Profiting from despair: How decriminalization advocates exploited B.C.’s opioid crisis

 fIt wasn’t just that funding for the out-of-control opioid crisis flowed to those promoting radical, unproven policies. Advocates leading the charge to B.C.’s doomed drug decriminalization experiment were personally investing in businesses to supply opioids to addicts, profiting off the back of a massive social crisis, as Vancouver psychologist Dr. Julian Somers tells Brian this week. Meanwhile, leaders promoting ever more “safe supply” grew too friendly with pharmaceutical producers. Somers, an addictions specialist, explains how this complete abandonment of harm-reduction principles, including any focus on recovery, created the catastrophe that has B.C. now desperately reversing course — even as other Canadian governments plan to repeat its mistakes. (Recorded May 2, 2024)
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 fIt wasn’t just that funding for the out-of-control opioid crisis flowed to those promoting radical, unproven policies. Advocates leading the charge to B.C.’s doomed drug decriminalization experiment were personally investing in businesses to supply opioids to addicts, profiting off the back of a massive social crisis, as Vancouver psychologist Dr. Julian Somers tells Brian this week. Meanwhile, leaders promoting ever more “safe supply” grew too friendly with pharmaceutical producers. Somers, an addictions specialist, explains how this complete abandonment of harm-reduction principles, including any focus on recovery, created the catastrophe that has B.C. now desperately reversing course — even as other Canadian governments plan to repeat its mistakes. (Recorded May 2, 2024)

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