“Feral Fate” would be a great name for a rock band. Is it taken yet?
You have such a way with words, Michael. I always look forward to your articles.
On the question of “services compet[ing] for their patronage”: it’s not just the political zeitgeist that we’re up against, it’s the huge number of people now employed in the industry built around harm reduction and homelessness. That career field has grown as fast as the problem itself. And it’s such a feel-good, righteous metier, that there’s no shortage of people aspiring to it. Bonus: current or former experience with substance use is now considered an asset.
In BC, the government has recently cracked down on pharmacies paying cash incentives to addicts who fill their prescriptions with them. That’s got the patrons howling that they NEED those illegal kickbacks. https://drugdatadecoded.ca/kickbacks/?ref=drug-data-decoded-newsletter (July 3, 2024).
They want the drugs (methadone, buprenorphine, etc.: Opiate Agonist Therapy; also, in some cases, safe supply), they want them free, they want to be able to take them “when they want” (i.e., as take-homes, not witnessed); they want the option to sell or trade them; and they want those illegal kickback payments from the pharmacies – because they “deserve” their fair share of the "profits" made off of them.
I fondly remember my mother telling me stories about her father being too proud to accept dole during the great depression. Both my parents lived thru the great depression and had that same sense of pride that they passed on to their children as an important value as well as commonsense, frugality, perseverance and the importance of manners. Times certainly have changed and many people have become victims of circumstances beyond their control and are forced into homelessness. Still, as Thomas Edison once said, "Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."
Many of the residents of these wilderness camps are indigenous. This is similar in some ways to how many reserve residents lived during the warm season in the past. My grandmother would tell me about how Roseau residents routinely did this. They would set up their tipi by the river, and fish, hunt and gather in order to eat. The river would be a combination water supply, bathtub and toilet. This worked well with small populations. The difference between then and now is that then the indigenous provided for themselves. Now they rely on the charity of others
I should probably ask you to clarify solutions to which issue but I'll pitch some thoughts.
There are many assistance solutions for homeless people who want to get off the streets. We've got so many here in Winnipeg that they're competing with each other now.
Some people want to live rough because they're junkies and shelters won't let them continue their habits. There's no outside solution to bad personal choices.
Education standards have been deteriorating for the past four decades which makes people less employable. It is far too easy for able-bodied people to collect welfare. I think there should be something like work camps where someone who is down and out but willing can get a room, earn money and work their way up to a better life.
Bylaws should be enforced. Nearby homeowners shouldn't be terrorized by thieving junkies IMO.
In Winnipeg, homelessness overwhelmingly has an aboriginal profile. Sober sociological analysis is required to understand why that is but instead we get CRT pablum that blames whitey. How much aboriginal homelessness is a consequence of poor education and reserve socialization where being unemployed is the common experience over several generations?
I guess I’m unsure that corrected personal choices will be sufficient. Much of the effort at intervention has the focus of “harm reduction” which is fraught. There was a study in the news the other day about getting people off the street that seemed to have some reasonably good data points. Aside from just bylaw enforcement. It’s not that I disagree with many if any of your observations.
I think there is an attitude of opting out of employment that has grown in the decades since I joined the work force; a kind of mentality that takes advantage of the 'third party liability' character of the welfare state. I know women, for instance, who have never held down a steady job, gotten on welfare and had kids to increase and continue their welfare cheques. What do their kids learn from that?
When I was a young punk in Winnipeg, it was very rare to encounter someone living rough and when we did, it was because they were 'rubbies' who had more or less made themselves 'unhouseable.' The idea that a small city like Brandon would ever have a homeless problem was inconceivable. Now there's homeless people in small towns everywhere. Is that because the economy has just continually gotten worse or is it because the circumstances of the welfare state provide sort of a perverse incentive to drop out of society?
I struggle with understanding why anyone would ever flirt with with addictive substances like crack, meth and opiates, especially using them intravenously. Do schools warn kids anymore about substance abuse? Growing up in the 70s, I saw why it was bad to get hooked on narcotics. Yes, there was a societal disdain then for all drug use but it was the image of a junkie without control over their life that scared me about trying narcotics. In an age when victimhood is fetishized, there is no longer any stigma about becoming a junkie. Should there be?
Maybe there is an institutional way of letting people maintain drug habits while also working and supporting their habits.
<< She [Bonnie Henry] repeatedly claimed that “non-medical safer supply” would be provided responsibly, with “guardrails” in place to prevent diversion. But it is hard to take this seriously when her report claimed IT IS "PARAMOUNT" THAT ACTIVE DRUG USERS, ADDICTED OR NOT, TAKE A LEADERSHIP ROLE IN DEVELOPING AND IMPLEMENTING THE EXPERIMENT. Perhaps not incidentally, the report also explicitly stated that any medical monitoring of safer supply — such as urine tests and witnessed consumption — should be removed for the sake of “reducing barriers.” These measures are among the few tools available to prevent or track diversion, but they apparently cause “discomfort” among drug users. >>
Just for fun, take a peek at the profile picture for BCAPOM's Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/BCAPOM (In case it changes, it currently reads, "We're not gonna piss in a cup. No we're gonna fuck shit up!")
I came back to this newsletter sort of by chance, and I'm glad to see the discussion in response to Robin's question.
Regarding solutions to the present situation, I have none; it just seems so intractable, and I have no expertise in the social welfare sphere. But I do have some thoughts on what we need to be doing to keep today’s problems from getting exponentially worse.
1) We need to bring back some focus on prevention, which is, or was, one of the “four pillars” of harm reduction, until it was supplanted by destigmatization. Your comment above, Michael, indicates you agree that the messages of dissuasion WE received in our youth are somehow absent today. The noise now is all about getting nasal naloxone into high schools, college dorms, and work places. We should be campaigning hard to reduce the number of new users coming on stream.
2) We have to recognize how much drug policy is being driven by the advocacy groups, and just stop it, geez! (i.e., stop kowtowing to the activists who are insisting that substance use is a right – as in, a human right).
I heard Nicole Luonga, a spokesperson for the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, interviewed on CBC a while back, so I looked up the Coalition to see what this advocacy organization is all about. https://drugpolicy.ca/about/mission-and-vision/ This was just before BC rolled back its decrim experiment to try to curtail open use in public spaces.
Nicole was saying she wanted to see decriminalization expanded by removing the 2.5 gram possession limit for personal use. When asked by the interviewer what she (Nicole) thought the limit SHOULD be, she said there should preferably be NO limit to the amount one can possess, but if there must be a restriction, the limit should be at least an ounce (28 grams). When the interviewer asked what she would say to people who are concerned that being allowed to carry a large amount of drugs might encourage people to sell them to others, her response was a bit baffle-gabby, but she essentially said, you know, the selling and exchange of drugs between users is really NOT A BAD THING. You know, we really need to remove the stigma from this “legitimate exchange” so that the trade is not “disrupted” (which she says makes it hard for people who use drugs to know their suppliers and have access to the specific drugs they want).
There’s more in this vein on the Coalition’s “critical terminology” page, which explains things like: substance use is not a disorder; substance use is not a medical problem, and users don’t want to be medicalized or have to be interrogated by medical personnel in order to access safe supply; accidental overdose is predominantly caused by drug policy, not the drugs themselves; drug dealing is a common income-generation strategy among many people who use drugs; interfering with drug users’ rights is “destabilizing” for them and therefore makes them unsafe (etc.).
This idea that we shouldn’t consider drug use to be a problem, and specifically not a “medical” problem, is what I find really confounding, because the whole shift away from viewing it as a criminal issue has been toward a more compassionate approach by deeming it to be a HEALTH CARE problem. Government brings us – the public – onside by explaining that addiction/substance use needs to be treated as a health issue. Drug users (some of them) and their advocacy groups, on the other hand, are saying NO, it’s not a health problem; we’re not sick; we don’t want doctors being the gatekeepers of our chosen lifestyles.
This subject area is way out of my expertise range although both my sons have worked in the field of people on the street (etc) and would certainly advocate in favour of harm reduction. I think the view is the crisis is so bad we have to prevent death and money has disappeared from more serious responses (like housing and health care and employment. Obviously many are too far gone which is why prevention as you note is the way out. I also think the crisis is an indicator of a society that has lost its bearings. So obviously libertarianism isn’t going to be the solution either: no drug limits. 😎
I too am a supporter of harm reduction, and have been from the get-go. But as with so many things, the definition has been subtly changed, and it now means things that go beyond what we signed up for. From harmreduction.org (note in particular the second sentence, since I can’t bold it here on Substack):
<< Harm reduction is a set of practical strategies and ideas aimed at reducing negative consequences associated with drug use. Harm Reduction is also a movement for social justice built on a belief in, and respect for, the rights of people who use drugs. >>
The other problem is that we are of course speaking about reducing negative consequences for the People Who Use Drugs, but the strategies do little or nothing to reduce the negative consequences to society. And from what I’ve seen, most drug users themselves care not a twig about the societal harms.
I don't fault the "too far gone" addicts; I fault the educated, power-hungry recreational users who are pushing their entitlements over any societal concerns. In fact, many of those activists I speak of don't even seem to truly care about the poor sods on the street who are shackled by their addictions.
I was going to be snarky and say that Michael isn't one of the (many) people who get PAID to come up with solutions, but I see that he's offered some thoughts in response, so I'll hold my snark : ) I did join in with some thoughts of my own following Michael's responses, so this comment is just to alert you to that. Seems I can only respond to one commenter at a time.
“Feral Fate” would be a great name for a rock band. Is it taken yet?
You have such a way with words, Michael. I always look forward to your articles.
On the question of “services compet[ing] for their patronage”: it’s not just the political zeitgeist that we’re up against, it’s the huge number of people now employed in the industry built around harm reduction and homelessness. That career field has grown as fast as the problem itself. And it’s such a feel-good, righteous metier, that there’s no shortage of people aspiring to it. Bonus: current or former experience with substance use is now considered an asset.
In BC, the government has recently cracked down on pharmacies paying cash incentives to addicts who fill their prescriptions with them. That’s got the patrons howling that they NEED those illegal kickbacks. https://drugdatadecoded.ca/kickbacks/?ref=drug-data-decoded-newsletter (July 3, 2024).
They want the drugs (methadone, buprenorphine, etc.: Opiate Agonist Therapy; also, in some cases, safe supply), they want them free, they want to be able to take them “when they want” (i.e., as take-homes, not witnessed); they want the option to sell or trade them; and they want those illegal kickback payments from the pharmacies – because they “deserve” their fair share of the "profits" made off of them.
This is the news story the BCAPOM article references: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-patients-say-bc-pharmacies-offering-kickbacks-in-exchange-for/
'Ferrell Fate and the Riverbank Choir.'
Just kidding again.
I fondly remember my mother telling me stories about her father being too proud to accept dole during the great depression. Both my parents lived thru the great depression and had that same sense of pride that they passed on to their children as an important value as well as commonsense, frugality, perseverance and the importance of manners. Times certainly have changed and many people have become victims of circumstances beyond their control and are forced into homelessness. Still, as Thomas Edison once said, "Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."
Good article Michael.
I'm afraid Biden and Trudeau have been reading Thomas Edison.
I found it heartwarming to see that he purchased flowers to adorn his surroundings.
Probably a donation from a welcoming neighbour.
More likely plants pinched from a local garden center.
Many of the residents of these wilderness camps are indigenous. This is similar in some ways to how many reserve residents lived during the warm season in the past. My grandmother would tell me about how Roseau residents routinely did this. They would set up their tipi by the river, and fish, hunt and gather in order to eat. The river would be a combination water supply, bathtub and toilet. This worked well with small populations. The difference between then and now is that then the indigenous provided for themselves. Now they rely on the charity of others
Solutions?
I should probably ask you to clarify solutions to which issue but I'll pitch some thoughts.
There are many assistance solutions for homeless people who want to get off the streets. We've got so many here in Winnipeg that they're competing with each other now.
Some people want to live rough because they're junkies and shelters won't let them continue their habits. There's no outside solution to bad personal choices.
Education standards have been deteriorating for the past four decades which makes people less employable. It is far too easy for able-bodied people to collect welfare. I think there should be something like work camps where someone who is down and out but willing can get a room, earn money and work their way up to a better life.
Bylaws should be enforced. Nearby homeowners shouldn't be terrorized by thieving junkies IMO.
In Winnipeg, homelessness overwhelmingly has an aboriginal profile. Sober sociological analysis is required to understand why that is but instead we get CRT pablum that blames whitey. How much aboriginal homelessness is a consequence of poor education and reserve socialization where being unemployed is the common experience over several generations?
I guess I’m unsure that corrected personal choices will be sufficient. Much of the effort at intervention has the focus of “harm reduction” which is fraught. There was a study in the news the other day about getting people off the street that seemed to have some reasonably good data points. Aside from just bylaw enforcement. It’s not that I disagree with many if any of your observations.
I think there is an attitude of opting out of employment that has grown in the decades since I joined the work force; a kind of mentality that takes advantage of the 'third party liability' character of the welfare state. I know women, for instance, who have never held down a steady job, gotten on welfare and had kids to increase and continue their welfare cheques. What do their kids learn from that?
When I was a young punk in Winnipeg, it was very rare to encounter someone living rough and when we did, it was because they were 'rubbies' who had more or less made themselves 'unhouseable.' The idea that a small city like Brandon would ever have a homeless problem was inconceivable. Now there's homeless people in small towns everywhere. Is that because the economy has just continually gotten worse or is it because the circumstances of the welfare state provide sort of a perverse incentive to drop out of society?
I struggle with understanding why anyone would ever flirt with with addictive substances like crack, meth and opiates, especially using them intravenously. Do schools warn kids anymore about substance abuse? Growing up in the 70s, I saw why it was bad to get hooked on narcotics. Yes, there was a societal disdain then for all drug use but it was the image of a junkie without control over their life that scared me about trying narcotics. In an age when victimhood is fetishized, there is no longer any stigma about becoming a junkie. Should there be?
Maybe there is an institutional way of letting people maintain drug habits while also working and supporting their habits.
This just-published piece by Adam Zivo confirms what I said in my earlier comment, point #2, so I popped back here to share the link.
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/health/other/adam-zivo-b-c-dodges-a-bullet-by-rejecting-safe-supply-of-all-hard-drugs/ar-BB1q0lVm?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=8d8a37cf334a4600b2c1d30eba24735c&ei=49 Especially this paragraph of Zivo's (emphasis mine, sorry about the all-caps):
<< She [Bonnie Henry] repeatedly claimed that “non-medical safer supply” would be provided responsibly, with “guardrails” in place to prevent diversion. But it is hard to take this seriously when her report claimed IT IS "PARAMOUNT" THAT ACTIVE DRUG USERS, ADDICTED OR NOT, TAKE A LEADERSHIP ROLE IN DEVELOPING AND IMPLEMENTING THE EXPERIMENT. Perhaps not incidentally, the report also explicitly stated that any medical monitoring of safer supply — such as urine tests and witnessed consumption — should be removed for the sake of “reducing barriers.” These measures are among the few tools available to prevent or track diversion, but they apparently cause “discomfort” among drug users. >>
Just for fun, take a peek at the profile picture for BCAPOM's Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/BCAPOM (In case it changes, it currently reads, "We're not gonna piss in a cup. No we're gonna fuck shit up!")
I came back to this newsletter sort of by chance, and I'm glad to see the discussion in response to Robin's question.
Regarding solutions to the present situation, I have none; it just seems so intractable, and I have no expertise in the social welfare sphere. But I do have some thoughts on what we need to be doing to keep today’s problems from getting exponentially worse.
1) We need to bring back some focus on prevention, which is, or was, one of the “four pillars” of harm reduction, until it was supplanted by destigmatization. Your comment above, Michael, indicates you agree that the messages of dissuasion WE received in our youth are somehow absent today. The noise now is all about getting nasal naloxone into high schools, college dorms, and work places. We should be campaigning hard to reduce the number of new users coming on stream.
2) We have to recognize how much drug policy is being driven by the advocacy groups, and just stop it, geez! (i.e., stop kowtowing to the activists who are insisting that substance use is a right – as in, a human right).
I heard Nicole Luonga, a spokesperson for the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, interviewed on CBC a while back, so I looked up the Coalition to see what this advocacy organization is all about. https://drugpolicy.ca/about/mission-and-vision/ This was just before BC rolled back its decrim experiment to try to curtail open use in public spaces.
Nicole was saying she wanted to see decriminalization expanded by removing the 2.5 gram possession limit for personal use. When asked by the interviewer what she (Nicole) thought the limit SHOULD be, she said there should preferably be NO limit to the amount one can possess, but if there must be a restriction, the limit should be at least an ounce (28 grams). When the interviewer asked what she would say to people who are concerned that being allowed to carry a large amount of drugs might encourage people to sell them to others, her response was a bit baffle-gabby, but she essentially said, you know, the selling and exchange of drugs between users is really NOT A BAD THING. You know, we really need to remove the stigma from this “legitimate exchange” so that the trade is not “disrupted” (which she says makes it hard for people who use drugs to know their suppliers and have access to the specific drugs they want).
There’s more in this vein on the Coalition’s “critical terminology” page, which explains things like: substance use is not a disorder; substance use is not a medical problem, and users don’t want to be medicalized or have to be interrogated by medical personnel in order to access safe supply; accidental overdose is predominantly caused by drug policy, not the drugs themselves; drug dealing is a common income-generation strategy among many people who use drugs; interfering with drug users’ rights is “destabilizing” for them and therefore makes them unsafe (etc.).
This idea that we shouldn’t consider drug use to be a problem, and specifically not a “medical” problem, is what I find really confounding, because the whole shift away from viewing it as a criminal issue has been toward a more compassionate approach by deeming it to be a HEALTH CARE problem. Government brings us – the public – onside by explaining that addiction/substance use needs to be treated as a health issue. Drug users (some of them) and their advocacy groups, on the other hand, are saying NO, it’s not a health problem; we’re not sick; we don’t want doctors being the gatekeepers of our chosen lifestyles.
We’ve given the activists an inch, and they’ve taken ten miles. They can’t complain about the “war on drugs” anymore (because there isn’t one), so it’s been re-branded as “the war on drug USERS”. Here's a short video from a recent safe supply rally in Toronto, organized in part by provincial labour unions (1 min 45 seconds): https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOfnmJLL8uo5sQQ2IqYuL1IEAXdMjAgwl1z2wm619FQbhIbLuVP3-jI07UP33XYnw/photo/AF1QipN7rczfJl5pzUuKJ8ijvEBEPU2TBNrxp82LrTP-?key=cVhoNDVmMUNxTUNCcE5sdHlqQ2c4b1o1WEpySGt3
Well, I've gone on too long. Sorry, it's an issue that has me at my wits' end; I start to rant.
This subject area is way out of my expertise range although both my sons have worked in the field of people on the street (etc) and would certainly advocate in favour of harm reduction. I think the view is the crisis is so bad we have to prevent death and money has disappeared from more serious responses (like housing and health care and employment. Obviously many are too far gone which is why prevention as you note is the way out. I also think the crisis is an indicator of a society that has lost its bearings. So obviously libertarianism isn’t going to be the solution either: no drug limits. 😎
I too am a supporter of harm reduction, and have been from the get-go. But as with so many things, the definition has been subtly changed, and it now means things that go beyond what we signed up for. From harmreduction.org (note in particular the second sentence, since I can’t bold it here on Substack):
<< Harm reduction is a set of practical strategies and ideas aimed at reducing negative consequences associated with drug use. Harm Reduction is also a movement for social justice built on a belief in, and respect for, the rights of people who use drugs. >>
The other problem is that we are of course speaking about reducing negative consequences for the People Who Use Drugs, but the strategies do little or nothing to reduce the negative consequences to society. And from what I’ve seen, most drug users themselves care not a twig about the societal harms.
I don't fault the "too far gone" addicts; I fault the educated, power-hungry recreational users who are pushing their entitlements over any societal concerns. In fact, many of those activists I speak of don't even seem to truly care about the poor sods on the street who are shackled by their addictions.
I was going to be snarky and say that Michael isn't one of the (many) people who get PAID to come up with solutions, but I see that he's offered some thoughts in response, so I'll hold my snark : ) I did join in with some thoughts of my own following Michael's responses, so this comment is just to alert you to that. Seems I can only respond to one commenter at a time.