Addictions
B.C. poll reveals clash between Indigenous views and drug policy
By Alexandra Keeler
A supermajority of First Nations respondents disagree that criminalizing drug use is racist, challenging public health advocates’ assumptions
A new report shows a majority of British Columbians — and a plurality of all ethnic communities surveyed — disagree with the contention that drug criminalization policies are racist.
The findings challenge assertions made by prominent B.C. policymakers, who have advocated for drug decriminalization and harm-reduction initiatives on the grounds of anti-racism and reconciliation.
The report, published by the policy nonprofit Centre for Responsible Drug Policy and think tank Macdonald-Laurier Institute, draws from a poll of 6,300 B.C. adults that was commissioned by the centre and conducted by Mainstreet Research.
“Chinese and Indigenous leaders keep telling me that their communities are very anti-drug, but public health officials and harm-reduction activists keep saying that legalization is integral to anti-racism and reconciliation,” said Adam Zivo, a journalist and founder of the centre.
“Now we have data to show which side is more accurate.”
When asked whether criminalizing drug use is racist, just 22 per cent of all respondents agreed, while 60 per cent disagreed. Notably, 79 percent of the respondents identified as white.
Disagreement was strongest among First Nations respondents, with just nine per cent of the 172 Indigenous respondents agreeing that criminalization is racist and 67 per cent disagreeing.
Agreement was stronger among Asian communities, with East Asian and South Asian respondents being most likely to say criminalization policies are racist.
In the East Asian cohort, 42 per cent said they disagreed that criminalizing drug use is racist, while 36 per cent strongly agreed. Similarly, 46 per cent of South Asian respondents disagreed and 32 per cent agreed.
Self-determination
The poll challenges views articulated by some prominent B.C. policymakers and public health groups.
In July, B.C.’s provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, released a report asserting that drug policies prohibiting the use of hard drugs are rooted in racism and colonialism.
“Prohibitionist drug policies are deeply rooted in colonialism, reflecting and perpetuating systemic racism that disproportionately impacts Indigenous peoples,” Henry’s report says.
“These policies were designed to control marginalized populations and have led to over-incarceration, intergenerational trauma, and significant health disparities within these communities.”
Henry’s report contends that decriminalization policies — such as those implemented by B.C. as part of a three-year trial project that began January 2023 — can help to rectify these injustices by prioritizing health and safety over law enforcement.
Henry’s report was released mere months after B.C. rolled back some of its decriminalization measures in response to growing public concerns over decriminalization’s effects on community safety and order. Henry’s report, which is published by the BC Ministry of Health, urges the province to move in the opposite direction.
“This report’s recommendation is to continue to refine and expand prescribed alternatives to unregulated drugs, and critically, to explore implementation of models that do not require prescription,” Henry writes, referring to harm-reduction initiatives such as safer supply that dispense prescription opioids to drug users.
The report presents decriminalization as a move supported by Indigenous communities, citing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act Action Plan. Action 4.12 aims to “address the disproportionate impacts of the overdose public health emergency on Indigenous Peoples by: applying to the Government of Canada to decriminalize simple possession of small amounts of illicit drugs for personal use.”
The Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, a policy advocacy group based out of Simon Fraser University, has similarly contended that drug criminalization is racist.
The coalition’s website says, “the demand by Black communities to decriminalize drugs and to immediately expunge records are a vital necessity for minimizing the racially disproportionate harms of drug criminalization, part of a broader struggle to end the war on Black communities.”
And in December 2023, the Harm Reduction Nurses Association, a national organization that advances harm-reduction nursing, obtained an injunction to prevent the B.C. government from imposing restrictions on public drug consumption.
The association alleged the government’s actions “would put people at greater risk of fatal overdose, make healthcare outreach more challenging, and drive racial discrimination, particularly against Indigenous people.”
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Minority polling challenges
Some Indigenous groups have expressed reservations about blanket decriminalization policies in other contexts.
In January 2024, the First Nations Health Authority, an agency that manages health services for Indigenous communities in B.C., issued a statement acknowledging decriminalization may not be the best approach for all communities.
“FNHA acknowledges and supports the self-determination of each First Nations community when considering implementing this exemption,” the statement reads, referring to the three-year exemption B.C. obtained from federal laws prohibiting the use of hard drugs.
First Nations Health Authority has emphasized the need for culturally informed approaches that prioritize community health and safety and advocated for nuanced strategies tailored to each community’s specific needs.
The Mainstreet Research poll reveals challenges in accurately representing the views of B.C.’s smaller ethnic communities.
While non-white Canadians make up 40 per cent of B.C.’s population, they accounted for only 16 per cent of the poll’s 6,300 respondents.
Responses by Black, Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian respondents were excluded from the current analysis because sample sizes were too small, numbering below 100. The English-only and automated telephone polling format may also increase uncertainty.
As the poll focused primarily on B.C. and broad drug policy questions, its findings underscore the need for a deeper understanding of community beliefs to inform drug policies.
The Centre for Responsible Drug Policy is releasing the polling data and its report on a “preliminary” basis so it can inform drug policy discussions ahead of provincial elections, which are taking place this October in B.C., Saskatchewan and New Brunswick.
But Mainstreet Research is continuing to gather data, aiming for a final survey size of more than 12,000 respondents. Once completed, the survey will be one of the largest polls on harm reduction ever conducted in Canada.
“The final report, set to be released later this year, will include larger samples from B.C.’s diverse ethnic communities, providing further clarity on their beliefs,” Zivo said.
This article was produced through the Breaking Needles Fellowship Program, which provided a grant to Canadian Affairs, a digital media outlet, to fund journalism exploring addiction and crime in Canada. Articles produced through the Fellowship are co-published by Break The Needle and Canadian Affairs.
Subscribe to Break The Needle. Our content is always free – but if you want to help us commission more high-quality journalism, consider getting a voluntary paid subscription.
Addictions
A conversation with Premier Smith’s outgoing chief of staff, architect of Alberta’s recovery-focused drug policies
Marshall Smith, Alberta’s Chief of Staff, sits in his office at the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton
Marshall Smith, on what he has learned as an addict and policy leader and what’s next for him
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s chief of staff, Marshall Smith, is leaving his post at the end of October.
Since taking office in 2022, he has been instrumental in shaping Alberta’s drug policies and developing the Alberta Model — a recovery-focused addiction treatment policy that has gained international recognition for enhancing access to mental health and addiction services.
Under his guidance, Alberta has prioritized building recovery communities over harm-reduction programs. Government data show a 53 per cent decrease in opioid-related overdose deaths in June 2024 from the prior year, which may suggest Smith’s initiatives are having an impact.
In a statement on social media, the Premier shared that Smith informed her of his decision to retire earlier this year, after dedicating 32 years to public service. His departure comes just ahead of the United Conservative Party’s leadership review on Nov. 2.
Smith met with reporter Alexandra Keeler on Sept. 10 to discuss his personal journey from addiction to recovery and how it has shaped Alberta’s drug policies. On Oct. 10, they spoke by phone to discuss his recent decision to step down and what lies ahead for him.
AK: What emotional and psychological impact did your addiction have on your sense of self?
MS: It makes you feel powerless. Addiction is an illness of isolation, despair, loneliness and powerlessness. One of the hallmarks of addiction is continuing to use a substance despite a complete lack of control over your using, and over the circumstances that you’re in.
AK: Do you think that sense of powerlessness impacts an individual’s ability to provide informed consent for involuntary treatment?
MS: I think that, over time, if addiction is left unchecked or untreated, or is allowed to progress to its very latter stages, you absolutely lose agency over your ability to make decisions.
I used to get the question a lot: ‘Is it a disease? Is it a choice?’ And I say it’s both. It’s actually a disease of choices, which is to say that it’s a disease or an illness that affects my brain’s ability to make good choices.
AK: Were you the driving force behind Alberta’s shift away from harm reduction towards a recovery-focused approach, or was there a broader change in attitudes within the community?
MS: Certainly I’m not solely responsible. I’m a member of a broad community of people in recovery who have been advocating for these policies for two decades. I think that I have a background [and] certain skills that have found me in positions like this, where I can be most effective helping my community advance these ideas and concepts and actually get them implemented into policy and action.
AK: Obviously your lived experience with addiction brings a valuable perspective to the table. But what data sources are the province using to inform its addiction and recovery policies?
MS: We have a very broad literature base that we use to inform a lot of our policy decisions … Alberta [also] has the most comprehensive data collection and data analytics system in North America, bar none.
A practical example of how that’s useful is … [if] the data shows us that a very high number of people who were in custody — whether that’s corrections or police custody — went on to fatally overdose in a period after their release, that tells us that we need to focus on correctional programs, and we need to focus on policing programs.
And we’ve done that. We have amazing new correctional treatment programs that are second to none. I don’t know of anybody in Canada that’s doing this — we’ve taken [jail units where inmates sleep and live] and turned them into treatment centres, and connected them with our new treatment centres outside of jails. We partnered with police, because police have probably the most amount of contact with people who are using substances, and we gave them the ability to help people get on to opioid-substitution medications.
We’re going to go even further. Minister [of Mental Health and Addiction Dan] Williams has just announced the creation of the Centre of Recovery Excellence (CoRE), which is a first of its kind in Canada. It’s a Crown corporation not beholden to pharmaceutical money, which is a big change for us, and we were very deliberate about that.
[CoRE] will give us the ability to pull in data from across systems in government and have that data analyzed … So we’re entering into a very exciting time in terms of data and analytics around this issue.
AK: Without CoRE fully operational yet, what made you confident the recovery-focused approach would succeed?
MS: I see hundreds of thousands of Canadians every day entering recovery and maintaining their recovery … What I see in the alternative is a lot of drug use, homelessness, despair, disease [and] crime.
We spend a lot of time talking about data and evidence and science, and all of those things are good and necessary … but it’s not the only component of the decision-making process. … The policies that we’re making and the pathways that we take also have to be informed by the values of the community that we serve. … For far too long in Canada, that hasn’t been a consideration.
I think that we are at a place in Canada where the country is saying to us it’s time to revisit the direction that we’ve been going. I think that they’re saying to us, as policymakers, that we gave this a chance. We had become convinced by experts and the media … to give [pro-drug, harm-reduction policies like safer supply] a try …
[A]fter 20 years of that, I think that Canadians are ready to throw in the towel and to say, ‘We’re done with this. We’ve given you enough time to prove out your thesis. It’s not worked, and now we’re looking for fresh ideas.’
So Alberta is here leading that conversation of fresh and different ideas, and we’re happy to have that role.
The remainder of this interview took place on Oct. 10.
AK: Premier Smith announced your retirement at the end of October. What prompted your decision to step down?
MS: My time in Alberta has been a lengthy and intense role of system transformation over two premiers and standing up government twice.
While there’s still a lot of work to be done here, we have a tremendous team in Alberta that is leading that work under Minister Williams. I just felt that it’s time for me to step out of the role and continue to serve in other capacities.
AK: Looking ahead, what aspects of the Alberta Model will you carry with you into your future endeavours?
MS: I would say all aspects of the model need to be expanded across Canada, for jurisdictions that are interested.
Where I can be of the most assistance to other governments is talking to them about how to effectively organize themselves to be successful in this area. I think that governments across the country are struggling to figure out how to do that.
AK: What new opportunities do you hope to pursue that you haven’t been able to explore during your time in this role? Will your focus continue to be in addiction and drug policy?
MS: The majority of my focus will be on addiction and drug policy, but I have other areas of interest.
I’m passionate about the work that we’re doing with Indigenous people … I’m also very passionate about emerging technology and how we’re going to use that to uncover some of the answers that we’re looking for on these models.
I’m looking forward to having a little bit more freedom and focus.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
This article was produced through the Breaking Needles Fellowship Program, which provided a grant to Canadian Affairs, a digital media outlet, to fund journalism exploring addiction and crime in Canada. Articles produced through the Fellowship are co-published by Break The Needle and Canadian Affairs.
Subscribe to Break The Needle. Our content is always free – but if you want to help us commission more high-quality journalism, consider getting a voluntary paid subscription.
From LifeSiteNews
As Canada expands its euthanasia regime, vulnerable individuals like the homeless, obese, and grieving are increasingly offered assisted suicide, countering claims that ‘safeguards’ ensure the protocol remains limited in its scope.
Canada’s suicide activists and euthanasia advocates promised the public that the path to “medical aid in dying” would be a narrow path with high guardrails. They were lying. It is a four-lane highway, and there’s nobody patrolling it.
Not a week goes by without some grim new development, and our government refuses to listen to those hoarsely sounding the alarm.
On October 16, the Associated Press covered the questions euthanasia providers are discussing on their private forums. One story featured a homeless man being killed by lethal injection:
One doctor wrote that although his patient had a serious lung disease, his suffering was “mostly because he is homeless, in debt and cannot tolerate the idea of (long-term care) of any kind.” A respondent questioned whether the fear of living in the nursing home was truly intolerable. Another said the prospect of “looking at the wall or ceiling waiting to be fed … to have diapers changed” was sufficiently painful. The man was eventually euthanized. One provider said any suggestion they should provide patients with better housing options before offering euthanasia “seems simply unrealistic and hence, cruel,” amid a national housing crisis.
Another featured a doctor debating whether obesity made someone eligible for assisted suicide:
One woman with severe obesity described herself as a “useless body taking up space” – she’d lost interest in activities, became socially withdrawn and said she had “no purpose,” according to the doctor who reviewed her case. Another physician reasoned that euthanasia was warranted because obesity is “a medical condition which is indeed grievous and irremediable.”
And perhaps the most chilling story of all is the case of a woman who was consistently pushed into accepting death:
When a health worker inquired whether anyone had euthanized patients for blindness, one provider reported four such cases. In one, they said, an elderly man who saw “only shadows” was his wife’s caregiver when he requested euthanasia; he wanted her to die with him. The couple had several appointments with an assessor before the wife “finally agreed” to be killed, the provider said. She died unexpectedly just days before the scheduled euthanasia.
Read that carefully: the couple had several appointments with the person assessing their eligibility for euthanasia before the wife “finally agreed” – that is, broke down and assented – to be euthanized. Other providers cited examples of people being euthanized for grief. It should be obvious to anyone looking at what is happening in Canada: there are no brakes on this train.
It just keeps getting worse. Linda Maddaford, the newly elected president of the Regina Catholic Women’s League, is sharing her family’s experience this month at the Catholic Health Association of Saskatchewan convention.
After her mother passed away, Maddaford’s family moved their father to a care facility in Saskatoon. “The very day after, we got a blanket email inviting us to come to a presentation in the dining room,” she said. The topic? Accessing euthanasia. Maddaford added that there is a “push from the top-down. That if you don’t – if you aren’t open to the idea; you should be. I worry for the people who feel the pressure of: ‘Well my doctor advised it.’ Or ‘someone with a clipboard came around and kept asking.’”
Another story, covered this month by the Telegraph, relayed the experience of a Canadian woman undergoing life-saving cancer surgery… who was offered assisted suicide by doctors as she was about to enter the operating room for her mastectomy.
None of these stories appear to give euthanasia activists pause. Instead, they are constantly pushing for more.
On October 16, the Financial Post published an editorial by Andrew Roman titled, “You should be able to reserve MAID service: Quebec is going to let people pre-order medical assistance in dying. Ottawa shouldn’t try to stop it. People should have that right.” Anyone still arguing about “rights” as Canadian physicians euthanize patients for grief, obesity, homelessness, disability, and a plethora of other conditions should not be taken seriously. But here’s Roman, arguing that if we don’t permit this, all kinds of elderly people with dementia will not be killed:
As Canada’s population continues to age, demand for MAiD – medical assistance in dying – will only increase. But, with rates of dementia also increasing, the cognitive ability of patients to consent becomes a barrier. The prevalence of dementia more than doubles every five years among seniors, rising from less than one per cent in those aged 65-69 to about 25 per cent among people 85 and older.
Then, revealing a breathtaking ignorance of how Canada’s euthanasia regime has unfolded, Roman writes this:
There is no good reason why, with the numerous safeguards in Ottawa’s and Quebec’s laws, patients should be precluded from making advance requests before their condition renders them incapable of giving consent; and no good reason why their physicians should become criminals for honouring their patients’ duly stipulated advance requests.
No good reason why? Safeguards? What a joke. He concludes:
MAiD is also regulated under provincial law and by the same medical colleges that regulate abortion. Ottawa should amend the Criminal Code to exempt MAiD altogether and, as is the case with abortion, let the medical profession do its work in accordance with provincial regulation and patients’ wishes.
And there you have it: the final goal of the euthanasia activists. Euthanasia on demand; doctors licensed to kill. We don’t have to ask ourselves what will happen if people like Roman get their way. It’s happening already.
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