Transcript
Speaker: I'm Jane Williams. This is the Red Eye Podcast, produced at the studios of Vancouver Cooperative Radio. In our episode today, I talk with Caitlin Shane of Pivot Legal about a report by a committee of the BC legislature that is, quote, another disappointment for people who use drugs and drug policy advocates.
Speaker: On November 1, after four months of consultation and deliberation, a provincial committee released a report titled Closing Gaps Reducing Barriers, expanding the response to the toxic drug and overdose crisis. The report contains 37 recommendations looking at everything from BC's proposed decriminalization to treatment beds.
Speaker: In response, nearly 60 organizations and individuals released an open letter calling the report another disappointment. They say that while not every recommendation is flawed, the report obscures the issue of a poisonous drug supply and recommends nothing outside of the status quo.
Speaker: Caitlin Shane is one of the signatories to the letter. She's a staff lawyer at Pivot Legal Society and leads Pivot's drug policy campaign. She joins me today to talk about the report and about Bill C -5, the federal government bill to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Hello, Caitlin. Hi. Thanks for having me. Oh, thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker: Pivot Legal made three key recommendations to the committee in the middle of June, and one of them was that improved access to prescription grade safe supply was essential. Did the committee tackle that issue at all in the report? No, the committee did not tackle that issue or really any of the issues that we raised in our submissions to the committee. One of the key oversights of
Speaker: the committee's report is a failure to acknowledge that people who use drugs are oftentimes driving these initiatives and driving creative initiatives that don't rely on the heavily -barreared medical system to access safe supply. So there's very little recognition of those efforts and very little teeth in the report to support people who use drugs in taking these initiatives into their own hands.
Speaker: When you say these initiatives, you're thinking of things like compassion clubs led by peer workers, that kind of thing. That's exactly right. So initiatives that drug users are taking that don't rely on a prescription oftentimes or that don't rely on the conventional prescription format, which requires
Speaker: certain criteria to be met in order to get a prescription that relies on a limited number of doctors, given the unwillingness of doctors to prescribe safe supply alternatives, and also the existing failure to provide even prescription grade substances for the purposes of maintenance or occasional use as opposed to the higher barriers associated with needing a prescription for a formal addiction.
Speaker: Everybody in the province is facing the issue that there are not enough family doctors. So I guess when you talk about it's hard to find a doctor who will write a prescription for a safe supply of drugs, then they're also dealing with that in addition to dealing with the fact that sometimes it's hard to just plain find a family doctor. That's absolutely right. And there's limited training and guidance for doctors, even doctors who might wish to prescribe a safe supply. There is inadequate
Speaker: training for doctors to be able to do so. So Pivot and numerous other groups spoke to the committee about this, and the committee acknowledged to a certain extent in their report that there is inadequate training for doctors to be able to prescribe safe supply, particularly in rural and remote communities in the north. There's a shortage of doctors, but there's also a real shortage of training for doctors to be able to prescribe these substances.
Speaker: Now, another of your recommendations was that the province prevent police from interfering with harm reduction. What did you mean when you said that the police interfere with harm reduction? So there's a well -documented practice of police loitering outside of overdose prevention sites, making it difficult for people to access these lifesaving services.
Speaker: One of the recommendations that we made was to legislate bubble zones around drug user spaces and harm reduction services. There are studies that show when police are in the vicinity of these health services, people will actually avoid using them. And this just perpetuates the cycle of criminalization, even if charges aren't being laid, which they are at times. But even if they're not, the mere existence and presence of police
Speaker: near these sites means people won't access them. And so there's a very clear need to make these spaces as accessible as possible. The bubble zones concept comes from what we've seen the province do around
Speaker: maintaining access to abortion clinics, where the presence of protesters or people who are trying to inhibit access to those services are actually prevented from loitering outside of the service. So we want to see the same thing in the context of these lifesaving health services with respect to police.
Speaker: Another way that police are very clearly interfering with harm reduction is confiscating things like naloxone and harm reduction supplies. This is something we hear from groups all around BC that they are afraid to carry harm reduction supplies that are actually being passed out by the health authorities because police will either confiscate those supplies or use those supplies as a basis to investigate that person for drug related offenses.
Speaker: So that's absolutely unconscionable at a time where we are encouraging people who use drugs to A, carry harm reduction supplies to make use as safe as possible and B, access harm reduction sites that are oftentimes implemented by the health authorities. We're sending extremely mixed messages and we cannot have this continued practice of police undermining the efforts of people who use drugs and health services.
Speaker: So when you say harm reduction supplies, you're thinking about things like naloxone. Naloxone, sterile injection equipment, sterile water, cookers, all of those things that people are encouraged to carry by their doctors and by the health authorities. Police are actually using those supplies as a basis for investigation. What does the report say about the role of police?
Speaker: This is probably one of the more disappointing elements of the report. It's not that the report makes bad recommendations, per se. It's just that it really does not respond at all to the elephant in the room, which is policing and law enforcement.
Speaker: We know that criminalization drives drug use underground and contributes to people, as I mentioned, not accessing health services, not wanting to speak to family and friends or health providers. The report does not really address this fact. It makes some reference to the need for resources to be directed toward health services as opposed to police services.
Speaker: But at the same time, it does recommend increased funding and training for police with respect to the oncoming decriminalization model that BC is set to enter in January. So funding police is directly at odds with a public health approach to substance use and is, in my view, directly exacerbating
Speaker: which lies fundamentally with police. If you speak to people who use drugs and ask them about the harms of prohibition, one of the first things people say is that we need to limit interactions with police.
Speaker: These are the interactions that drive drug use underground. This is the reason why we're in the situation we're in. So part of the goal needs to be to limit interactions with police, to remove police funding and restore it with health and community services, including services run by people who use drugs.
Speaker: I understand there's a connection between prohibition and the potency and unpredictability of the drug supply. How does that work?
Speaker: So if you think about the fact, first of all, that people use drugs, people have always used drugs for a variety of reasons, whether it's recreational or pain or trauma or lack of housing. There's so many systemic factors that lead people to use drugs and that will always exist. Prohibition takes the approach that it is necessary to
Speaker: make it impossible for people to access drugs. And that would be one thing if prohibition actually resulted in that.
Speaker: doesn't because it doesn't address demand. It doesn't address the fact that people will access drugs no matter what. And so by turning a blind eye completely to access and supply, prohibition results in a supply that's entirely profit motivated and that is inherently illicit. The fact that it is now illegal to purchase or sell drugs,
Speaker: doesn't mean that those things no longer exist because, as I mentioned, people will always use drugs and will always seek to purchase drugs, which means inherently that there will always be some sort of supply to meet that demand. It just means that that transaction or exchange occurs underground and therefore at increased risk to health and safety. And then that actually changes the nature of the drugs that are available to people?
Speaker: Absolutely, because there's very minimal legal regulation of illicit drugs. The purpose of legal regulation is to standardize and ensure quality of product. We legally regulate all sorts of things, whether it's alcohol or toothpaste, to ensure that you have a stable, consistent product. When you employ prohibition,
Speaker: and deny legal regulation, you leave supply and quality up to the decisions of profit motivated people who are operating in the illicit drug market.
Speaker: So part of the reason why we've seen such a spike in fentanyl laced substances over the last several years is because that's an economically viable option for people who are producing drugs. If you were to legally regulate, you would have the ability to actually ensure the quality of that product rather than have
Speaker: someone decide that it's worth more bang for your buck to introduce highly potent opioids into the regular drug supply for the purposes of profit. I want to turn to the federal government's Bill C -5 to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. You made a submission to the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs with regard to that bill. What was the main thrust of your submission?
Speaker: So my main recommendation at that point was to fully decriminalize simple possession. That is, repeal the prohibition of simple drug possession under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
Speaker: And I made that recommendation because we see in the principles of Bill C -5 a stated intention to reduce the harms of prohibition, to reduce the likelihood that a person will receive a criminal sanction for simple drug possession, and to undo some of the harms that we've seen associated with the war on drugs.
Speaker: And so while the bill understands these principles in a way that I agree with, the solution that it comes up with completely misses the mark. And so to clarify what the bill actually does, it does sort of three key things.
Speaker: One, it repeals mandatory minimum penalties for some drug -related offenses. Two, it restores conditional sentence orders for some of those offenses. And three, this is the main piece that I took aim at.
Speaker: is that it implements programming to divert people from the criminal justice system when they are in possession of drugs. And the issue with that is that diversion is not decriminalization. It restores or retains the ability of police and prosecutors to continue criminalizing people for simple possession.
Speaker: And given the history of enforcement in Canada and elsewhere, we know that it is poor and racialized people who use drugs who are being disproportionately targeted by the criminal law for these offenses. If we don't actually take aim at that problem, that pattern, then we can't expect anything to change. So that is we cannot give discretion, continued discretion to police and prosecutors
Speaker: to make these decisions when they have evidenced for us historically and continuously that these patterns are going to persist. Where are people diverted to? Well, that's another issue with the bill. There isn't really anywhere for people to go. So the bill effectively says that when a police officer comes into contact with a person who possesses drugs,
Speaker: They need to consider certain principles about whether it makes sense to actually suggest laying a charge against this person. And if they decide that it doesn't make sense to recommend a charge, then they are to give that person a referral to a health service. But as many people who use drugs have pointed out, these services don't exist. There are many people that want voluntary
Speaker: treatment or health services or housing supports, but they simply don't exist. And this is also a problem with BC's decriminalization pilot that's set to take place in January is you have police continuing to engage with people, which is a problem as we know, but providing referrals to services that really don't exist. There's a lot of different complex threads here, and I want to thank you so much for explaining some of them for us today.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me. I've been speaking with Caitlin Shane. She's a staff lawyer at Pivot Legal Society and leads Pivot's drug policy campaign. The Red Eye podcast is produced at the studios of Vancouver Co -op Radio. You can support us by supporting Co -op Radio. Go to coopradio .org and click on the donate button. Independent media relies on the support of people like you.
