By Liam Michaud a b, Gillian Kolla c d, Katherine Rudzinski e, Adrian Guta 

The ongoing overdose and drug toxicity crisis in North America has contributed momentum to the emergence of safer supply prescribing and programs in Canada as a means of providing an alternative to the highly volatile unregulated drug supply. The implementation and scale-up of safer supply have been met with a vocal reaction on the part of news media commentators, conservative politicians, recovery industry representatives, and some prominent addiction medicine physicians. This reaction has largely converged around several narratives, based on unsubstantiated claims and anecdotal evidence, alleging that safer supply programs are generating a “new opioid epidemic”, reflecting an emerging alignment among key institutional and political actors. Employing situational analysis method, and drawing on the policy studies and social science scholarship on moral panics, this essay examines news media coverage from January to July 2023, bringing this into dialogue with other existing empirical sources on safer supply (e.g. Coroner's reports, program evaluations, debates among experts in medical journals). We employ eight previously established criteria delineating moral panics to critically appraise public dialogue regarding safer supply, diverted medication, and claims of increased youth initiation to drug use and youth overdose. In detailing the emergence of a moral panic regarding safer supply, we trace historic continuities with earlier drug scares in Canadian history mobilized as tools of racialized poverty governance, as well as previous backlashes towards healthcare interventions for people who use drugs (PWUD). The essay assesses the claims of moral entrepreneurs against the current landscape of opioid use, diversion, and overdose among youth, notes the key role played by medical expertise in this and previous moral panics, and identifies what the convergence of these narratives materialize for PWUD and healthcare access, as well as the broader policy responses such narratives activate.

International Journal of Drug Policy Volume 127, May 2024, 104423

By Liam Michaud, Jenn McDermid, Aaron Bailey, Tyson Singh Kelsall 

The unregulated drug toxicity crisis in British Columbia (BC), Canada, has claimed over 14,000 lives since 2016. The crisis is shaped by prohibitionist policies that has led to the contamination of the unregulated drug supply, resulting in a surge of fatal and non-fatal overdose events. The criminalization of drug users exacerbates this situation, pushing individuals into carceral systems for the possession of and/or social practices related to drug use. This commentary examines the involvement of policing in the development, and throughout the first 15 months of its implementation, of BC's decriminalization framework. We highlight concerns regarding police discretion, the expansion of scope, and the interweaving of carceral logics into policies that purport to be public health-oriented.

International Journal of Drug Policy, Volume 129, July 2024, 104478