Community conversation in Trail tackles harm reduction challenges

What are the biggest barriers to drug safety in the West Kootenays?

Garth Mullins is a Vancouver-based activist who produces Crackdown – A podcast about drug user activism.

On Tuesday, Mullins was a guest speaker at “Community Conversation on the Toxic Drug Crisis,” a sold-out event in Trail that attracted 150 people.

Garth says a big barrier to help is a lack of access to pharmaceutical alternatives.

“So, we have a toxic drug supply. It’ll kill you in the afternoon, it’ll kill you in the morning. So the very thing we need to do is to separate people from the toxic drug supply. Give them a pharmaceutical alternative. That’s what we’ve been asking for for ten years.”

Interior Health also reports that drug deaths remain high. They say that street drugs in the region are increasingly toxic.

BC Coroners Service data shows the Kootenay Boundary remains one of the hardest-hit regions in the province for toxic drug deaths. 

But harm reduction strategies like pharmaceutical alternatives remain controversial. 

Organizers say the event aimed to address what they described as misinformation and disinformation around harm reduction strategies. Organizers included community action teams in Nelson, Castlegar, Grand Forks, and Trail in partnership with ANKORS West.

Rising toxic drug poisonings are putting more pressure on service providers. Organizers say space in overdose prevention and shelters is already limited.

Another guest speaker, Corey Ranger is president of the Harm Reduction Nurses Association.  Ranger feels drug policy is moving backward in Canada.

He explains that an unregulated drug supply is an unpredictable one. Ranger, like Interior Health, says opioid agonist therapy along with treatment and harm reduction are among the best ways to prevent toxic drug deaths. 

Mullins says pharmaceutical alternatives to street drugs are needed to reduce risk. He argues restricting access to traditional street drugs forces people to find more dangerous alternatives. 

“…In places where there’s been a furious drug war with lots and lots of police action, drug seizures, interdictions, border controls, all that stuff, those places are more dangerous. The places where they crack down on heroin and crack down on opium, driven those things right out of the market, and they’ve been replaced with fentanyl and you know, tranquilizers and benzodiazepines and stuff. Those are the really dangerous places for drug users.”

Ranger pointed to research showing an association between drug seizures and increased drug poisoning rates. Researchers say overdose rates can rise following enforcement actions by police, possibly because disruptions in the drug supply push people toward more dangerous alternatives. 

Cheryl Dowden is Executive Director of ANKORS and an organizer of the event. ANKORS provides essential, harm reduction services to vulnerable populations in both Nelson and Cranbrook.

Cheryl said it’s hard to narrow down which issue is the biggest barrier to people who use drugs getting the help they need. Stigma is the first one that came to her mind. Cheryl says we should seek to understand rather than dismiss those with lived expertise.

“I would say that obviously stigma, and the way that society you know, treats people who use drugs. I mean, that’s something that we’ve been talking about this entire conference is how we remove that barrier. And I think that that just really involves us, opening our hearts and minds.”