Latest / Kvetch & Release / London Police say hydromorphone seizures up 3,000% post-safer supply expansion but failed to disclose publicly

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London Police say hydromorphone seizures up 3,000% post-safer supply expansion but failed to disclose publicly · Kvetch & Release

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  New call him out in the National Post titled hydromorphone pill Season. It's three
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  thousand percent after safer supply expansion, with the National Post learning that police leaders
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  in London, Ontario, have known for months that staggering amounts of sofer supply
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  opioids are being diverted to the black market, yet they failed to publicly disclose
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  this as a national debate has been ongoing, leading to questions about the police
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  service about the safer supply program, and one person who keeps a close eye
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  on that is the founder and director of the Center for a Responsible Drug Policy.
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  Adam Zvo joins me right now, Hey, Adam, how you doing,
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  Helliam good? Thanks for having me back on the show to talk about
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  this. Yeah, thanks for joining me here. Three thousand percent, that's
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  not a small number. No, no, not at all. So essentially
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  I received an email from the Deputy Chief at London Police Service and in that
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  email he basically said that in two thousand and nine seen less than one thousand
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  hydromorphone bills received in London. Then that increased sharply in twenty twenty, which
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  is the same year that safe supply access was dramatically expanded. He didn't spetify
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  exactly what Sharply meant, but what he did say is that by twenty twenty
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  two, six thousand bills were seized, and by twenty twenty three, thirty
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  thousand bills were seized. So over the course of just a few years,
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  coincidentally, when safe supply was made available in London, we saw a three
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  thousand percent increase in hydromorphone feizures. Now these numbers may not mean a lot
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  to many people, but we have to keep in mind that just three of
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  these pills is enough to induce an okioid overdose and an inexperienced user, for
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  example in a teenager if you snort them for example. So these thirty thousand
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  pills is the equivalent of ten thousand overdoses for young Canadians. And as doctor
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  Sharon Koivu, who's an addiction specialist in Toronto in London, who's been soundingly
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  alarmed about this for years, said, this is only a drop in the
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  bucket compared to the total number of pills that are diverted and which aren't confiscated
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  by the police. So why would these pills be diverted, what's the purpose?
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  What are people I guess diverting them for well, the problems that our
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  safe fleck programs are really poorly designed. So hydromorphone is an opioid that is
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  as potent as heroin, and we use that as a potential alternative for people
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  who are using illsted fentanyl. The idea is that if a drug user is
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  using local fentanyl, they don't know what's in it, they don't know if
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  it's contaminated, they don't know the dose, and they might kill them.
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  So we give them bottles and bottles and bottles of hydromorphone instead. But the
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  thing is that sentinel is fifty times stronger than hydromorphone or heroin, So if
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  you're a heroin addict, even if you get huge amounts of hydromorphone, it's
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  not going to do much for you. Even the federal government has conducted studies
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  which show that maximal doses at most will maybe manager withdraws. So in this
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  case, you do the rational thing, because addicts are still rational people in
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  many ways. They have irrational ends because of the addiction, but they know
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  how to rationally pursue those ends. They sell their hydromorphone on the street at
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  dirt cheap prices because they get these drugs for free to make money to buy
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  Sentinel, and so they flood surrounding communities with hydromorphone. They get like thirty
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  or forty pills a day, and then these pills are disproportionately acquired by people
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  who have lower opioid tolerances because those the people that these pills will work for.
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  And they often get into the hands of youth because you don't know what
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  hydromorphone is. They know that heroin will mess up your life, and they
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  don't want to inject heroin because kids don't want to experiment with intravenous drugs.
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  But if they're at a party and someone hands them a pill and they say
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  it's hydromorphone, and they say it's just a prescription pain medication that is given
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  for free by the government and it's marketed at faiths, then they try it
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  and then they get it did and then they graduate to sensinal which then kills
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  them. Now you spoke with the president of the London Police Association, that's
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  their union, and what did you find out from him? Well, so
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  he told me back in January that it was common knowledge amongst frontline officers in
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  downtown London that safer supply was being diverted, and that was the first time
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  that I considered the possibility that the London Police Service, the actual department itself,
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  wasn't being totally honest. Now, around this time, a credible source
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  told me that the London Police Service was actually afraid of going public about diversion
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  because they didn't want to deal with the backlash that could come from social service
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  agencies dealing with addiction homelessness. I didn't include that in the final article though,
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  so I could already tell by January that there was a lack of transparency
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  here. Now you sort of pulled teeth a little bit when it came to
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  sending over some detailed questions to the London Police Service trying to get this information
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  out of them. What was that process like? What happened? Well,
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  so in early April I saw that they had done a drug seizure that included
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  about ten thousand hydromorphone bills eight bilograms, which is the exact dosage use for
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  safe supply. And when you have that volume of pills, it's pretty obvious
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  that there's a safer supply connection unless it's counterfeit. But that doesn't usually happen
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  in this case, and so I three days later I emailed London Police Service
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  and I told them, hey, you know, you can you let me
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  know is this seizure related safer supply? You know? If so, how
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  do you know what indications do you have about safe supply diversion in general?
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  And they didn't get back to me for three weeks. They stonewalled, and
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  I followed up several times and got nowhere. And then eventually I said,
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  hey, can you give me a clear timeline because I suspect that you guys
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  are stonewalling me. And the next business day, the deputy chief you know,
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  got on the phone with me called me, and after that call I
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  got a sense well basically, it promised that he would send over some data
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  measuring diversion. And then another month passed and nothing happened. I didn't get
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  the data, and then I emailed them again and I said, I'm writing
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  a column about this for next week and I'm going to publish the column regardless
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  of you guys answer, so please answer by the deadline. And only then
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  when I applied that pressure tactic, that they give me the data that I
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  just mentioned. With this three thousand percent increase. At that point I pushed
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  a bit more. They said they could speak more openly about this. At
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  the end of June, I took a guest and I thought that maybe that
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  they were in the middle of an operation involving safer supply, which turned out
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  to be true. And so last week I spoke with Deputy Chief again.
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  He confirmed that safer sply diversion is a significant public safety issue. He said
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  that this data hadn't come out earlier because of the lack of like an institutional
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  culture of secrecy and poor data gathering practices, and he apologized. He actually
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  admitted that when I first when I first approached the London Police Service in early
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  twenty twenty three about diversion, I was told that there was no one who
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  could speak about this, and they respect me to climb my request for answers,
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  and I said, I think you guys were stonewalling me because at this
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  point you already had data showing a six hundred percent increase. And he said,
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  yeah, you know what, that seems like stonewalling And I'm sorry that
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  was not cool, but I don't know who made that decision. Now you
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  conclude your column with a question posed to the audience. What would have happened
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  had the You know, I guess the population generally known that this information existed
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  by the one London Police Service due to a lack of transparency, and I
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  guess, according to their own spokesperson that they had an institutional culture of secrecy
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  in the past. What does it mean, though, I suppose that this
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  information wasn't made public when they first had it, and how does that contribute
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  to the ongoing debate of safer supply in your opinion? Well, for eighteen
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  months now, there has been a vigorous public debate about whether safe supply drugs
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  are being diverted to the street or not. And for over a year now,
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  dozens of addictions physicians have come forward and said that they are seeing this
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  in their practice. They are begging the federal government to listen. They are
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  begging the public to listen. And they've been told time and time again that
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  they are just making all of this up, or that they are fear mongering,
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  because this is what safe supply advocates do. They gaslight the public.
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  They've gaslight the public about me. They told me that I was a liar,
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  a fabulous, a grister, and because the London Police Service sat on
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  this data despite the fact that there was a very loud public debate, it
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  means that people didn't believe us, and that means that corrective action has been
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  delayed. If we had cut down on safer supply and required more supervision and
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  reforms a year ago, that would have meant tens of thousands, if not
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  hundreds of thousands of pills being kept off the streets, which would have meant
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  fewer teams getting addicted, and that would have meant fewer kids dying. Well,
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  I want to thank you so much for coming on to discuss your most
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  recent column here. Obviously it's a file that we're going to be keeping a
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  close eye on, Adam. I appreciate your time. Oh, thanks for
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  listening to me. Thank you very much. Adam Zivo is the founder and
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  director of the Center for Responsible Drug Policy New Post call them out in the
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  National Post. Hydromorphone pills seized in London skyrocket three thousand percent after safer supply expansion.