 |
| Image: Pixabay, johnhain |
Letter to a friend today as we talked about how to get our heads around what has to come next in the toxic drug crisis:
I have been thinking so very long and hard about the toxic drug crisis lately, and have come to that point where the conclusion I've arrived at is challenging yet necessary. I hit that in my Peers Victoria years when I realized that the real way to support sex workers was to end stigma, and the only way you could end stigma was to normalize the activity.
So here we are on this one, and we all know the most obvious strategy with the quickest results: make sure everybody gets a safe supply of the drug they use. Normalize drug use. It's a strange one because in SO many ways and overwhelmingly, drug use is normalized. But this ridiculous "street drug" business - the drugs we don't want people to have, for no particular reason other than because we said so - is seen as an aberrant use.
In fact, as the demographics of the people dying have shown us, the people who are dying are "every person," in a sense. (Not really, of course - they skew male, young and blue-collar, but you know what I mean.) Drugs are used commonly, as it turns out, including the drugs we don't want people to have. I guess it hurts to know that, after a gazillion years of useless prohibition, but here we are. And we have to wake up to that if we're ever going to get a grip on the crisis.
I mean, let's consider this hoo-hah over "diversion," as you noted in your message. So what happened there was that a few people on safe supply sold their prescription drugs in order to get money for the kind of drug they actually wanted. In other words, safe drugs - at least in the sense of certified purity - entered the unsafe supply chain. How is that a bad thing when you've got 16,000 people dead and not even a whiff of a real plan up your sleeve?
Another revelation from my sex work days: You don't have to like the thing that is happening, you just have to want it to be safer, and less "in your face" for the community. I think we've been positioned to believe that safe supply means being pro-drug use, when it's actually just a pragmatic response to stop the dying. Other things absolutely have to come right after that, because really, we ALL need more understanding from a young age about drugs, and not from the police. But first, we need to get a handle on the drug supply.
Here's a thing to think about: Victoria has drug-checking through a really cool UVic initiative, and the government has (so far) been ok with checking small quantities of people's street supply. BUT they frown on checking the supply of an actual seller, because that could be interpreted as being helpful to drug "traffickers."
So here we are on this one, and we all know the most obvious strategy with the quickest results: make sure everybody gets a safe supply of the drug they use. Normalize drug use. It's a strange one because in SO many ways and overwhelmingly, drug use is normalized. But this ridiculous "street drug" business - the drugs we don't want people to have, for no particular reason other than because we said so - is seen as an aberrant use.
In fact, as the demographics of the people dying have shown us, the people who are dying are "every person," in a sense. (Not really, of course - they skew male, young and blue-collar, but you know what I mean.) Drugs are used commonly, as it turns out, including the drugs we don't want people to have. I guess it hurts to know that, after a gazillion years of useless prohibition, but here we are. And we have to wake up to that if we're ever going to get a grip on the crisis.
I mean, let's consider this hoo-hah over "diversion," as you noted in your message. So what happened there was that a few people on safe supply sold their prescription drugs in order to get money for the kind of drug they actually wanted. In other words, safe drugs - at least in the sense of certified purity - entered the unsafe supply chain. How is that a bad thing when you've got 16,000 people dead and not even a whiff of a real plan up your sleeve?
Another revelation from my sex work days: You don't have to like the thing that is happening, you just have to want it to be safer, and less "in your face" for the community. I think we've been positioned to believe that safe supply means being pro-drug use, when it's actually just a pragmatic response to stop the dying. Other things absolutely have to come right after that, because really, we ALL need more understanding from a young age about drugs, and not from the police. But first, we need to get a handle on the drug supply.
Here's a thing to think about: Victoria has drug-checking through a really cool UVic initiative, and the government has (so far) been ok with checking small quantities of people's street supply. BUT they frown on checking the supply of an actual seller, because that could be interpreted as being helpful to drug "traffickers."
In terms of stopping people from dying, a quickly effective strategy would be to expand drug-checking so that someone selling to 100 people, say, actually knows something about what is being sold. What about a big drug-checking initiative of suppliers' drugs, with immunity? Wouldn't that be a positive thing?
But you see the problem - first, you have to get over the fact that people buy drugs (and sex, going back to the sex work comparison). And that we all buy drugs, in fact, and count on them for all kinds of things we're deeply grateful for. And that this is exactly the same thing, except that the people who are dying are buying weird concoctions of unknown potency and dosage from some dude who's cooking them up in Kitimat, while the rest of us use drugs that have been deemed socially acceptable.
The crisis is a pretty obvious problem of potency, purity and dosage at the drug end of things. At the addiction end of things, it's more complicated, definitely, but there's very little about the current system that helps the person with addiction. So that needs to get sorted too.
But you see the problem - first, you have to get over the fact that people buy drugs (and sex, going back to the sex work comparison). And that we all buy drugs, in fact, and count on them for all kinds of things we're deeply grateful for. And that this is exactly the same thing, except that the people who are dying are buying weird concoctions of unknown potency and dosage from some dude who's cooking them up in Kitimat, while the rest of us use drugs that have been deemed socially acceptable.
The crisis is a pretty obvious problem of potency, purity and dosage at the drug end of things. At the addiction end of things, it's more complicated, definitely, but there's very little about the current system that helps the person with addiction. So that needs to get sorted too.
Interesting fact: 300,000 British Columbians with substance disorders, 623 publicly funded treatment beds, and 259 detox beds. Plus just the muckiest way through treatment that anyone could imagine, and horribly expensive with no known or followed-up-on outcomes. I don't have to tell you that.
Wow, I should use this as a blog post, lol. It does not take me much to get ranting these days. But the parallels with sex work are striking. People hate that people use drugs that we've declared illegal. But hey, tough shit, man. Nothing else we do matters if the drug supply isn't safe.
Wow, I should use this as a blog post, lol. It does not take me much to get ranting these days. But the parallels with sex work are striking. People hate that people use drugs that we've declared illegal. But hey, tough shit, man. Nothing else we do matters if the drug supply isn't safe.
No comments:
Post a Comment