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Tales of a safe-supply child soldier · Kvetch & Release

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  Good morning, folks. Ten thirty three. John Ldkey here on AM eight
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  hundred KLW. Hope you're doing well. Thank you for tuning in. Looking
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  at a story right now, a column that was written in the National Post
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  Tales of a Safe Supply Child Soldier. It tells the story of a teenager
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  who describes how a British Columbia gang diverted government supplied drugs and it starts out
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  pretty harrowingly. I just want to read the first sentence to you beneath the
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  fluorescent lights of a Vancouver area basement, seventeen year old Logan, which is
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  a pseudonym provided to protect his safety. Seventeen year old Logan showed me his
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  old stab wounds last month. He received these scars while working as a drug
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  dealer for the infamous Brothers Keeper's gang, a life he recently left after getting
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  sober in jail. Logan told his story about out how that gang was trafficking
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  diverted safer supply drugs to my guest right now, who is the founder and
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  director of the Center for Responsible Drug Policy, Adam Zebo. Hey, Adam,
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  how you doing. I'm good. Thanks for having me on the show
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  again. Absolutely, thank you. For joining me. Tell us a little
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  bit about this column that you wrote. Tell us a little bit about Logan.
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  Well, so, I've been hearing for about a year and a half
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  that organized crime is involved in the trafficking the safe supply drugs. These are
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  drugs that the government gives away for free with the assumption that it will mitigate
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  use of the street supply, which tends to be contaminated and unpredictable. So
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  I'd heard from positions and former drug users that organized crime was involved, but
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  I had never heard from someone who was actually involved in that trade. Now,
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  about a month ago, a rehab center contacted me and said that they
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  had a youth want speaking to me about safe supply diversion, and I thought
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  that was interesting. I'd heard of you know, I've spoken many youths before,
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  so I said why not. And when I began to speak with him,
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  I realized he wasn't just some random kid who I diverted saber suppliers,
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  rather accessed it. He was actually involved in the Brothers Keeper's gang and has
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  been very actively involved in the criminal trafficking of these drugs all across Canada.
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  How did he How did Logan find himself in the Brothers Keeper's gang. How
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  does someone so young end up in a situation like that? Hi, How
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  did someone like Logan find their way into this gang, the Brother's Keepers?
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  What situation led to it? Well? So, Well, the thing is,
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  he was a bit of a troubled child. He had difficulties in school
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  when he was fourteen years old, and he started using marijuana and base and
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  and over time he wanted money to buy more weed, and he ended up
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  joining the gang because many of the friends were already a part of this,
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  and right away they put him to work as a drug dealer in Vancouver's downtown
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  Each side. So within a few months he was hopelessly addicted to opioids.
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  He was using his own supply. He became addicted defenseanl and he was trapped
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  as an e criminal lifestyle. And so this is of course something that you
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  said, you've been hearing a lot about. But we have been told,
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  you know, many times by different orders of government that this is not occurring.
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  Do you feel any I don't know. How how do you feel having
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  had to conduct this interview and how much it's revealed. Well, I hadn't
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  realized, I mean, I hadn't heard of the criminal traffic a safe supply
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  in this death before. I'm very much aware of the fact that the federal
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  government in DCNDP is lying to the public about safer supply because at this point,
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  I've interviewed dozens of people who have confirmed that this diversion exists and this
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  trafficking is commonplace. You know, I've heard from dozens of addiction doctors,
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  I've spoken with numerous former drug use or it's been confirmed by government reports.
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  So this isn't entirely surprising. But what was surprising to me. What was
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  new to me was the fact that this gang, in addition to reselling tens
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  of thousands of hills all across Canada, they would actually crush their pills,
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  mix it with fentinel to create something stronger and more appealing to hardcore drug dealers,
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  and then repress these pills, which once again are contaminated. And many
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  Safer Suppy advocates say that it's okay that diversion is occurring because they say,
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  oh, at least it's flooding communities with quote unquote safe drugs, not that
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  pharmaciical bids are ever safe. But it turns out that these drugs were actually
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  being contaminated, which really nullifies that point. Not only are we flooding our
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  communities with pharmacutical drugs, for far flooding our communities with sentinel laced pharmaceutical drugs
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  before. So again this is from what we're hearing from Logan here, again
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  a pseudonym. But you had made a couple of phone calls, not a
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  couple, you called fifteen pharmacies. And what did you find out through those
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  phone calls regarding the potential diversion and sale of government provided safer supply drugs.
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  Well, one of the things that Logan said, and this is something that
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  I had heard from other youth and drug dealers before and drug users, is
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  that diversion would occur right in front of the pharmacies that dispend safer supply,
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  So clients would come in, they'd build their safe supply prescriptions, and they
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  would go and sell within sight of these pharmacists. And so of course we
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  have to verify anything that a contact tells us. So I called fifteen different
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  pharmacies in the downtown east Side. I basically opened the people maps and just
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  called any pharmacy I could see, and thirteen of them didn't reply. Some
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  of them just a client to speak. Many of them said that they were
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  busy. Of the ones that said they were busy, sons sounded like they
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  were action busy, and some of them didn't. For some it sounded like
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  they were just making excuses. But of the two pharmacies that did respond,
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  both of them were aware of the fact that diversion was occurring in the neighborhood
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  and would hear about it from their clients. But both of them said their
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  own customers weren't doing this, and they said that the other pharmacies were less
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  attentive to the rules and therefore they thought this was possibly were likely occurring at
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  other pharmacies. Interesting things, they're being said by a couple of pharmacies who
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  are on the streets. Again, though this is a Vancouver, British Columbia
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  story specifically. But logan told you something about interprovincial shipping. I think that's
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  pretty interesting. Yes, So what what happened is that he would acquire about
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  two hundreds of five hundred dillies. Dillies is a slang term for an eight
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  milligram hydromorphon pill. Every single day. He would get fourteen of these bills
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  every single day from every single safer susply client, because that's the maximum that
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  can be given to a client, and then him and his fellow dealers would
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  go back to the Dang's traphouse, put in the big bag, and at
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  one point they accumulated twenty thousand pills, which they then shift to Ontario.
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  Now, to give you a sense of how significant of a problem this is,
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  snorting just three or four of these pills is enough to induce an overdose
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  in an opioid naive user. For example, a teenager. One of these
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  pills is four times the okioid dose used to manage pain in a surgery setting,
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  So this is these are a lot of okiods. Keep in mind,
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  like hydromorphone is twice as strong as heroin, go into Ontario because of safe
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  supply, and all of it is funded by our government. Staggering to begin
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  to think about Now Logan again, a pseudonym was eventually jailed for assault,
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  but he quit drugs and despite relapsing, is now in recovery, which is
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  a great thing to hear. But Logan is just one person on the street
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  who was dealing, which obviously is a significant undercount of what's actually happening on
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  the streets. What does that mean that you know, one person isn't doing
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  this anymore, but there is still you know the system still exists. Well,
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  I mean, so he's just one lower level part in a larger machine.
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  He's replaceable. And as mentioned, he was not the only only dealer
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  in this gang before acquiring safer supply, So you had numerous dealers from one
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  gang acquiring hundreds of sills each. And that system still exists. And we've
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  seen in DC the RCMP announcing seizures of let's say, thousands and thousands of
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  skills at a time. I know that in Ontario, in London, Ontario,
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  they just seized about two months ago ten thousands of lotted bills. So
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  this flood of pharmaceutical opioids is continuing and we're starting to see that reflect in
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  our data because a few weeks ago cam H released report that showed that the
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  number of students in Ontario who self report using pharmaceutical okioids for non medical reasons
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  jumps by seventy percent between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty three. And keep
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  in mind, the safe supply really burst out into Ontario in twenty twenty,
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  so I think there's a problem here, something that will continue keeping our eye
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  on and having conversations about Adam. I want to thank you for your time
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  today, very much appreciated. Thanks for once again for having me on the
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  show and letting me speak about my work