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D.A.R.E to resist police propaganda about fentanyl
154 Plays3 years ago
Drug policy researcher Hilary Agro joins us to dissect the Edmonton Police's reaction to the revelation that a huge portion of their officers never carry Narcan, how the EPS spreads misinformation about fentanyl and the move by Toronto to decriminalize drug possession.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Funding Drive
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey folks, Duncan Kinney here to remind you that the Progress Report is a proud member of the Harbinger network. And a pod on the network that I want to highlight is the latest from a new podcast on the network called Darts and Letters. Host Gordon Kaddich has multiple guests on this latest pod that I want to talk about, even including our own guests today, the incredible Hilary Agro. And this latest pod is nailing down who exactly Canada's dumbest public intellectual actually is. It's fantastic.
00:00:27
Speaker
Pod features not only Hillary, but multiple other fine folks are on the Harbinger Media Network, including Andre Goulet, the founder of it. And also, now that it is officially December, we are officially in funding drive season.
The Role of Podcasting and Call for Support
00:00:40
Speaker
And as weird as it is to say, podcasting is my job. I mean, it's not my whole job. I have a bunch of other bullshit I do, as well as, you know, the original investigative journalism that you can't find anywhere else on, you know, theprogressreport.ca. But podcasting
00:00:55
Speaker
is a regular part of my work and it's really kind of weird to think about. Thousands of people download this podcast and like it and hopefully get something out of it. And if you are one of those people, I need to ask you for something. I need you to become a recurring donor. Five, 10, $20 a month, whatever you can afford. We absolutely cannot do this work without your help and it's really easy. There is a link in the show notes and you could just go to theprogressreport.ca slash patrons.
00:01:22
Speaker
That's it for the funding drive ass this week, but I'm just gonna keep asking all December. So if you just wanna bust over this part for the next few weeks, just donate now and then you don't have to worry about it. Now, onto the show.
Guest Introduction: Hilary Agro on Drug Policy
00:01:47
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney. We're recording today here in Amiscuochi, Wisconsin, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta, here in Treaty 6 territory on the banks of the Cassis-Cassau, Mississippi, or the North Saskatchewan River. Joining us today is Hilary Agro, a drug use and policy researcher and a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia, as well as a content creator extraordinaire. Hilary, welcome to The Progress Report. Thank you. All kinds. Lovely to be here.
00:02:16
Speaker
I am very pleased to have you here. So we did reach out to you for a piece we wrote recently.
Study on Narcan Usage Among Edmonton Police
00:02:22
Speaker
They kicked up a bit of controversy here in Edmonton about how a recent academic study showed that 76% of Edmonton cops don't carry Narcan. You remember this? Yep, sure do.
00:02:37
Speaker
That number really was quite high. When I saw the report, I was like, wow. What were your thoughts when I initially alerted you to the existence of this academic study from University of Alberta and McMaster academics?
00:02:55
Speaker
I was disappointed but not surprised. The classic response to bad news. You can apply that to basically anything cops do and that's going to be the answer. But it's frustrating because
00:03:14
Speaker
those of us in drug policy and people who use drugs, we know that cops don't view people who use criminalized drugs as fully human, that they're not interested in reviving us. On the whole, obviously, we don't want to generalize, not all cops, but as an institution, their role is not to protect and serve and save lives, it's order and control.
00:03:40
Speaker
and maintaining the power of the state. So the idea that 76% of Edmonton cops are aware that they could carry a life-saving medicine that could save dozens to hundreds of lives a year, and they choose not to because of whose lives they would be potentially saving is, yeah, not surprising, but it is enraging.
00:04:07
Speaker
So we will link to that story in the show notes. Within that story is the link to the academic study itself. And I do encourage you to
Comparative Study: Narcan Carriage in Edmonton vs Calgary
00:04:14
Speaker
read it. It's very digestible. It's like eight pages, like seven pages of actual content with like the eight pages for the bibliography and the references. Like it is a very straight ahead piece of academic work that's well written, easy to understand. And they actually talk to cops. Like, what can you say? Like,
00:04:32
Speaker
Like they actually did the work and talked to frontline cops in both Edmonton and Calgary. And like the other wild part of that too is just, is how big the disparity was between Edmonton and Calgary cops where it's like 76% of Edmonton cops never carry Narcan. Whereas 28% of Edmonton cops never carry Narcan or sorry, Calgary cops never carry Narcan. And it was just like this huge disparity in just like awareness and like how many Calgary cops carried Narcan versus Edmonton cops in this survey. Like it was, it was wild.
00:05:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's, uh, it's significant. Um, we should like, we should be just able to talk about, you know, Oh, if there's like 20 something percent of cops, like that should be the focus because that's still way too many, but yeah, 76% is just, that's not acceptable. And, and this story caused a bit of reaction from the Edmonton police service who, uh, you know, unfortunately did not make carrying Narcan mandatory for friendly cops. They did not institute or start up a,
00:05:31
Speaker
service-wide education efforts in order to educate cops about the opioid poisoning crisis and why they need to carry Narcan.
Critique of EPS's Narcan Policy and Excuses
00:05:39
Speaker
No, instead, they published a page called Police Use of Naloxone in order to deal with the backlash that they were getting. I think it's worth doing a bit of commentary on this spin that they've put out.
00:05:56
Speaker
And I'm just going to quote from it, and I'm just going to get your reaction, Hilary. A report, and it links, I think, to the abstract that you would have to pay for, like the science direct abstract. And this isn't a report, let's be honest. This was an academic piece of work, an academic study. Yeah, this is a study. It's like a peer-reviewed publish, yeah.
00:06:20
Speaker
A report issued by the University of Alberta and McMaster University, sorry, I got to keep breaking in here, about Naloxone has caused concern among residents that Edmonton Police Service officers are choosing not to administer the life-saving medication. The report is based on interviews conducted with EPS and Calgary Police Service officers between 2018 and 2019.
00:06:42
Speaker
So just to break in here, this page originally said that the interviews happened in 2017, which was incorrect and they changed it. They corrected it eventually, but they didn't make any note that the error originally existed. I'll get back to it.
00:06:58
Speaker
EPS officers regularly administer naloxone and save lives across the city. All shift supervisors carry naloxone kits and all divisional stations and holding sales have kits on hand. Holding sales also have an onsite paramedic in the event a detained person experiences an overdose after they have been taken into custody.
00:07:16
Speaker
Because naloxone is temperature sensitive, not all officers carry it as it can be difficult to maintain a consistent temperature during a long shift on the street. The EPS does not currently have enough naloxone kits to supply every officer with a kit. However, more officers are choosing to carry naloxone kits during their shifts, particularly in areas where police regularly encounter opioid use.
00:07:37
Speaker
In addition, naloxone, all EPS market vehicles are equipped with bag of masks, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyways, that's it. So let's get into it, Hillary. Do you buy this like, this 10-figure sensitive, not all officers can carry the line that they have here?
00:07:55
Speaker
No, it's
Debunking EPS's Narcan Excuses
00:07:56
Speaker
like it's a literal lie. It's bullshit. Like, yeah. OK, you shouldn't like leave it lying out in the sun, you know, or like in your car. Yeah. But I myself carried naloxone during long shifts on the street, administering naloxone to people and like and doing, you know, street outreach work.
00:08:19
Speaker
everybody who does street outreach work does it. You can carry it at, you know, people bring it to to raves. People bring it anywhere and everywhere. People brought it to Burning Man and it's that is in the desert. It doesn't like stop working. It gets cold here. It gets cold in Edmonton and Edmonton is special. Yeah. And what is cold temperatures usually do to medication? It prolongs the shelf life.
00:08:42
Speaker
I can't, I don't actually know whether or not that applies to naloxone, but generally in my experience and knowledge, putting medications in cold temperatures does not, does not ruin them. Um, I mean, my understanding of this is that like you, you don't want to, you don't want it to freeze all the way through. Like you don't leave it overnight in subzero temperatures. That would be bad for the, for the drug itself. Sure. But in the, but in the context of like a police officer on a 12 hour shift,
00:09:08
Speaker
Well, one, you're in your car most of the fucking time. And so if it's on your person, you're fine.
00:09:15
Speaker
I don't know very many beat cops that are doing 12-hour shifts outside. Just outside, yeah. And the amount that would be doing that is not enough to make this acceptable. Even on the off chance that that were to happen, carry it anyway, just in case. Maybe it'll work. If 100% of them carried it and then maybe 2% of it went bad, that's still a hell of a lot better than what we're working with right now. So no, it's just a cop-out.
00:09:44
Speaker
And the point that they make about holding cells having kits on hand, I mean, I would have loved that information for when I wrote the story because like the inciting incident of me writing that story where I was eventually tracked down that study was an overdose in a police holding cell.
00:09:59
Speaker
And so three times in the past year, there have been suspected opioid overdose deaths or opioid poisoning deaths in an EPS holding cell. And it's like, you're saying they have naloxone. But then like, I go back and read the tape of this, this incident from 2018. And Acer, to the kind of police watchdog out here, they did this very thorough report where they like went through all this footage and they detailed all of the medical interventions that happened to this guy. And the word naloxone in our kind isn't mentioned once in that report.
00:10:28
Speaker
And so the reality, like the on the ground reality is not obviously being reflected in this kind of like spin that's being put up.
EPS's Fear-Mongering Tactics on Fentanyl
00:10:38
Speaker
No. And even just the fact that they say, oh, the EPS does not currently have enough naloxone kits to supply every officer with a kit. How much money?
00:10:46
Speaker
What do you people have? Don't act like it's a supply issue. You could just buy naloxone kits. That's not an excuse. We just don't have any. Well, why don't you use some of your millions and millions of dollars of public funding and spend some money on things that would protect the public?
00:11:04
Speaker
Like, I'm sure they have enough money for body armor and all that bullshit, but they don't have enough money to carry a life-saving medication. It's completely ridiculous. And the idea that it's, you know, they're like, don't worry. More and more officers are choosing to carry naloxone kits during their shift. It shouldn't be a choice. It should be mandatory because there's just absolutely no reason not to.
00:11:28
Speaker
Yes. The academic study has policy recommendations in it. And policy recommendation number one is make naloxone or Narcan mandatory for all frontline cops. And it's not hard. The government, the police have a massive budget. You're absolutely fucking correct. And EPS has, I think it's between 380 or $400 million a year, somewhere around there. You can find the money for Narcan and the fucking couch cushions.
00:11:57
Speaker
on the EPS budget, right? Exactly. But they don't want to. They don't want to force their officers to do anything, let alone something that is going to save the lives of the very people that they have no respect for and nothing but disdain for. That's what cops do. They arrest drug users. They don't save our lives.
00:12:14
Speaker
And so this response was like, you know, your, your typical kind of like very defensive, never back down, you know, we're working on it. Trust us stuff where it's like the solution is right there. My guy, like make it mandatory for all frontline cops, like find them the lock zone. Like, uh, in, uh, Edmonton was home to a, like a one and a half, sometimes some couple million dollar, um,
00:12:37
Speaker
pilot over the summer, which was nasal Narcan. And I know that EPS has access to nasal Narcan and they specifically requested it because, you know, it's easier to use. It's not as scary. You don't have to work with a needle and a, and a vial. Right. And, uh, again, if you want to find the money for nasal Narcan for every single frontline cop, it's there and it would save lives.
00:13:00
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. No, they just, they just don't want to, they don't want to hear it. They don't want the pressure. They just want to put out enough PR spins so that, you know, people will get off their backs and we should not. Another, another thing that was discovered in this, um, uh, McMaster university and university of Alberta study was that a certain small percentage of frontline cops that were surveyed have
00:13:27
Speaker
inaccurate, let's be generous and call it inaccurate, but they're just wrong views on the toxicity and dangerousness of opioids like fentanyl in their solid form. Oh yeah, this is one of my favorite topics. This is another area where it's, I mean, it's an interesting, you know, it's interesting to try to pinpoint what the line is between like outright lying
00:13:54
Speaker
and bullshitting and fear-mongering because they actually believe this. It's a very blurry line. I think that sometimes these outfits, they convince themselves that their lies are true. And so, yeah, but anyways. Are they convinced themselves that they've overdosed on fentanyl somehow? Yeah, I mean, anxiety attacks are real, but overdosing on fentanyl through your skin is not.
00:14:24
Speaker
Yeah, so while the EPS did put out this new website, trying to educate people about how the police uses and what its relationship with Narcan is, there is still a web page on the EPS's website titled Drug Safety, which repeats some ridiculous myths.
00:14:45
Speaker
about fentanyl and let's get into it. I'm just going to quote directly from the page. We'll link to it in the show notes. It's still live. They still haven't updated it. I've linked to it in my reporting. I've discussed it in my reporting and on social media. For whatever reason, they still leave this shit up there. Quote, touching or ingesting even a small amount of pure fentanyl can render a person unconscious and in need of a medical attention. It's just, it's just, oh my God, it's bullshit. It's literally not medically possible.
00:15:16
Speaker
Ingesting yes, but touching no. Yeah. Ingesting yes. Like if you're injecting it or starting it, yes. If you're just touching it, no. But here's, here's the quote from Guy Pilon with the EPS Dragon Gang section. All it takes is the equivalent of three grains of salt on your skin or tongue to cause respiratory distress.
00:15:32
Speaker
How dare this man? Honestly, it's really clever of them to just say things like, yeah, just three grains of salt on your skin or tongue, because people will focus on the three grains of salt and how absurdly small that is and dangerous that is, and completely gloss over the fact that skin and tongue are different roots of administration. And one of those things does not absorb fentanyl. It just doesn't. You can't say that.
00:16:01
Speaker
And it's a big difference because sure cops may be coming into physical contact with Fentanyl like not as often as they would claim but in terms of like their physical skin like there's an offhand chance and that's what they argue you know they can't they don't want to revive people from overdoses on the off chance that they touch Fentanyl and so that's why they just let people die but
00:16:22
Speaker
It can't go through your skin. That's not possible. That's not how it works. You could hold fentanyl in your hand. You can hold a big pile of it and nothing's going to happen. If it's on your tongue, that's a different story because then you're ingesting it orally. But why is it on their tongue in the first place?
00:16:37
Speaker
I didn't get there. Just try to taste it. So this page is undated, but there is a clue in the next paragraph about when it possibly was published, which is very funny. So, quote, in its legal prescription form, fentanyl is a powerful painkiller. The street version, which goes under various names, including Apache, China Girl, and Dance Fever, was responsible for 100 deaths in Alberta in 2014. People really go to their dealers and ask for Dance Fever.
00:17:05
Speaker
Yeah, so the drug names are fucking hilarious and are clearly not the drug names. I mean, even if they were ever real, they're definitely not real now. Yeah. A hundred deaths in Alberta in 2014 seems fucking quaint to where we're at now. Yeah, that's pretty outdated. It's almost 2022. In 2020, we had, I think, more than 1,000, I think 1,000, almost 1,100. Yeah, that's some real selective choosing of stats.
00:17:33
Speaker
And so 10 times what happened, I mean, who knows when this page was originally published and why they don't take it down, but it's just like, it's like, come on, man, I've told you about this page. You can, you can get rid of it. Um, yeah. And it's, you know, it's, it's frustrating. You know, all this stuff about skin versus tongue and, and everything that they're, these myths that they're trying to perpetuate about fentanyl.
Impact of Fentanyl Myths on Drug Users
00:17:55
Speaker
about drug users as well, you know, it really gets into, and this is some stuff that I talk about in my actual academic research as an anthropologist, is it really gets into this, these sort of like wider issues of like moral scapegoating and moral panics, you know, they want people, they're appealing to people's effective nature, their emotional cores, you know, they're not trying to
00:18:19
Speaker
speak logically about these things. They want people to be afraid, because the more people are afraid and the more they other people who use criminalized drugs, the more those people are dehumanized. And thus, the more of a threat they can render them. And that allows them to keep their funding because they need to, you know, keep these dangerous, scary drug users under heel, it allows them to, you know, dehumanize in order to maintain racial hierarchies, because this stuff often, you know, goes along with racialization and
00:18:47
Speaker
of people of color and indigenous people. So it goes along with maintaining the state and colonialism. There are so many wider and broader structures that this kind of approach to making illegal drugs seem like almost magically powerful and scary.
00:19:08
Speaker
And it benefits those structures and it's the reason they're doing it. So it's, you know, yeah. That is the perfect segue into the last bit of bullshit from this, uh, drug safety page on the EPS website. So quote, it's 50 to a hundred times more potent than morphine and 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin. Pilots says that potency is why fentanyl is growing in popularity among drag addicts and why so many addicts end up overdosing.
00:19:34
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, just like they're going to the store, they're going to the store and they're like, I want the one that kills me, please. Yeah, I mean, it's yeah, I don't love their use of the word addicts as well. Like, that's also dehumanizing. But, you know, we're not going to get them to get on board with language. But but it's, you know, so I will say that
00:20:00
Speaker
It's not that they are completely wrong because some people who use opioids do actually intentionally seek out fentanyl because after so many years of fentanyl being in the supply, their tolerance has raised so much that for some people, not many, but for some people, fentanyl is the only thing that can keep them well.
00:20:24
Speaker
So it's not completely incorrect to say that some people are seeking it, but it's also an exaggeration. It's not why it's growing in popularity. It's because the supply is unsafe. Fentanyl has been in the supply for so long that people have by no choice of their own had their tolerance
00:20:41
Speaker
raised for them by, you know, just by a result of the supply being like that. And it's also, you know, once again, they they put the onus and the blame on, you know, drug addicts, like drug users themselves, as if it's not prohibition in the first place. That's the reason the fentanyl is in the drug supply. Like, it's not like a bunch of people who use opioids got together and were like, oh, shit, there's like more powerful stuff now. Let's get that. No, people want heroin. Like, that's what they want.
00:21:11
Speaker
And that's what they've always want because it's the opioid that feels good. And obviously not everybody wants the same opioids. Different things work for different people. But in general, people want stuff that is easier to dose. They want it to be regulated. They want it to be safe. But when you implement drug prohibition and make drugs illegal, there's this thing that happens.
00:21:29
Speaker
called the iron law of prohibition. And this has been studied and it happens over and over and over. It's when you ban a substance, you won't stop people from accessing that substance because you cannot stop people from accessing substances anywhere ever. We have drugs in prison, the most heavily guarded places on earth. People still use drugs there. However, when you prohibit a substance, all you do is
00:21:50
Speaker
is basically just a law of nature at this point the drug will still be sold except it will be extracted and reduced to its more potent form because of the physical accessibility of transporting it so when opium was made illegal heroin came about because it was more powerful and thus easier to transport larger quantities.
00:22:10
Speaker
when there's crackdowns on heroin suppliers, then fentanyl came about because yes, if it's 50 to 100 times more potent, then you can transport 50 to 100 times more product in the same amount of physical space when you're transporting it. So that's why these overdoses happen. That's why fentanyl is everywhere. It's because of prohibition, not because of drug users who just want a stronger high.
00:22:36
Speaker
I mean, yeah, we have a 90 year old example of the iron law of prohibition,
Media's Role in Amplifying Misinformation
00:22:42
Speaker
right? Which is that when temperance advocates brought in prohibition of alcohol, the popularity of fucking alcoholic spirits and distilled spirits skyrocketed because you only needed to move around a liter of gin as opposed to 20 liters of beer.
00:22:58
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what happens. Even when 20-year-olds are trying to sneak booze into a music festival or whatever, they bring hard liquor instead of buying expensive beer inside. You see this lot playing out everywhere.
00:23:17
Speaker
And so these myths are incredibly, these myths about fentanyl and opioids are incredibly prevalent amongst police, right? They are ubiquitous. And you find this in news stories, you know, earlier this year, there was the incredibly viral story of that like San Diego County Sheriff
00:23:41
Speaker
like flopping around like a fish because he thought he had touched a bit of fentanyl. Right. And there was, you know, people were on their hind legs calling it bullshit. But like this was only the kind of most recent example of this. And this happens. This has even happened here in Edmonton, where I am. I did some some some hardcore googling. Not really. I googled Edmonton police fentanyl exposure. And these were this was a story that popped up
00:24:11
Speaker
From March 27th, 2018, Edmonton cop recalls, quote, close call, unquote, exposure to fentanyl. Uh, I'm just going to read you it from the story. Cause it's funny. Uh, Edmonton police services, tactical officer, Scott Innes was driving away from a raid at a suspected drug house when he realized something was wrong. I started to overheat. I started to sweat. I felt my pulse rate was starting to increase. He told CTV Edmonton on Monday, I suddenly started to feel ill.
00:24:41
Speaker
Does that sound like fentanyl to you? Yeah, no. Generally, one of the things you worry about is your pulse rate doing the exact opposite. Yeah, that sounds like a stimulant overdose. Yeah, does that sound like fentanyl? I'll keep going. Yeah, or even just a panic attack.
00:25:00
Speaker
Even very, very likely a panic attack once you realize that you thought you touched something. Reading from the story, Innes was set to lead a group of officers into the home. Instead, he found himself outside patting down and searching a suspect with his bare hands.
00:25:13
Speaker
He had no idea the biggest threat he would encounter that day was the one he could not even see. Oh God, I hate whoever this journalist was. This is the thing I expect. You expect cops to lie because that's what they do. But why do the journalists have to be such like handmaidens for these assholes? Like it's just.
00:25:33
Speaker
Don't be a dupe, come on. The slightest amount of critical thinking or asking literally anybody with any expertise in the subject that is not employed by the police would be able to tell them that this, that, yeah, it's, oh, I get so frustrated. Don't be a dupe. If you're a journalist and you're talking about, I mean, I think we're largely free from it now. I mean, I think enough people have kind of laughed at that San Diego County Sheriff, like,
00:25:58
Speaker
being an idiot, but just in case, just be critical. We get back to the story. During that pat down search, I pulled various items from his pockets. I placed them on the bumper of my vehicle, and it was recalls four months later. It was just a momentary lapse in my judgment. Alone in southbound traffic on Wayne Gretzky Drive, he realized one of the powerful synthetic opiates that had become notorious for their lethal strength was taking hold. A colleague responded to his call for help, jumped into his truck, and rushed him to the nearest hospital.
00:26:27
Speaker
Medical staff needed to know what they were dealing with as soon as possible. A phone call to investigators prompted a field test of the items. Innes pulled out of the suspect's pockets. It tested for fentanyl right away, Innes said.
00:26:39
Speaker
And then we get your, of course, very now typical description of fentanyl. It is a powerful prescription painkiller, about 100 times more toxic than morphine. According to the RCMP, two milligrams of the uncut drug, about the size of four grains of salt is enough to kill the average adult. Unintentional contact through touching or inhaling can cause death. Again, the touching.
00:27:01
Speaker
Yeah, and it's interesting and clever the way that the person who wrote this strategically avoided consulting anybody with any medical knowledge. And didn't actually, you know, they talked about that all the medical staff needed to know what they were dealing with. So they looked at the suspect's pockets, said it tested for fentanyl, but no medical professional actually confirmed that this was an overdose that they were dealing with. And then it just ends and that's it.
00:27:30
Speaker
Like, yeah, like, yeah. And the actual like source that they say for this medical claim of, you know, how much is able to kill the average adult is the RCMP. Like, this is just, this is negligence. It's criminal negligence because this, this overdose crisis and prohibition is killing people. And if you're a journalist doing this kind of thing, then you are helping to maintain a system that is hurting people like fuck.
00:28:02
Speaker
Again, if you are a journalist, listen to this, or you know a journalist and you are writing about fentanyl and cops, cast a wary eye. Hillary will set you straight. Call any doctor, call a nurse, anybody.
00:28:19
Speaker
So this wasn't the only story, of course. This next one is from November 2017, and it's actually kind of hilarious in how much of a non-story it is. The headline is Fentanyl Contact by Two Edmonton Police Officer Exposes Dangers of Deadly Drug. It's just anthrax for, like, narcs.
00:28:41
Speaker
I'll quote from the story. The first fentanyl exposure happened to a member of the EPS's tactical section, Detective Guy Pilon, that guy again, with the Edmonton Police Drug and Gang Enforcement Unit, said the officer was
Fear Narratives and Conservative Agendas
00:28:54
Speaker
assisting with a search warrant when he came into contact with prepackaged powders that tested positive for fentanyl.
00:29:00
Speaker
In the second incident, police were responding to a drug overdose call when an officer was given a baggie with a quote, minuscule amount of powder unquote, that was believed to be fentanyl. In both cases, the officers were examined by medical staff and found to be unarmed.
00:29:14
Speaker
Well, then what are we doing here? Why is this a news story? Why is this a news story? Yeah, I mean, okay, so it's pretty funny. But I think that that's actually like a really important question to ask. Why is this a news story? And, you know, I kind of alluded to that before when I'm talking about like this, this effective fear mongering. But we also have to keep in mind the audience for these things. It's a conservative audience and what drives conservative views and clicks and engagement.
00:29:41
Speaker
It's fear like they have actually done studies on this that the conservative worldview is a fear driven worldview. And so the truth and veracity of these things doesn't really matter so much as appealing to this like very base effective, you know, this this fear drive that
00:30:01
Speaker
It stimulates, ironically, in the same way that drugs stimulate the brain and body. When you are afraid of something, it sets off centers of your brain that give you stimulation and adrenaline. And it's unfortunate that at this point there's these journalistic outlets basically know that and they know that
00:30:28
Speaker
When they're driven by the profit motive, all they need to do is make people afraid and they'll keep clicking back. The whole system kind of runs on itself because the more that they make people afraid, the more that people want the police to keep them safe from these dangerous evil drug users and these mystical, magical, powerful drugs.
00:30:48
Speaker
and everybody profits, and that's why in the end, I can't believe we've made it this far into this interview without me bringing it up, but it's capitalism, it's the profit motive. All of these journalistic outlets are not, I'm not saying all of them, but ones that do reporting this poor, this just shoddy, it's because in the end, they just care about keeping themselves employed and keeping the money flowing, and they know that this is how they will get money from people is keeping them afraid, so.
00:31:16
Speaker
That's why it's quote unquote news. Yeah. Why is this a news story? I mean, fundamentally, it's also important to note that like these myths increase stigma and, um, you know, make people less likely to help people who are overdose and are suffering from opioid poisoning. And like those people have a, it's a very simple to help them to get trained on Narcan does not take long to carry around a Narcan thing is very easy.
00:31:42
Speaker
And like to think that like, Oh, if I touch this, this, if I only touch two grains of sand or salt of this fucking drug, I will immediately fall over dead is like actually harmful to the project of like keeping people alive who are suffering from opioid poisoning. Very much so.
00:32:03
Speaker
So I don't have a good segue into this next one, but it was, it's on broadly speaking on the same subject and you know, it's from your neck of the woods as
Toronto's Move Toward Drug Decriminalization
00:32:12
Speaker
well. You're based in Hamilton, right? Uh, I'm from Hamilton. Uh, yeah. So, you know, represent, I love my hometown, but yeah, I, I live in Toronto now and hopefully we'll not be leaving until, you know, we're priced out by the housing market someday.
00:32:28
Speaker
But yes, Toronto through various MASH nations, which I don't understand because I don't presume to understand Ontario, provincial or Toronto municipal politics, but they have moved and started the application process to decriminalize possession of certain small amounts of drugs. Indeed. We're very excited. This is broadly speaking a good thing, right?
00:32:50
Speaker
Yes, yes, it's a very good thing. It's a step. It's not enough. But I, as a leftist, do not subscribe to the idea that we should not celebrate small victories, even if they're not everything that we want. Sorry, there's going to be a little bit of background noise. My baby is
00:33:12
Speaker
playing on the floor over there with my partner. But yeah, I think it's not that we want incremental reforms like this, but it doesn't mean that we can't celebrate them because a reform like this means lives could be saved. And certainly, you know, even though we're not going to get a handle on the actual overdose crisis until we're able to legalize and regulate, decriminalize, we'll waste fewer public resources on arresting people and putting them in jail, which is what we don't want.
00:33:43
Speaker
Yeah, I mean you kind of have just made a very brief positive case for drug decriminalization as well as the like, you know, it's not legalization. It's not safe supply. It's not free drugs for everyone who wants them, but less people will have
00:33:57
Speaker
negative interactions with cops if and when this eventually goes through, right? Exactly. We want that. Yeah. So it's great. And it also, even more than just decriminalizing drugs just within one locality, because Toronto is actually following Vancouver and there's a few places in the US now that are doing this as well.
00:34:18
Speaker
it creates a groundswell. It creates a movement. It allows other cities and especially other city council members who are all cowards and just want reelection and want to make sure that other people do the important work first before they're willing to risk their political lives on a reform. It allows them to look at this and say, hey, well, they're doing it. Maybe we could do it over here. It kind of gives people permission to think that, oh, yeah, we could actually change things and do things differently.
00:34:47
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I think it's important to just take a minute to talk about the process of what's happening here. So, you know, Vancouver and the province of British Columbia and now Toronto, which is, you know, pretty sizable portion of Canada's population. All three of these jurisdictions have applied for what's called a section 56 exemption. And this is under the control section 56 of the controlled substances and blah, blah, blah act.
00:35:13
Speaker
And essentially they're saying, hey, federal government, we know you have this stupid rule about possession of illegal drugs. Could you not enforce that rule in this location? And so any political, any level of government can ask for this, whether you're a municipality, whether you're a province, and those three jurisdictions have now made these requests. I believe Vancouver and BC got their requests in over the summer.
00:35:41
Speaker
June and July, I think, respectively. And then now we've got Toronto in November, I guess end of November. And yeah, it's fall pretty recent because I was actually, I was actually part of the, you know, sort of very group of people that was trying to get people to
00:35:57
Speaker
support Toronto's application to Health Canada. They did a public survey wanting people's public input on this, so I was helping to organize, making sure as many people as possible were filling out the survey in support of Decrim, and that was only just a couple months ago, and now it's moving forward, so it's really exciting.
00:36:18
Speaker
And, and so yeah, so a government can say essentially, please decriminalize X, but like, it's got to go through some layer of like health bureaucracy. And like, I don't think the police have to be on board, but it's probably more difficult if the police aren't like, what's, what are the actual kind of like moving parts? Um, yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's kind of tricky. And as, uh, you know, a drug policy colleague always, uh, uh, reminds me, and actually this came up again recently.
00:36:46
Speaker
If the cops are in full support, then something is wrong with the proposal. You want to have to fight with the cops on these things. And if they're supportive, then you're not pushing hard enough. But yeah, it's going to be beneficial regardless.
00:37:06
Speaker
And that maxim is very true because Vancouver and BC are further along on their process. They've actually gotten to the specifics, right?
Critique of Decriminalization Limits
00:37:16
Speaker
They've said, you can only have so much amount of X drug. And in both Vancouver and BC's case, there has been a lot of pushback from drug users and drug user advocates and the organized people who use drugs community.
00:37:32
Speaker
about these limits. And I have actually pulled the list for- Mm-hmm. This is very helpful, by the way. I saw you sent me this and I'm like, this is very good information to have because, yeah, it's
00:37:47
Speaker
I mean, even just having a list where each drug gets its own threshold, it kind of reveals just the absurdity of the whole thing, just because it's like, why are we even doing this? What is good about having these different thresholds? 81 milligrams of Ativan. I'll ring you up on a...
00:38:09
Speaker
on a simple possession charge, but if you have 80 milligrams, I'm sorry. So it's a fun exercise to just actually go through it because these amounts are very low and Vancouver, again, from my understanding, I had a brief call with Garth Mullins before this podcast and he was kind of giving me the short story of like this, like, oh yeah, they've drug users and the like Van Do and all of these drug user advocates were involved, involved, involved in the last minute, this fucking, this,
00:38:39
Speaker
A list went out and was like, what? So, okay, here it is. Opioids, including heroin and fentanyl, so the big one, two grams. That's all you get. Yeah. Great. Cocaine, three grams. Crack cocaine, one gram.
00:38:57
Speaker
Gee, I wonder why there's a disparity there. Gee, that's odd. Why would we allow people who use cocaine to have more than people use crack cocaine? There's no racism and classism happening there. Amphetamines, one and a half grams. Ah, like, come on, just like, say like 15 or 25 or 30 grams and be done with it. Yeah.
00:39:23
Speaker
Dilaudid two grams. Okay. Uh, oxycodone, two grams, methadone liquid. You're really people have two grams of methadone liquid. You're going to bring them up on simple possession. Yeah. And I mean, sorry, I don't know if you're, if you're going to finish this list, I have some thoughts on a couple of them. Um, because I have the list in front of me too. Just so I, one, I find it really funny that LSD is measured in units.
00:39:49
Speaker
You can have 30 units of LSD. What the fuck is a unit? What if it's liquid LSD? The entire eight and a half by 11 piece of paper is a unit by the way. But also GHB, five grams, GHB usually comes in liquid form. So you're not like...
00:40:12
Speaker
how many milliliters, but then that also gets to the problem with all of these things is, okay, cops, are you going to test our drugs for us? Yes. MDMA, two grams, you really know what's in that pill? Yeah. What if it's two grams of a substance and it's only 10% MDMA? Are you measuring the MDMA or are you measuring the random
00:40:35
Speaker
Filler that's in there too. Like it's just it's so absurd like okay if I can have two grams of heroin and I buy heroin and it's actually only you know Some tiny little amount of heroin then I guess I can buy more like it's just so how are you? Categorizing these are you just going by what we say they are you going by what they are? It's like there's all these benzos in here There's all these benzos in here right like clonazepam 80 milligrams diazepam 400 milligrams and it's like
00:41:00
Speaker
Okay, so from my understanding, street drugs these days are a mix of opioids and benzos. Depending on where you are and what time of day it is and who you talked to last, how do you know what is fucking what?
00:41:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's all like it's labeled with a baggie on the side, like written in fucking Sharpie. Oh yeah. It's patently absurd. It's, it's, it's dummies writing rules because they like rules. It's frustrating. And you know, it's, it's also, it's also really frustrating because, and I have written about this in my research too. Like this is, this is like published work that I wrote about this in my master's research. Um,
00:41:38
Speaker
The harm reduction as a concept is more complicated than just sharing needles and giving people clean needles or whatever. If we want to reduce the harms that can come from drug use, first we have to accept that most of the harms from drug use actually are a result of prohibition, but there are harm reduction techniques.
00:41:58
Speaker
that are very helpful to people who use criminalized drugs and actually can save their lives that make that put them at more risk of incarceration with stuff like this so for example if a person wants to buy a bunch of MDMA and they find a really good source it's pure MDMA they've tested it
00:42:17
Speaker
the safest thing for them to do if they have the income, and of course there's a class divide here, but if you have the income is to buy as much of that as possible, give it to your friends and keep everybody safe because that way you have this safe supply of it. But now you're a dealer. And so by keeping these amounts so low, they're just encouraging people to only buy and carry in smaller amounts, which puts them at risk.
00:42:42
Speaker
from buying more frequently in a more unstable supply and then they're also putting people at risk just for for trying to keep their friends safe by giving them good drugs because okay if I you know if a person gets caught with let's say 60 units of LSD instead of 30 units whatever that is then you know they have done like morally ethically and medically the right thing by keeping their their
00:43:07
Speaker
friends and you know safe by giving them this access to a safe supply but now they're fucked because the cops can say well sorry you were only allowed to have 30 units so arbitrarily whatever we decide a unit is we're now gonna put you in jail so yeah it's it's exciting when these things when we make these this progress but it's still just it feels
00:43:27
Speaker
Like we're just living in a circus where these people do not want to give up power They do not want to accept that the entire system needs to be rebuilt from scratch And so we're just living in this land of cognitive dissonance where we're like, okay Well, yeah, how many grams is enough and it's just yeah
00:43:45
Speaker
I mean, I know we're joking about these, these limits and these, you know, the milligrams of X, but it's like, you just fucking explained the iron law of prohibition. Like if, if the limits are this low and this ridiculous, the iron law of prohibition will just simply once again rear its ugly head. Yeah, exactly. Which they wouldn't mind. So yeah. And, and it's also worth pointing out that this is largely just like cop shit, right? This is the thing as a researcher, I can tell you there is,
00:44:14
Speaker
Well, okay, I was going to say there's no group of researchers that are less listened to than drug policy researchers, but that's not true because my comrades and colleagues in climate science would have something to say about that. None of this is based on research because I'm literally a researcher and I am sitting here waiting for somebody to call me to get my expert
00:44:37
Speaker
you know knowledge to help them craft these policies and even more than that the expert knowledge of the actual people who are impacted by these policies drug users themselves. And nobody's giving us phone calls they're all just going ahead and doing it so obviously the stuff is not based on actual science not based on data it's just based on ideology power and control.
00:44:59
Speaker
When we get Edmonton to decriminalize their drugs, I will do my very best to make sure that you're on the list of people that they call. I may be vastly overestimating my influence there, but I'm just saying. I'll try. There's good experts in Edmonton too. There's a lot of really good people doing drug policy work in Alberta. The hard fight is getting people to listen to experts, and it would be nice if the public could demand that more often.
00:45:23
Speaker
And when I say this is largely cop shit, I mean, I am being truthful, but it's also just like, since 2020, federal prosecutors have been directed to avoid simple drug possession charges when possible.
Flaws in Drug Possession Enforcement
00:45:36
Speaker
And like, that doesn't mean that people still don't get charged with simple drug possession, because there's a difference between cops and prosecutors. And then if the cop has the leeway on the street to do what they want, like if it's still technically illegal, the cop will use that to their benefit, right?
00:45:54
Speaker
when it actually gets to a courtroom, very rarely are people getting all the way through on simple drug possession charges. I talked to a federal prosecutor off the record the other day and they were like, yeah, it still exists. And if you were to search how many people get charged all the way through in the courts with simple possession, the number is still relatively high. But a lot of those cases I was told were
00:46:15
Speaker
Um, cases when like trafficker, people are charged with trafficking and they plead down from trafficking to a simple possession. Cause it's like a bad case. It's a bad search or whatever writer or the prosecutor simply doesn't want to deal with it. Uh, and then like in Alberta, there's also mandatory minimums. It's like, I think a three year sentence for trafficking, whereas a simple possession charge is a $500 fine. So.
00:46:37
Speaker
Yeah, well, I'm glad there's people trying to do whatever they can to plead these things down, but it's just like, it's so... I mean, these drug laws have never been good for anybody or actually made sense, but it just feels like especially now, now that the entire world has been thrown into chaos and we all have really much bigger fish to fry,
00:47:00
Speaker
The idea that on a burning planet where we're trying to prevent the next pandemic, that we're still putting people in prison for helping others alter their consciousness, it kind of makes me feel like I'm going insane. I know that this is my fight. This is a big chunk of what I have chosen to do with my life is to help end drug prohibition, but it's
00:47:27
Speaker
It boggles my mind that I have to do it at all and that it's this much of a fight. Can't believe I still have to protest this shit is the classic sign. I think that's a fantastic way to close
Call to Support Drug Decriminalization Exemptions
00:47:39
Speaker
it. The only other thing I would want to remind people of as we close out this conversation is every single level of government
00:47:46
Speaker
can request this section 56 exemption. So if you know a counselor or are a counselor, you know, at the city of Edmonton in the town of Acme, Alberta, uh, the very fondly named balls, ac Alberta, um, anyone out there, if you're involved in municipal government and you want to see a positive effect and just, just to help people live their lives with dignity and respect, uh, go for a section 56 exemption and decriminalize drugs in your, in your municipality.
00:48:15
Speaker
Mm hmm. Yeah. Talk to people about it, you know, post and support on social media. I know it feels like there's not a lot you can do a lot of the time, but we can at least, you know, we can try to control the conversation that's happening around this stuff. We can just, you know, just say just just be vocal about this stuff and and say that, no, we need to decriminalize. We need to legalize. And yeah.
00:48:42
Speaker
If you have the spoons, send letters to your city councilors and your representatives and try to get them to get on board as well. Strike now while the iron is hot. This Toronto shit is in the new news. It made national news. Follow us. If Toronto can do it, you can fucking do it. Yeah. Share it on Facebook and with your boomer uncles and say, hey, we should do this in our city.
00:49:07
Speaker
And then just don't read the replies. Just don't. That's my number one tip for social media is post stuff and don't read the replies because it will waste your time.
Hilary Agro's Social Media and Projects
00:49:15
Speaker
And speaking of social media, we've come to the end of our chat today, but I did want to give you the opportunity to plug your pluggables. How can people kind of find you on the internet and follow along with the work you're doing?
00:49:25
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm kind of all over the place now. I am doing a PhD and I teach in school, but I'm increasingly sort of driving my education work towards public education. So I'm on Twitter, I'm on TikTok, which is a recent thing. People are really liking my stuff on TikTok, so that's kind of blowing up recently. I stream on Twitch and I'm just getting my YouTube channel started on all of those platforms. I'm Hilary Agro, all one word, Hilary with one L.
00:49:54
Speaker
And yeah, I also have a Patreon where people support my work and if people have specific questions or they want me to make videos or content about this stuff because I know a lot about this stuff and I'm just trying to help people out. I do a lot of psychedelic therapy work and
00:50:14
Speaker
advocacy and integration and stuff like that. If people have questions, I'm increasingly, because I get so many of them, I can't answer them all. So I try to prioritize questions on my Patreon and I can make videos about that. And then next week I'm actually restarting my podcast Bread and Poppies after a very long hiatus. So yeah. Is it on the Harbinger Media Network?
00:50:39
Speaker
It sure is. Holy shit, we fucking did it. The crossover synergies are real. Yeah, I'm talking to Andre Goulet next week about how we can get some cross-content going with the other Harbinger Network podcasts. Well, I'm on Harbinger. It's fantastic. The crossover synergies are real. Yeah, well, we're starting early before I've even gotten the pod back.
00:51:05
Speaker
Yeah. Well, the final way I'm going to close out this pod is just with a very quick ask for money. If you want to join the 500 or so other folks who help keep this independent media project going, it's very easy. There's a link in the show notes, or you can go to theprogressreport.ca slash patrons. You can put in your credit card. You can contribute whatever you can per month.
Conclusion and Final Donation Request
00:51:26
Speaker
The recurring donations are quite helpful, but $5, $10, $50, I don't care, whatever you can afford. Jim and I really appreciate it.
00:51:33
Speaker
If you have any notes, thoughts, comments, I am very easy to reach. I am on Twitter far too often at, at Duncan Kinney. And you can reach me by email at Duncan K at progress, Alberta.ca. Thank you to Jim story for editing this podcast. Thank you to cosmic fam, you communist. Thank you for listening and goodbye.