:24,480
Speaker 1: to start thinking about what is driving it to begin with.

1242
01:04:24,720 --> 01:04:27,000
Speaker 1: I'm not just talking about weekend Warrior stuff. I'm talking

1243
01:04:27,000 --> 01:04:29,160
Speaker 1: about what's at the roop of it. Gotta have to

1244
01:04:29,200 --> 01:04:32,680
Speaker 1: stop traumatizing people. Gonna have to stop asking people to

1245
01:04:32,800 --> 01:04:36,640
Speaker 1: do these herculean efforts to just survive, to work three jobs,

1246
01:04:36,720 --> 01:04:38,920
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah. You know, like we're gonna have

1247
01:04:39,040 --> 01:04:42,440
Speaker 1: to make a nicer society, because otherwise, how can you

1248
01:04:42,480 --> 01:04:46,800
Speaker 1: blame people for finding that little warm hug that is opioids.

1249
01:04:46,840 --> 01:04:50,040
Speaker 1: Of course it makes sense, you know, or using methamphetamine

1250
01:04:50,080 --> 01:04:53,680
Speaker 1: to keep up with the pace of maybe their workplace

1251
01:04:53,760 --> 01:04:57,720
Speaker 1: or whatever. Hey, Garth, let me switch subjects for a second,

1252
01:04:57,760 --> 01:05:00,480
Speaker 1: you know, just to give our audience a greater sense

1253
01:05:00,560 --> 01:05:04,760
Speaker 1: of van do and the drug user union and and

1254
01:05:04,880 --> 01:05:08,400
Speaker 1: the feeling of it and what sort of community it provides.

1255
01:05:08,520 --> 01:05:12,200
Speaker 1: I mean, they're obviously central to your doing your podcast Crackdown,

1256
01:05:12,240 --> 01:05:14,040
Speaker 1: you know, helping produce it and to come up with

1257
01:05:14,080 --> 01:05:16,880
Speaker 1: ideas and and all this sort of stuff. But you know,

1258
01:05:16,920 --> 01:05:18,680
Speaker 1: I think for for a lot of people listening to

1259
01:05:18,680 --> 01:05:21,520
Speaker 1: the Wonders. So when you talk about you know, drug

1260
01:05:21,640 --> 01:05:24,480
Speaker 1: users hanging out, when you talk about this union, I mean,

1261
01:05:24,520 --> 01:05:27,720
Speaker 1: obviously there's an advocacy element, but when you go to

1262
01:05:27,880 --> 01:05:31,640
Speaker 1: a gathering Van dou gathering, are people like you know

1263
01:05:31,880 --> 01:05:34,280
Speaker 1: it worked up about what's going on with Russia and

1264
01:05:34,360 --> 01:05:36,400
Speaker 1: Ukraine right now as you would see any place else

1265
01:05:36,400 --> 01:05:38,640
Speaker 1: in society, or they more caught up in their own

1266
01:05:38,960 --> 01:05:43,040
Speaker 1: lives around this scene. No. I mean yesterday I was

1267
01:05:43,120 --> 01:05:47,440
Speaker 1: in a meeting of the British Columbia Association people on methodone.

1268
01:05:47,840 --> 01:05:51,560
Speaker 1: I'm on the board of that, and we did talk

1269
01:05:51,720 --> 01:05:55,960
Speaker 1: actually about Ukraine, you know, and and Russia, and the

1270
01:05:56,000 --> 01:05:59,880
Speaker 1: president of the group was just like, no good things

1271
01:05:59,880 --> 01:06:03,040
Speaker 1: to say about Putin, you know, and uh, don't get

1272
01:06:03,080 --> 01:06:06,160
Speaker 1: me wrong, it is a war. And we we have

1273
01:06:06,280 --> 01:06:10,360
Speaker 1: this storefront space on East Hasting Street here that's got

1274
01:06:10,560 --> 01:06:12,520
Speaker 1: you know, a big room where we hold meetings and

1275
01:06:12,560 --> 01:06:15,200
Speaker 1: a few side offices where we can old board meetings

1276
01:06:15,320 --> 01:06:18,160
Speaker 1: or do work on the computer. There's a safe injection

1277
01:06:18,240 --> 01:06:21,400
Speaker 1: room in the back. And all over the walls are

1278
01:06:21,440 --> 01:06:24,000
Speaker 1: pictures of our dead members. And it's just like the

1279
01:06:24,040 --> 01:06:27,200
Speaker 1: walls are full of more pictures than you can ever imagine,

1280
01:06:27,360 --> 01:06:29,800
Speaker 1: because I mean, if you're if you're a VAN new member,

1281
01:06:29,840 --> 01:06:32,920
Speaker 1: you're a member forever, Like after you die whatever, you

1282
01:06:33,240 --> 01:06:38,160
Speaker 1: will never forget you. So there is constant death all

1283
01:06:38,200 --> 01:06:42,760
Speaker 1: around us. The building is crowded with ghosts. So we

1284
01:06:42,840 --> 01:06:46,560
Speaker 1: try to organize the next piece of advocacy, the next campaign,

1285
01:06:46,760 --> 01:06:49,040
Speaker 1: do the next civil disobedience, have the next meeting with

1286
01:06:49,080 --> 01:06:51,760
Speaker 1: some government officials to try and gently lobby them on

1287
01:06:51,800 --> 01:06:56,440
Speaker 1: a small reform um. With all this in the background,

1288
01:06:57,000 --> 01:07:00,680
Speaker 1: and people still have space to think about the odder world,

1289
01:07:00,720 --> 01:07:02,560
Speaker 1: you know, the threats of war, the threats of the

1290
01:07:02,560 --> 01:07:05,560
Speaker 1: far right. You know, Canada just had this terrible uh

1291
01:07:05,880 --> 01:07:09,040
Speaker 1: month of a convoy of people on the very far

1292
01:07:09,160 --> 01:07:12,680
Speaker 1: right driving across the country pretending to be truckers and

1293
01:07:12,720 --> 01:07:15,280
Speaker 1: all this stuff about vaccines and everything, and so we

1294
01:07:15,400 --> 01:07:17,360
Speaker 1: felt that a lot, because I mean, we're into harm reduction,

1295
01:07:17,400 --> 01:07:20,320
Speaker 1: we're into public health, so we know all of that's bullshit.

1296
01:07:20,400 --> 01:07:22,680
Speaker 1: You know, we we know COVID is real, and we

1297
01:07:22,760 --> 01:07:25,400
Speaker 1: want the vaccines and we we want to take care

1298
01:07:25,400 --> 01:07:28,160
Speaker 1: of each other. That way, we know we're more vulnerable,

1299
01:07:28,160 --> 01:07:29,600
Speaker 1: so we keep we keep an eye on all that

1300
01:07:29,600 --> 01:07:31,400
Speaker 1: stuff because we know the rest of the world affects

1301
01:07:31,440 --> 01:07:33,920
Speaker 1: us too. You know, I'm curious you mentioned van Do,

1302
01:07:34,200 --> 01:07:37,040
Speaker 1: the drug Users group that a Livingston and but Osborne started,

1303
01:07:37,080 --> 01:07:39,320
Speaker 1: you know, almost twenty five years ago. You've mentioned the

1304
01:07:39,400 --> 01:07:42,800
Speaker 1: Drug Users Liberation Front, which is doing civil disobedience around

1305
01:07:43,000 --> 01:07:46,360
Speaker 1: safe supply and making drugs available through a compassion club model.

1306
01:07:46,640 --> 01:07:50,920
Speaker 1: You also mentioned a group of Methodon activists and I'm curious,

1307
01:07:51,160 --> 01:07:54,360
Speaker 1: how does the method and activists relate to the other

1308
01:07:54,440 --> 01:07:57,000
Speaker 1: two And are the group of the Methron activists people

1309
01:07:57,040 --> 01:07:59,880
Speaker 1: who are mostly using method on and still listen to DRU.

1310
01:08:00,560 --> 01:08:02,680
Speaker 1: Are there people on Methodon who just need to keep

1311
01:08:02,840 --> 01:08:05,960
Speaker 1: arms length from the people are actively involved with the

1312
01:08:05,960 --> 01:08:08,439
Speaker 1: illicit drug use just in order to you know, keep

1313
01:08:08,440 --> 01:08:11,480
Speaker 1: it straight um or are they fully engaged in supporting

1314
01:08:11,520 --> 01:08:13,680
Speaker 1: the uh you know, the objectives of VANDU and the

1315
01:08:13,760 --> 01:08:17,040
Speaker 1: Drug Users Liberation people in the Methodone group span it all.

1316
01:08:17,080 --> 01:08:19,479
Speaker 1: You know, So there's people who are just on methodone.

1317
01:08:19,479 --> 01:08:21,639
Speaker 1: There's people who are still using. There's people who are

1318
01:08:21,640 --> 01:08:23,680
Speaker 1: on some box zone and all the other kinds of

1319
01:08:23,720 --> 01:08:26,679
Speaker 1: things that you can get prescribed. And you know, people

1320
01:08:26,920 --> 01:08:29,960
Speaker 1: make an effort to not use in sight of people

1321
01:08:30,080 --> 01:08:32,439
Speaker 1: in that group. You know, they try to be careful,

1322
01:08:32,600 --> 01:08:35,400
Speaker 1: and you know, if someone's trying really hard not to use,

1323
01:08:35,479 --> 01:08:37,640
Speaker 1: not to not put that sort of thing in in

1324
01:08:37,720 --> 01:08:41,040
Speaker 1: someone's face. So, but we're all part of VANDOU, right,

1325
01:08:41,120 --> 01:08:43,720
Speaker 1: Like all of these people we meet in the in

1326
01:08:43,760 --> 01:08:47,000
Speaker 1: the VANDU space were members of the Drug User Union.

1327
01:08:47,320 --> 01:08:49,479
Speaker 1: We're all part of the same movement. So um, we

1328
01:08:49,640 --> 01:08:51,719
Speaker 1: broadly share the same goals. It's just that the world

1329
01:08:51,760 --> 01:08:54,200
Speaker 1: of method and you get so wrapped in all the

1330
01:08:54,280 --> 01:08:56,559
Speaker 1: rules and regulations. It's like you need to break off

1331
01:08:56,600 --> 01:08:59,320
Speaker 1: the conversation to have a separate chat about it in

1332
01:08:59,360 --> 01:09:02,240
Speaker 1: a separate group, you know. Yeah, So Garth, in your

1333
01:09:02,280 --> 01:09:04,040
Speaker 1: own life, I heard you mentioned someplace that you we've

1334
01:09:04,120 --> 01:09:07,240
Speaker 1: gone back and you're working on a PhD. Now that's right, Yeah,

1335
01:09:07,080 --> 01:09:09,400
Speaker 1: University of we're just Glumbia. Do you have a subject?

1336
01:09:09,479 --> 01:09:12,160
Speaker 1: What's it? What is it? It's an interdisciplinary of journalism

1337
01:09:12,160 --> 01:09:14,920
Speaker 1: and public health. And you have a dissertation. I'm just

1338
01:09:15,080 --> 01:09:18,200
Speaker 1: into that phase now, so I'm about halfway through. And

1339
01:09:18,240 --> 01:09:20,519
Speaker 1: will it be a drug theme, you think, yes, yeah,

1340
01:09:20,520 --> 01:09:23,640
Speaker 1: it's it's uh, it's something on the something on the

1341
01:09:23,680 --> 01:09:27,640
Speaker 1: overdose crisis, you know, and how we represent ourselves and

1342
01:09:27,680 --> 01:09:32,400
Speaker 1: tell stories and form partnerships on on journalistic enterprises. Yeah. No,

1343
01:09:32,560 --> 01:09:34,320
Speaker 1: I heard you make a comment somewhere one of the

1344
01:09:34,320 --> 01:09:36,240
Speaker 1: things I was listening to about you actually have a

1345
01:09:36,280 --> 01:09:38,439
Speaker 1: lot of respect to the academics. You just wish there's

1346
01:09:38,439 --> 01:09:43,960
Speaker 1: stuff more, you know, like the the the literature and

1347
01:09:44,000 --> 01:09:46,800
Speaker 1: the studies and the research around harm reduction and drug

1348
01:09:46,880 --> 01:09:51,000
Speaker 1: use is phenomenal. It's like liberating. There's there's great information

1349
01:09:51,040 --> 01:09:55,800
Speaker 1: in there. Um, you know, social theory, writing on policing,

1350
01:09:55,840 --> 01:09:57,920
Speaker 1: all that stuff is fantastic. It's just so much of

1351
01:09:57,920 --> 01:10:02,400
Speaker 1: it as written, so dent Uh you know that you

1352
01:10:02,400 --> 01:10:04,400
Speaker 1: need I guess you need people to get on the

1353
01:10:04,439 --> 01:10:06,840
Speaker 1: mic and popularize that. And maybe that's part of what

1354
01:10:06,920 --> 01:10:10,400
Speaker 1: my job is. But uh, I sometimes wish that academic

1355
01:10:10,439 --> 01:10:13,040
Speaker 1: writing style hadn't been so embedded into people and you

1356
01:10:13,040 --> 01:10:15,880
Speaker 1: could just talk like a human instead of a weird Uh.

1357
01:10:15,920 --> 01:10:19,080
Speaker 1: These sentences that are a half page long and sixteen clauses.

1358
01:10:19,080 --> 01:10:21,559
Speaker 1: You know, well, let me just thank you. I mean,

1359
01:10:21,600 --> 01:10:23,840
Speaker 1: I wanted to first congratulate you for having you know,

1360
01:10:24,000 --> 01:10:26,680
Speaker 1: you know, launched this podcast with your colleagues in Vancouver,

1361
01:10:26,880 --> 01:10:29,680
Speaker 1: and for your activism and the great work you're doing

1362
01:10:29,720 --> 01:10:32,320
Speaker 1: and the impact you're having, and uh and thank you

1363
01:10:32,360 --> 01:10:35,439
Speaker 1: for taking the time to uh you know, spends a

1364
01:10:35,439 --> 01:10:38,479
Speaker 1: few hours. Moving on, thank you for having me and

1365
01:10:38,640 --> 01:10:42,240
Speaker 1: congrats on the podcast, and thank you for talking to

1366
01:10:42,400 --> 01:10:45,320
Speaker 1: our mayor like twenty or twenty five years ago or

1367
01:10:45,320 --> 01:10:47,160
Speaker 1: whatever it is that you met him at that conference,

1368
01:10:47,200 --> 01:10:49,240
Speaker 1: because I'll bet you that help. I'll bet you there's

1369
01:10:49,280 --> 01:10:52,200
Speaker 1: people people who are around today. I think I know

1370
01:10:52,280 --> 01:10:55,200
Speaker 1: some of them because of the changes in policy that

1371
01:10:55,760 --> 01:11:00,000
Speaker 1: conversations like the one you had with Philip Owen helped create.

1372
01:11:00,240 --> 01:11:03,280
Speaker 1: And and also just thank you for your career in

1373
01:11:03,479 --> 01:11:11,479
Speaker 1: organizing on this stuff. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please tell

1374
01:11:11,520 --> 01:11:13,600
Speaker 1: your friends about it, or you can write us a

1375
01:11:13,600 --> 01:11:16,720
Speaker 1: review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

1376
01:11:17,080 --> 01:11:19,519
Speaker 1: We love to hear from our listeners. If you'd like

1377
01:11:19,640 --> 01:11:22,519
Speaker 1: to share your own stories, comments and ideas, then leave

1378
01:11:22,600 --> 01:11:26,479
Speaker 1: us a message at one eight three, three, seven, seven

1379
01:11:26,600 --> 01:11:32,519
Speaker 1: nine sixty that's eight three three psycho zero, or you

1380
01:11:32,560 --> 01:11:36,200
Speaker 1: can email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com or

1381
01:11:36,240 --> 01:11:39,160
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at Ethan natal Man. You can

1382
01:11:39,200 --> 01:11:43,400
Speaker 1: also find contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive is

1383
01:11:43,400 --> 01:11:46,920
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's

1384
01:11:46,960 --> 01:11:51,000
Speaker 1: hosted by me Ethan Nadelman. It's produced by Noham Osband

1385
01:11:51,080 --> 01:11:55,439
Speaker 1: and Josh Stain. The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel,

1386
01:11:55,600 --> 01:11:59,839
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronovsky from Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams

1387
01:11:59,840 --> 01:12:03,080
Speaker 1: and At Frederick from My Heart Radio and me Ethan Edelman.

1388
01:12:03,520 --> 01:12:07,320
Speaker 1: Our music is by Ari Blucien and a special thanks

1389
01:12:07,360 --> 01:12:24,320
Speaker 1: to a bio Sef Bianca Grimshaw and Robert BB. Next

1390
01:12:24,360 --> 01:12:27,479
Speaker 1: week I'll be talking with Gould Dolan, the neuroscientists at

1391
01:12:27,560 --> 01:12:30,519
Speaker 1: John's Hawkins who's been administering M d M A and

1392
01:12:30,520 --> 01:12:36,000
Speaker 1: other psychedelics to octopuses and mice with fascinating results. So

1393
01:12:36,280 --> 01:12:40,880
Speaker 1: we decided that we wanted to understand Sarah Tonin by

1394
01:12:40,920 --> 01:12:43,680
Speaker 1: looking at an octopus. If you put two octopuses in

1395
01:12:43,720 --> 01:12:46,840
Speaker 1: a tank together, they will kill each other. And so

1396
01:12:47,479 --> 01:12:50,360
Speaker 1: M d M A has this very powerful ability to

1397
01:12:50,479 --> 01:12:54,679
Speaker 1: override that and make them desire social interaction and spend

1398
01:12:54,680 --> 01:12:58,160
Speaker 1: more time with the other animal. Subscribe to Psychoactive now,

1399
01:12:58,280 --> 01:12:59,080
Speaker 1: see it, don't miss it.