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@andrewwadden @TSN1040 @BlakePriceTSN @mattsekeres Hey guys. Just turned you on after reading the Botchford family statement. I work with people who use drugs and programs that serve them, and have for 11 yrs. I am from Vancouver, spent six years working on the DTES and am a /1
...big Cancun’s fan and was a religious reader of the provies and the Athletties. I have lived and worked on these issues in the US since 2014 in DC and Baltimore. It is impossible to overstate how the problems around overdose are exacerbated here by stigma and racism. /2
Three things for ppl to know in the wake of Botch's death: (1) while ppl mix cocaine and opiates ("a speedball"), folks who use stimulants like cocaine, and have no opioid tolerance (placing them at higher OD risk) have been dying in greater numbers in recent years as fentanyl /3
Proliferated into the street drug supply. Stimulant associated OD deaths have been described as a “fourth wave” of the opioid crisis. This doesn’t make Jason’s life more or less valuable than people I lived and lost on the DTES or here in DC, Baltimore it elsewhere. Knowing the/4
...risks is critical. (2) Blake mentioned the DTES and not knowing where to start. I think mentioned @AndreaWoo, who has long covered the neighborhood well. The DTES is a community with a lot of pain, but also a magical place and a leader in community informed response. Here, /5
...folks who work and research in this area often present on the innovative responses on the DTES, including Hopkins prof @SusanSherman. If folks want to learn about the community, they should read @AndreaWoo’s colleague @tlupick’s book “fighting for space”, capturing some of /6
..the work done on the DTES, often led by tHE @PHScss & @VANDUpeople, the latter of which is the first drug user union in North America. Years and decades of gains in saving lives were deeply challenged since fentanyl hit the neighborhood in 2014, a poisoning of the street drug/7
..supply that reaches all corners of society, including Jason, who meant a lot to a lot of us, and more to you, his colleagues. (3) this week of acknowledging racism, the education needed for NHL players and fans and the need to listen, we’d be remiss to not connect racism and /8
..the war on drugs. The first prohibition laws in North America were in 19th century San Francisco abd Vamcouver, targeting opium@because its association with maligned Chinese Canadian communities. The war on drugs is declared by the Nixon administrationh in 1971, and is often /9
..called a failure, which is true if it was to save lives or reduce drug use, or get rid of drugs. Nixon domestic adviser later admitted it was to target their enemies: “You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, /10
... but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.” Martin Luther King called the work of historian C Vann Woodward’s work explains Jim Crow as they intellectual/11
..and historical bible of the civil rights movement. You can strongly argue that Michelle Alexander’s 2010 book “the New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age if Colorblindness” plays a similar role today. Folks who want to understand this should start by reading her book or /12
..watching @13THFilm. Thanks for the work and broadcasting y’all do at a bunch of intersections. It has often been a salve to feel connected to home since moving here. Rest In Peace @botchford, and my condolences to his family. That’s it for me except some receipts/links —> /13
..on the three waves: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/opioids/index.html. On the onset of the fentanyl crisis in the DTES by @tlupick that won a National magazine award —> https://www.straight.com/news/841036/how-worst-overdose-epidemic-vancouvers-history-left-downtown-eastside-fend-itself Why/how things looked different in DC: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/local/dc-opioid-epidemic-response-african-americans/?utm_term=.2f6c38eb8f34&itid=lk_inline_manual_3&_gl=1*1d9ee2v*_ga*U3UwNDJ6RXRfcVNoNm1GVnVwTUhwU3FEUnV1aG1DTEFaVF8zZ2Q0TW1Md2FzaXEyNDk4YlFXSzlqZXRCVkRTWg..
A Lecture by renowned neuroscientist Dr Carl Hart on how Drug Policy is Race Policy from 2017 —> and here is Michelle Alexander at the historic pulpit often used by Dr King at Riverside church in NY:
indigenous disparities in ODs https://www.straight.com/news/1246576/bcs-overdose-crisis-hitting-indigenous-peoples-way-harder-any-other-group and here is the publisher of “fighting for space” where you can buy or read a free excerpt —> https://arsenalpulp.com/Books/F/Fighting-for-Space. A podcast by people who use drugs can be found here: @crackdownpod
@TSN1040 @andrewwadden @mattsekeres @BlakePriceTSN that’s the end of my thread. You mentioned a couple times that you are not experts. Thanks for saying so and directing to @AndreaWoo. I am paid as an expert here, & that’s b/c I was shaped by working among the giants of the DTES.
