Front Burner - ‘The Drugs Store,’ safe supply, and its backlash

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

Two months ago, Jerry Martin opened up a shop in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside selling a clean supply of drugs like cocaine and heroin. His store was shut down by B.C. police less than 24 hours later. Last Friday, Martin himself died from a suspected fentanyl overdose. For the last several months, safe supply has been the subject of fiery debate in the House of Commons. Conservatives like Pierre Poilievre say that safe supply policies lead to an increase in drug-related deaths. But many experts and B.C. officials disagree. Today on Front Burner, VICE News reporter Manisha Krishnan discusses the life and legacy of Jerry Martin, as well as the current state of safe supply policies in Canada. Two months ago, Jerry Martin opened up a shop in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside selling a clean supply of drugs like cocaine and heroin. His store was shut down by B.C. police less than 24 hours later. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Tamara Kandaker. I'm excited, for sure, absolutely. I'm really looking forward to it. It's been a long journey to get here.

This is Jerry Martin, speaking to CBC Vancouver just two months ago. And what Jerry was really looking forward to was the opening of his little mobile shop in the city's downtown Eastside. In a few short hours, the shop was going to start selling small amounts of a variety of clean and tested drugs. Cocaine, crack, methamphetamine, and heroin. Jerry said the goal was to educate people and...

To save lives and stop injuries and stop predators for sure. You know, providing a safe, clean supply is going to hopefully stop a lot of the overdoses, a lot of the injuries, and stop girls from having to do certain things just to get their drugs or whoever. So that's our plan. Jerry said the drugs he was about to sell had been tested for fentanyl and other harmful toxins, so users would know what they were getting and could hopefully avoid overdosing. I spent a lot of time in the streets myself, nearly 15 years actually.

So I understand the fears, the dangers, and, you know, just people want to be people, you know what I mean? They should have something safe, just like everybody else gets something safe. It's their medicine, really. This is what they're doing to deal with their traumas. Jerry knew what he was doing was illegal. B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of up to 2.5 grams of some drugs for a three-year pilot project. But selling those drugs is still against the law. It is what it is. I have no choice. If people want to do this, get a safe supply, someone's going to have to stand up and do it. Obviously, I'm not going to be able to get a business license for something illegal, so I'm just going to stand up. We're going to do it anyways. Case prosecution,

fines, whatever needs to be done. I do hope that they leave me alone. I do hope that, you know, they've called for a clean, safe supply, the police and the government. So I'm hoping that they just let me do what I need to do. I mean, they should have done this themselves. I mean, you can't just tell a whole problem. His dispensary, called The Drug Store, made headlines around the world. It was open for less than 24 hours before he was arrested, the shop was closed, and the drugs were seized. Last week, Jerry Martin died of a suspected fentanyl overdose. He was 51.

More than 1,000 people have died from drugs in BC this year alone. So today, Manisha Krishnan is with me. She's been reporting on North American drug policy for Vice News since 2015. We used to be colleagues and we're still good friends. We're going to be talking about the state of safer supply policies in Canada. Policies that have recently come under heavy fire from opponents who want to see them done away with altogether. Hi, Manny. Hi, T. How's it going? Let's start with Jerry Martin.

I know you had a chance to meet him and interview him before he died, right before he was about to open his shop. And what did he tell you about how the toxic drug crisis had touched his own life personally? the toxic drug crisis had touched his own life personally. I actually met Jerry because I had interviewed his brother, Gord, his stepbrother, Gord, for a documentary that I did on the synthetic drug wave of the overdose crisis. And that doc aired last year. And at the time, Gord, who was severely addicted to this street drug called Benzodope, he told me that he didn't think he was going to make it to his next birthday. I think that I'll probably die. You do? Maybe, yeah.

If I make it to 40, I'll be surprised. Like, I'm 39 now, and I'll be 40 in May. I'd be pretty surprised. And he did die before the doc aired. After that, one of his other brothers had reached out to me and put me in touch with Jerry and said, Jerry wants to open this store. So then Jerry and I started talking about it. And he felt guilt about Gord's death. I think Gord died right after he got out of a jail stint. And Jerry felt bad that he hadn't let Gord stay with him. Jerry himself was homeless for a lot of his youth, and he was addicted to crack cocaine.

So this is something that's really touched his family. It touched himself. And I know there's still a lot that we don't know. But what do we know at this point about his death last week? So his partner told me that he was found in her car and he had overdosed. You know, they weren't exactly sure how long he had been there for, but they did manage to revive him. And then he was taken to the hospital and monitored for a couple of days and he just didn't have any brain activity. So they ultimately decided to take him off of life support. And he did die of a suspected fentanyl overdose. You know, fentanyl is the main driver of overdose deaths in the country,

but it is pretty ironic that somebody who was really trying to provide a safe supply of drugs would then die from an overdose. Right. And he wasn't a known opioid user, right? Do people close to him find it strange that he died with fentanyl in his system? Yeah. So this was the thing with Jerry. He had used cocaine and crack cocaine. And he told me, you know, when I was in Vancouver right before his shop opened, I had asked him if he was using again. And he told me that he was using cocaine again, but that he wasn't using fentanyl. And his partner, Krista, also told me that she did not think he was using opioids. For the amount of times that man has been knocked down in his lifetime, he always got back up. And I think I just thought he'd get back up. The other thing is

he really went to great pains to source heroin for his store. Now it's really hard to get heroin that is free from fentanyl in BC or in large, most of North America at this point. Most of it is contaminated. So he was really sort of adamant that he didn't want to sell fentanyl. He wanted to provide people with alternatives to that. So that's what makes it even stranger that he would die with fentanyl in his system. We know that he wouldn't be carrying a supply that could ever be tainted or cross-contaminate with other supplies. But the fentanyl was found in his system. And so it begs the question whether he had his own supply that day or made an impulsive decision. So we heard Jerry Martin in the intro say that he opened this shop in part to provide a safe supply of drugs to users. But the B.C. government already has safe supply programs in place. And I wonder if you can tell me a bit more about how

long they've been around, the drugs that they provide, and just generally, how do they work? Sure. There's a clinic in the downtown east side, which is sort of ground zero for Canada's overdose crisis. It's called Crosstown, and they have been prescribing prescription heroin since 2014. It was sort of a pilot project that was one of the first clinics in North America to ever do that. And they now offer people prescription fentanyl, morphine, or other opioids like hydromorphone to replace the street supply. And then in 2020, the BC government expanded the safe supply program. So, you know, they funded a number of other projects. And then, you know, the federal government has also provided funding for these across

the country. So there's at least a couple dozen of these programs across the country. Okay. So according to the BC Centers for Disease Control, between March 2020 and December 2022, around 12,000 people received safe supply in BC. That number is really just a fraction of the more than 100,000 British Columbians who have opioid use disorder. So it's still just a sort of a tiny fraction of the people who are addicted to opioids that are getting it. And so why would someone like Jerry Martin have found these safe supply

efforts insufficient enough so that he would want to take matters into his own hands and offer his own alternative? I think some of the arguments that you hear from people like Jerry Martin, but also people who work in harm reduction, is that these programs are quite small. They're pretty regulated. So for example, you know, while some places they will let you take home stuff, often you'll have to go to a clinic every day if you want to receive your safe supply. And then also they mostly pertain to opioids. Jerry wanted to go beyond that. Like there no safe supply government-provided cocaine. There's no government provided MDMA or meth. So I think he also just wanted to take it a step further and offer all

of these drugs. And yeah, a lot of people just feel like they should be more widely accessible to drug users. then free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you.

Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Okay, so even though these existing safe supply

programs are pretty small, the backlash and the discourse around them right now has been pretty heated. So, for example, the federal conservative party introduced a motion in the House of Commons calling on the liberals to stop all programs that provide non-toxic drugs to people with addiction and redirect the funding to treatment services. We're told that giving out and decriminalizing hard drugs would reduce drug overdoses. These so-called experts are typically pie-in-the-sky theorists with no experience getting people off drugs, or they're members of the misery industry, those paid activists and public health bureaucrats whose jobs depend on the crisis continuing. That motion was defeated. But what have you heard from experts about the claims made by

conservatives that safe supply programs are actually making the toxic drug crisis worse? Yeah. So, I mean, BC's chief coroner, Lisa LaPointe, she has said that there is no evidence that safe supply is, you know, diversion is driving overdoses. I think a lot of the rhetoric comes from reporting in the National Post that's saying that hydromorphone is being diverted. So that means if I'm in safe supply and I'm getting some and then I go on the street and resell it, that it's being diverted and that's driving new addictions, especially among young people, like teenagers and overdose deaths. People are dying because the policies of this prime minister

are killing them. His policies are flooding the streets with drugs that now go for a dollar a hit. You can buy 26 hits of hydromorphine, which is an analogue to heroin, for $30. These are drugs paid for by Canadian tax dollars under a program by this government that has led to a 300% increase in drug overdose deaths. But the reality is that the overdose deaths are still largely being driven by fentanyl or, you know, fentanyl combined with other drugs. A very, very tiny percentage of our overdoses are linked to prescription drugs. Yeah, I just think this is a lot of sort of rhetoric. It's kind of driving a moral panic, but the evidence, the data is just not there supporting it. And just to add some stats, Dr. Bonnie Henry said at a press conference last month that among young

people, there's been no change in opioid use disorder since safe supply programs started. If we look at specifically at opioid use disorder in young people, in those age 19 to 24, there has been a decrease in new diagnoses since 2017. And thankfully, in youth under 19, it has been stable and low since 2017. And to be clear, like we should be concerned about young people who are addicted to drugs and who are using the street supply. But I think this sort of argument over diverted safe supply is a bit of a red herring. And I'll just include some of what BC's chief coroner, Lisa LaPointe, has said about the backlash to safe supply. She put out a statement that read in part, anonymous allegations and secondhand anecdotes suggesting that these new initiatives are somehow responsible for the crisis

we've been experiencing since 2016 are not only harmful, they are simply wrong. And also that safer supply prescribing has been closely monitored, and there are no indications that diversion is leading to increased incidence of opioid use disorder. There's also no evidence that prescribed safer supply is causing drug toxicity deaths. Evidence must continue to be gathered, and facts must take precedence over partisanship. We have been concerned about this increasingly polarized rhetoric that is not informed by evidence, that is not paying attention to evidence, as a matter of fact, and is sharing opinion or anecdote that, in fact, is clearly not defensible if you look at the data.

So one thing that you always hear from critics of safe supply is a data in the number of overdose deaths. And that is because it is clear... Alberta has taken a totally different approach, one that de-emphasizes harm reduction policies like safer supply and safer consumption and focuses more on recovery. They're building about a dozen recovery communities. And for a little while, deaths were trending downward there, but now they've gone back up. And in April, the toxic drug supply killed a record number of Albertans. What role do you see treatment and recovery playing in this crisis? So I think there is a real sort of false dichotomy that pits treatment against harm reduction. You know, harm reduction, simply the philosophy is to meet people

where they're at and keep them alive. You know, if they then eventually want to go into treatment, I mean, you can't go to treatment if you've died of an overdose, right? So I think that this is part of what's sort of playing out. But Alberta has sort of floated the idea of forcing people to go into treatment. And that is a really dangerous idea, because people are at higher risk of overdosing on opioids when, for example, when they go to jail, when they get evicted, or when police make drug bus and treatment, especially forced treatment could be another example of that. And the reason why is because your tolerance actually goes down quite fast. So if you then are, you know, let's say you're forced to go to treatment and then you get out and you start using again right away, or maybe you go back to the dose you were using before, you are at much higher risk of overdosing and dying. Wow. Yeah, I think that's part of the issue with sort of trying to force people to go into treatment.

So it feels like the backlash to safe supply and other harm reduction policies, it's not new, but it seems like the volume of it has really turned up in recent months. Like there was a time not too long ago that this issue didn't feel quite so partisan. Even the Canadian Federation of Chiefs of Police came out and endorsed safe supply programs as, quote unquote, evidence based medical treatment. So why do you think we're seeing this immense backlash right now? I have a couple of ideas. I think the pandemic did sort of make things a lot worse in terms of poverty, wealth inequality, homelessness and addiction. poverty, wealth inequality, homelessness, and addiction. We're seeing a ton of rhetoric out of cities like Vancouver, Portland, San Francisco, these cities that are sort of perceived to be progressive, but they also have, you know, huge issues with housing, homelessness, and addiction. And what I'm seeing is a really sort of mobilized NIMBY movement right now in a lot of these cities where people are saying, you know, we're fed up.

They're kind of feeding these viral content farms where they go out and film people who are on the streets, who are addicted to drugs. And I think a lot of people are just uncomfortable with this level of sort of visible poverty and addiction and they just want it gone. But I think also like people are just sort of impatient. They want things to just be solved. And so San Francisco, for example, people say, oh, it's such a progressive city, but look at all of these overdoses. And it's like, well, San Francisco doesn't have safe consumption sites. They don't have safe supply. They have major issues with wealth inequality. None of those things have actually been addressed. You know, even Vancouver, we have safe supply, but it's not sort of maybe at scale or en masse to the level that it might need to be to make kind of a bigger

impact. What would you say to people who ask if safe supply is a useful approach in this crisis? And if, as you say, the backlash against it is misguided, why isn't it working? Why are we seeing more people dying more than a thousand in BC this year alone, and it's only July? That's a pretty astonishing number. Yeah, I think it's really, it's frustrating. It's a difficult question to answer because it's like all of these strategies, you know, decriminalization, consumption sites, safe supply, they're all sort of pieces of a puzzle. But in and of themselves, like none of them is going to be a silver bullet. I think the answer in BC is just that if there was no safe supply and if there were

no safe consumption sites, we would be seeing a lot more people dying. That's not necessarily a satisfying answer, but that is what the experts that I've talked to have said. And I know you've also done reporting on the ways that the drug supply is getting even more dangerous with things like benzo dope and trank, which is now starting to get attention in Canada, it's spreading across North America. Do you want to talk a bit about the effects that they're having on on drug users? Yeah, I mean, I think basically, we've entered this new era of the overdose crisis, where we have all of these combinations of synthetic drugs. And so we

have drugs that are even worse than fentanyl because they're being combined with either super potent benzos or super potent, you know, tranquilizers. In the case of Trank, it's xylosine, which is a veterinary sedative. You know, I guess part of the reason for that is that some of these substances that are being cut into the supply, they're not necessarily scheduled. So it's easy to sort of order them online and just add them to the drug supply. And we have this sort of never ending war on drugs where you have various governments, I mean, namely the US government, have various governments, I mean, namely the US government, like banning certain substances. And then inevitably, there's a new novel substance that's not yet banned, that maybe is even worse, that's being cut into the supply. So it's this never ending game of whack-a-mole. And the effects

can be horrific. I mean, with Trank, we're seeing people who are literally having their arms and legs amputated. Their skin is essentially rotting from using this drug. In BC, where benzo dope has become really prevalent, you know, I talked to a teenage girl who said that she has been sexually assaulted multiple times because these drugs are so strong and they will knock you out for hours at a time and that leaves you very vulnerable. So before we go today, just going back to where we started with Jerry Martin, it struck me when I was reading your story that he's not the only source of yours or someone you've interviewed who's died. And you've been on this beat for years. And, you know, we're friends. So I've watched you navigate some pretty difficult moments. And I wonder how they've informed your approach to reporting on this crisis.

your approach to reporting on this crisis? Yeah, it's I mean, it is surreal to sort of interview someone's sibling, have him predict his own death, and then that comes true. And then literally, you know, a year later, the same thing happens with with his stepbrother. And it is really like it does hit you when you sort of you see these people who are fighting against the toxic drug supply they're trying to warn people and they're also you know sort of trying to keep themselves safe and then we just keep watching these deaths pile up and i have a lot of respect for my sources who talk to me about things that, you know, including on the record that will clearly criminalize them. I mean, with Jerry, he got arrested, you know, within a day. And so I think a lot of these people aren't treated as experts. They're not treated with sort of the respect that they deserve. But I do look at them as experts in the drug supply. And, you know, my sources who

are drug dealers and drug users, they're the ones who first told me about Benzodope and Trank. And that was way before any official authority or government body came out and even knew about it. Unfortunately, they are the canaries in the coal mine and they are at the mercy of a very, very toxic drug supply. Okay, Manny, thanks so much for doing this. Yeah, thanks for having me. All right, that's all for today. I'm Tamara Kendacker. Thanks so much for listening and I will talk to you tomorrow.