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Safer supply advocate admits kids likely use diverted drugs · Kvetch & Release

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  Welcome back to AM eight hundred KLW. The issue of harm reduction and safe
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  supply is complex. It involves people who are in need of help, and
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  how to address that is looked at from many different angles and many different views.
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  And one person who has quite a few views on the subject is Adam
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  Zevo, the director of the Center for Responsible Drug Policy, who is out
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  with a new column in the National Post titled Behind closed Doors, Safer Supply
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  advocate admits kids likely use diverted opioids and this of course is touching on the
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  safe supply debate and diversion. Adam, how are you today, I'm good,
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  I'm good. Thanks for having me back on the show to talk about
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  this. Yeah, thank you so much for joining me here. So right
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  off the bat, this column is talking about a leading figure in the country's
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  safer supply movement, doctor Andrea Sereda. Why don't you tell me a little
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  bit about the doctor and what your thoughts are and why you wrote this column.
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  Well, so, doctor andrews Rita is the reason why we have safer
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  supply in Canada. She actually founded the first safe supply program in the country
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  back in twenty sixteen. In London, Ontario. It was housed in the
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  London inter Community Health Center, and initially that program was meant to just supply
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  drugs to addicted sex workers so that they would have less of a reason to
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  sell their bodies. It was meant to keep them safe, but the scope
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  of her program quickly expanded into what we know is Safe for Supply today,
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  where the idea is to provide a regulated source of pharmaceutical alternatives to illsted substances.
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  Typically that means providing hydromorphone in opioid as potent as heroin as an alternative
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  to fensanyl. And her program published a large number of evaluations which claimed that
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  saf supply was successful, the underlying data was very questionable. Most of it
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  was based on self report data from these patients, so essentially just asking patients
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  if they benefited from the program where they got free opioids, which obviously brings
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  a lot of issues with bias. And she became one of the nation's greatest
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  advocates for safer supply and spoken parliaments multiple times about it. Now, when
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  I started investigating Safe for Supply in early twenty twenty three and found a like
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  just no shortage of evidence that these drugs were being diverted, which means traded
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  or sold so that people could get stronger drugs, and that hydromorphone was actually
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  flooding the streets because it was being resold on the black market. Sorita was
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  one of the main voices to try to shut down that conversation and try to
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  deny the legitimacy of my reporting and to gaslight physicians who were seeing this in
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  their clinical practices. So she went to London Free Press and she told them,
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  I'm actually going to pull this up right now, So she told she
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  said, not a single physician critic of safe supplies being able to rede us
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  with an example of medications being sold to children. This seems to be the
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  boogeyman of safe supply. It is silly. And then in February she told
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  parliamentarians that there was no evidence that kids were accessing safe for supply. Now
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  I knew that this was false because I have spoken with a large number of
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  kids who have accessed safe for supply. I have spoken with dozens of physicians
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  who have seen young patients access safeer supply. I've spoken with addiction counselors,
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  So I knew that this was false, and it was shocking to me that
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  she and other safe supply advocates were in a sense gas lighting the public.
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  And so was startling to me when a community member sent me a video presentation
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  of hers that happened on June first, where she openly admitted in a venue
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  that she thought was private, that kids probably don't access safe for supply.
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  So she said one thing in public and said another thing in private. And
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  I'm looking here at the transcript from that annual general meeting of mom stopped the
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  harm and she says very clearly, had a parent come up to me that
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  said that their child had accessed diverted safe supply because they were on a wait
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  list to access it through me. So it's pretty staggering when people do talk
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  in private versus in public what they are often going to receive in terms of
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  pushback, and there's motivating factors. Actually, I'm going to have to interject
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  here because I did ask her about that. So I sent a very detailed
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  list of questions to her and her boss just to make sure that everything that
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  I reported is accurate. So her boss, who answered on her behalf,
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  claimed that the child here was actually in adults, and that she was using
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  child to reference the fact that this was the child of that parent. But
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  they're claiming that this child was an adult child, and I'm going to assume
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  that they're telling the truth, and so'll proven otherwise. However, the other
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  quote that she had, which I thought was quite telling, is when she
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  said she said, in my quote, I'm not going to stand up here
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  and say that some kids, some adolescents are not accessing diverted safe supply and
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  using DIVERT safe supply. Kids experiments with everything, and we need to be
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  honest with ourselves that kids probably experiment with DIVERT and safe for supply as well.
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  So there she is saying that this is probably happening, and her boss,
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  when answering my questions, tried to downplay it and said, well,
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  she's just flagging the risk of diversion. This is a very routine thing for
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  her. Well, if this is a very routine thing for her, that
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  would imply that she is routinely telling people that it is probable that kids are
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  accessing diverted safe for supply, which makes her public denials of this problem all
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  the more concerning. Do you feel at all vindicated having come across this again.
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  It's just it's staggering on face valid. I feel vindicated, but at
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  the same time I'm disappointed. Right, I do not think that Serena is
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  a bad person. I think that she is just someone who may be so
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  invested in her ideology that she is not always open with people about some of
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  the costs of this program which she has championed so ardently over the past eight
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  years. And look, I'm gonna be honest with you. I'm in the
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  middle of investigating safer supply diversion in London, Ontario, including diversion which is
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  connected to her clinic. And I know as a fact that diversion happens a
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  lot around her clinic. And I know as a fact that there have been
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  thousands of bills that seem to have been diverted from her like that have her
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  name on it right, that she prescribed. And that information will be coming
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  out later this year, along with a number of other bombshell revelations about safe
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  for supply in London. So this is just the beginning, and I feel
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  bad that a doctor who seems to have come into this with good intentions has
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  allowed yourself to be put in such a compromising position by denying reasonable conversations about
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  drug policy experiments. Well, and this is why I enjoy having these conversations
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  with you, Adam, because this is all still, you know, so
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  relatively new that these conversations I think need to be had regardless of where you
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  stand on the point. I don't like having conversations with absolutists who have completely
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  closed minds on one side or the other. And I also enjoy getting a
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  lot of rigorous data that we can pour through. But it seems like in
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  this debate that we're having, being able to get to some of that data
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  has been difficult because of those absolutist stances and how that translates into the overall
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  political movement. Do you understand, like, am I coming from the right
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  point in that assessment? Yeah? I think so. And what I do
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  want to stress is that the safer supply advocates have oftentimes misrepresented the data that
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  they have to imply, or rather to argue that their experiment is much more
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  evidence based than it actually is. And the London Intermedity Health Centers evaluations are
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  a great example of that. When you go to the documents, you see
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  lots of persuasive graphs and charts that suggest, you know, x percentage decrease
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  inthentanol, but when you look at the data, it's also purported with a
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  relatively small sample size. Or you'll have studies which say that this program has
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  led to you know, positive outcomes. But the problem here is that safe
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  supply programs, including the one ren by doctor Andrea Srita, don't just provide
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  free addictive drugs. They also provide other support systems like traditional addiction medication,
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  like methodone, like access to doctors and housing supports, things that have a
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  proven history of increase of improving well being. And so these studies don't make
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  any effort to discern whether positive outcomes are caused by these free addicted drugs or
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  all the other supplementary supports, and many journalists and policy makers are, I
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  guess, I don't know, a bit too lazy or ideological blinded to look
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  into this, and so they take this data at face value and they don't
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  realize that it's much more contentious they than they think. And then the safer
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  supply advocates just don't point that out either, and then there is this illusion
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  that we are implementing an innovative and effective drug policy when it seems like this
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  experiment is actually quite disastrous and that ends up costing lives. I'm still just
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  having a hard time getting over the idea that there are people who are in
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  this sphere who actually suggest, in one form or another that diversion is potentially
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  beneficial. Well, so here's the thing. So Serita and many safer activists
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  will publicly say, when they're forced to, that diversion is a bad thing,
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  and then they'll talk out of one side of the mouth and say not
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  the thing with the other side, and then they'll say, Okay, well,
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  actually diversion is fine. The like Sorita's you Know program or Clinic published
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  something called Reframing Diversion which argued that doctor should look the other way when their
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  patients resell their safer supply because diversion is driven by mutual aid and compassionate sharing,
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  which is not true. I mean, every single former drug user who
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  I've interviewed who has had friends divert safe supply found this all laughable. And
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  they say it's all driven by finance. It's all driven by money and organized
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  crime. But for many of the safe Supply advocates they think, oh,
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  well, you know what, it's better that there be more safe pharmaceutical opioids
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  in the community, because at least that means that people are using safe drugs
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  instead of drugs that are for example, imported or produced by criminals. But
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  we know, we know that that doesn't lead to good outcomes, because the
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  entire reason why we have an opioid crisis in North America to begin with is
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  because of the oxyconton crisis of twenty years ago, where essentially doctors over prescribed
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  quote unquote say pharmaceutical opioid. It's made them incredibly available, and then they
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  were diverted en mass into communities, causing the addiction crisis we see today.
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  So we have done this experiment before, and Sweden, for example, tried
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  this exact same experiment between nineteen sixty five and nineteen sixty seven. It's the
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  only other country that has ever done this in history. Well UK potentially in
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  that time too, but that's contentious and they saw the exact same disastrous results.
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  So we know that this doesn't work. We know that diversion is a
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  bad thing and it doesn't help people, but they can't seem to grasp that.
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  They don't want to accept it. Adam zvo is the director of the
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  Center for Responsible Drug Policy. Latest column is out in the National Post titled
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  behind closed Doors, Say for supply. Advocate admits kids likely use diverted opioids.
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  Adam, thank you for your time today. Oh thanks for having me
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  back on the show. We'll be right back.