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I find this piece kind of surprising, because there's a lot of good intention in it, but, also a lot of misunderstanding of the political economy of drugs and what policy reform could look like.
A thread 1/ https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/portland-protests-how-covid-affects-weather-forecasts-canada-s-opioid-crisis-love-on-the-spectrum-and-more-1.5660707/amid-horrific-spike-in-opioid-deaths-doctors-call-for-decriminalization-regulation-of-drugs-1.5660720?__vfz=medium%3Dsharebar
A thread 1/ https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/portland-protests-how-covid-affects-weather-forecasts-canada-s-opioid-crisis-love-on-the-spectrum-and-more-1.5660707/amid-horrific-spike-in-opioid-deaths-doctors-call-for-decriminalization-regulation-of-drugs-1.5660720?__vfz=medium%3Dsharebar
1. Historically it's been doctors that have advocated for control of the drug market.
2. there's no mechanism in place for a regulated market. It's not downloading govt responsibility, this is triage 2/
2. there's no mechanism in place for a regulated market. It's not downloading govt responsibility, this is triage 2/
3. "No research" here is confusing, I'm assuming stim substitution - evidence does exist here, but it's mixed https://harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12954-019-0351-1
^ All of that to say that doctors can't be reluctant to prescribe here - this is a position that as experts they've situated themselves in 3/
^ All of that to say that doctors can't be reluctant to prescribe here - this is a position that as experts they've situated themselves in 3/
Since before prohibition in Canada, doctors have positioned themselves as the legitimate controllers of medicine - shirking that responsibility at this moment isn't possible 4/
Moving on to the discussion of the drug market in this article as pointed out by @kwardvancouver the discussion of drug sellers in this article puts blame on people that have less control over their drug supply than doctors 5/ https://twitter.com/kwardvancouver/status/1286871852938190848
People who traffic and sell drugs are not trying to make their "evil quota" - you don't bring more dangerous drugs onto the market to kill people. Drug prices are going up. Sellers have to sell products that people want to buy 6/
When safrole for MDMA became unavailable ~2008, sellers switched over to other drugs - this incredibly busy (i'm sorry) graph I made of ecstasydata drug samples (in 2016) - shows how as MDMA fell BZP + TFMPP replaced a lot of that MDMA (synthetic cathinones rose ~2011) 7/
There's no "creation" of new drugs - no one is going out and synthesizing your alphabetamine fent analogues because of the pandemic - with crackdowns in producing countries and a diversification of the market, labs externally, but also locally are filling demand 8/
No one is intentionally leaving methylamine in meth - it's a byproduct of a shotty synthesis - like PMMA, which was synthesized bc it's cheaper to make than MDMA and similar process - shotty drug making is what happens when new players enter the market 9/ https://twitter.com/samhatobias/status/1284679261400363008
I'm unsure how much i can say, but our paper on drug sellers accessing drug checking from my masters work will be coming out soon - what we found is that the sellers we talked to were motivated by money to reduce harm, but also by community care ~ sellers are pwud 10/
Last thing - decrim =/= regulation. I think there is a confusion of terms here, and this can be detrimental to the public understanding the demands of drug user groups 11/
What is meant by decrim here? A regulated market is certainly decriminalized, but Portugal/Czech Republic/Costa Rica have decrim but no regulated market 12/
This ideal situation where the government regulates/legalizes drugs to be purchased by the government is one I'm here for. I'm team legalization 100% of the way, but I'm also pragmatic - legalization is 5 years out if JT said he'd do it today 13/
For context, before the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act was implemented, Canada had the Narcotic Control Act + Food and Drug Act. What became the CDSA was initially proposed in 1987, it took til 1992 for a bill to be introduced, which was passed in 1997 14/
The Cannabis Act, far less ambitious of a policy, took several years to produce, Indigenous communities did not feel adequately consulted, then there's the international mechanisms to deal with for cocaine, import & export of materials, the incredible fallout w/ the US 15/
The medical route sucks, I get it. No one is a fan of it, but doctors can't all of a sudden now, after decades/a century of fighting for the right to control medicine now wash their hands of it 16/
Lastly, the myth of the drug seller harms people who use drugs. "The Nordic model" for sex work puts sex workers lives at risk. Framing the world as "drug users good, drug sellers bad" harms everyone 17/
It makes buying drugs risky, it makes supply access more challenging. Over the years, I've had friends who sold drugs, some who do it because they have no ability to work in the legal market, others because they had a good connection and could supply others with safer drugs 18/
We are often privileged as researchers/public health folks that the question of having to sell drugs is one that has never been necessary to even consider
When imagining regulation, we need to imagine what happens to people selling too 19/
When imagining regulation, we need to imagine what happens to people selling too 19/
Drug selling & drug using are entangled together; there's what we want the world to be, how we get to that goal, and what the world is
We do need to be "sophisticated" in our approach to regulating drugs - but that means sophistication to every part of "the problem"
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We do need to be "sophisticated" in our approach to regulating drugs - but that means sophistication to every part of "the problem"
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