Addictions
Illicit drug use still tolerated in some B.C. hospital rooms, says recent patient
Illustration courtesy of Midjourney
News release from Break The Needle
Vancouverite Mark Budworth says he was exposed to illicit drug smoke while recovering from an ankle replacement at St. Paul’s Hospital.
Two months ago, nurses across British Columbia said that the provincial government had allowed addicts to openly smoke illicit drugs, such as fentanyl and meth, in hospital rooms to the detriment of frontline workers and other patients. The province subsequently committed to banning the practice – but testimony from a recently hospitalized patient suggests that, at least in some hospitals, this crackdown may not have been serious.
Mark Budworth is a semi-retired Vancouverite in his early 60s who received a full ankle replacement at St. Paul’s Hospital, one of the province’s preeminent medical institutions, in mid-May. In a recent phone interview, he told Break The Needle that, during his four day stay, he was exposed to illicit drug use that was tolerated by staff and made him feel unsafe.
Though only one story, his account fits into a broader picture of rampant fentanyl trafficking and public disorder that has been bleeding into the province’s healthcare system, all to the seeming indifference of provincial officials.
The problems allegedly began after his surgery when he was wheeled into his hospital room, which was shared with another patient who seemed around 30 years old. “There was a strong smell of smoke. And it didn’t smell like tobacco smoke. It smelled like drugs,” said Budworth, who claimed that the hospital porters transporting him commented on the smell but were largely indifferent to it. To his knowledge, no attempts were made by staff to do anything about the apparent illicit drug use.
The next day, Budworth had a friend visit him. He said that the hospital roommate introduced himself to them and was in a “euphoric” and “confused” state, which made them uncomfortable and led the friend to later speculate that the roommate may have been high on meth. After the friend departed, the roommate allegedly left the room and, upon returning, told Budworth that he had bought $200 of fentanyl.
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Budworth said that, around midnight that night, he awoke and realized that his roommate, who sounded very intoxicated, was in the middle of an “aggressive” conversation with a female visitor, which sounded “a little scary.” He said the smell of illicit drug smoke lingered in the air and that he called the nurses who, in turn, summoned security guards. As the woman was being removed, security told her to pull her pants up from around her knees, he said.
The alleged incident left Budworth feeling unsafe, as he worried that he might face retaliation from his roommate. The hospital’s nurses refused to relocate him to a new room at first, but eventually relented after he persistently emphasized his safety concerns, he said.
In his second room, his new roommate was a homeless man who would often leave to smoke cigarettes and marijuana, he said. This new roommate allegedly told Budworth that the hospital’s fourth floor rooftop courtyard is an open drug market where people regularly fight and smoke fentanyl.
Budworth said that, throughout the rest of his stay, he spoke with several hospital staff and, though they were “wonderful,” his conversations with them suggested that illicit drug use was tolerated in the building. “The staff didn’t seem to think it was a big deal. It was normal,” he said.
He claimed to have spoken with four nurses, some of whom suggested that illicit drug use among patients was making their jobs difficult. “They’re people dealing with unlimited problems with limited resources,” he said.
After Budworth was discharged from the hospital, he wrote a letter to Health Minister Adrian Dix explaining his concerns, which he then forwarded to Break The Needle. “I’ve read a lot of articles about the nurses complaining. I hadn’t yet read an article about a patient complaining – patients’ experience. And that’s why I thought I should go on record,” he explained over the phone.
The conditions Budworth recalled at St. Paul’s were largely consistent with what was described in a news report published by Glacier Media Group in early April, before the province cracked down on open drug use in hospitals. In that report, a nurse who worked at the hospital told journalist Rob Shaw, “You can barely walk into some of the rooms, there’s needles and broken crack pipes and dirty food all over the floor.”
“Absolutely there are people throughout that hospital who are dealing and using everywhere,” said the nurse at the time. “We know they are drug dealers, and yet they come and go.”
Budworth’s testimony raises concerns about whether the provincial government’s attempts to control illicit drug use in hospitals have, at least in some instances, been unsuccessful.
In an emailed response sent to Break The Needle on May 30, a media representative of St. Paul’s stated that illicit drug use is not permitted anywhere in the hospital, except for an outdoor overdose prevention site (OPS) on the rooftop courtyard, which she said had received approximately 600 unique visits in the preceding two weeks.
The representative wrote that drug trafficking has “never been permitted” anywhere at the hospital, including the OPS. “Security has increased at our sites to support clinical teams as they respond to problematic behaviours, aggression, drug use, and illicit drug dealing in hospitals.”
But apparently those policies neither protected Budworth nor safeguarded his right to a dignified hospital stay free from illicit drugs and intimidating behaviour.
He blamed the province’s failed drug decriminalization experiment, which was recently scaled back by the BC NDP, and said that the decriminalization movement made him feel “uncomfortable” because, “We’re seeing people smoking fentanyl on the streets already… which is easy to walk away from when you’re mobile, but when you’re in a hospital bed and it’s happening in your room, it’s a little too close.”
“I was gonna vote NDP. I think the provincial government’s pretty good, but, with this experience, they lost my vote on this one… I don’t think that our current government and Victoria is really considering all the stakeholders on this issue,” he said.
[This article has been co-published with The Bureau, a Canadian media outlet that tackles corruption and foreign influence campaigns through investigative journalism. Subscribe to their work to get the latest updates on how organized crime influences the Canadian drug trade.]
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Dr. Andrea Sereda addresses Moms Stop the Harm online.
From LifeSiteNews
Dr. Andrea Sereda, an advocate for the safe supply program, had previously denied that kids could get access to the opioids.
A “safe supply” drug advocate has admitted that children probably use drugs diverted from government programs.
During an annual general meeting of Moms Stop the Harm (MSTH), an advocacy group that champions radical harm-reduction policies, Dr. Andrea Sereda, a prominent Canadian advocate for the “safe supply” drug program, revealed that kids are likely using diverted opioids.
“I’m not going to stand up here and say that some kids, some adolescents, are not accessing diverted safe supply and using diverted safe supply,” she declared during the June 1 meeting.
“Kids experiment with everything, and we need to be honest to ourselves that kids probably experiment with diverted safer supply as well,” Sereda continued.
“Safe supply” is a euphemism for government-provided drugs given to addicts under the assumption that a more controlled batch of narcotics reduces the risk of overdose. Critics of the policy argue that giving addicts drugs only enables their behavior, puts the public at risk, disincentivizes recovery from addiction and has not reduced – and sometimes has even increased – overdose deaths when implemented.
Sereda even gave the phenomenon of children using diverted “safe supply drugs” a positive spin, claiming that one parent told her these drugs kept her child alive “longer” than expected.
“I met a parent about a year ago who had lost their child to a fentanyl overdose,” she said. “This parent approached me, and they told me that their child had been using safe supply given them to them by a friend.”
“I thought this parent was going to be angry with me, but that parent told me that that diverted safe supply had kept their child (…) alive longer than the otherwise [they] would have been,” she continued.
Sereda has been a strong advocate for the program and founded Canada’s first safer supply program in 2016 at the London InterCommunity Health Centre (LIHC) in London, Ontario.
Previously, when speaking to Parliament or publicly addressing Canadians, Sereda has denied the possibility of children consuming “safe supply” drugs.
In May 2023, she told the London Free Press that, “Not a single physician critic of safer supply has been able to provide us with an example of medications being sold to children. This seems to be the boogeyman of safer supply. It is silly.”
Similarly, Sereda told the House of Commons health committee in February that there is no evidence that children are taking the “safe supply” drugs.
“Do you agree that it’s possible that diverted opioids are ending up in the hands of people they aren’t prescribed to, or even children? Yes or no?” asked Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Todd Doherty.
”We have no evidence that they (safer supply hydromorphone tablets) are ending up in the hands of children,” Sereda responded.
Later, Conservative MP Laila Goodridge asked the same question, and Sereda answered, “They’re not being sold to kids.”
However, it may be that Sereda tells a different story when she believes she is not being recorded, as her remarks to the meeting seem to suggest.
During the meeting, she congratulated the Drug User Liberation Front’s distribution of “unadulterated crystal meth and cocaine.”
“If physicians could prescribe that, and this is where I’m afraid there’s a mole like on that other Zoom call earlier this week, right? But if physicians could prescribe crystal meth and cocaine, I think we would actually start to get somewhere,” she said, apparently referring to a National Post article, which published secret audio recordings from activists planning to disrupt a recovery-oriented addiction conference in Vancouver.
It is unclear why Sereda would not know the meeting was being recorded; that it would be captured and downloaded to YouTube was made clear in the opening remarks.
Notably, Sereda’s admission comes after the program was deemed such a disaster in British Columbia that the province asked Trudeau recriminalize drugs in public spaces. Nearly two weeks later, the Trudeau government announced it would “immediately” end the province’s drug program.
Beginning in early 2023, Trudeau’s federal policy in effect decriminalized hard drugs on a trial-run basis in British Columbia.
Under the policy, the federal government allowed people within the province to possess up to 2.5 grams of hard drugs without criminal penalty. Selling drugs remained a crime.
Since its implementation, the province’s drug policy has been widely criticized, especially after it was found that the province broke three different drug-related overdose records in the first month the new law was in effect.
The effects of decriminalizing hard drugs in various parts of Canada have been exposed in Aaron Gunn’s recent documentary, Canada is Dying, and in the U.K. Telegraph journalist Steven Edginton’s mini-documentary, Canada’s Woke Nightmare: A Warning to the West.
Gunn says he documents the “general societal chaos and explosion of drug use in every major Canadian city.”
“Overdose deaths are up 1,000 percent in the last 10 years,” he said in his film, adding that “(e)very day in Vancouver four people are randomly attacked.”
Addictions
Trudeau gov’t earmarks over $27 million for ‘safe supply’ drug program linked to overdoses and violence
From LifeSiteNews
The taxpayer money will help fund 22 drug distribution projects in British Columbia and Ontario.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is planning to spend over $27 million on “safe supply” drug programs this year.
This week, Health Canada revealed that the Trudeau government has budgeted over $27 million in funding for “safe supply” drug programs that have been linked to increased violence and overdose deaths across Canada, according to information obtained by Rebel News.
“With regard to planned funding by the government related to ‘safe’ or ‘safer’ supply programs: How much does the government plan on spending on such programs, broken down by department, agency, and initiative in the current fiscal year and in each of the next five fiscal years?” Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Tako Van Popta had questioned in April.
“Safe supply” is the term used to refer to government-prescribed drugs given to addicts under the assumption that a more controlled batch of narcotics reduces the risk of overdose. Critics of the policy argue that giving addicts drugs only enables their behavior, puts the public at risk, disincentivizes recovery from addiction and has not reduced — and sometimes even increased — overdose deaths when implemented.
Three months later, on June 17, the House of Commons revealed that the Trudeau government plans to spend an excess of $27 million to fund 22 drug distribution projects in British Columbia and Ontario.
The two largest recipients of federal funding are in Ontario, with Toronto’s South Riverdale Community Health Centre receiving $2.7 million and Kitchener’s K-W Working Centre for the Unemployed receiving $2.1 million.
In British Columbia, the largest recipient is the AVI Health and Community Services Society SAFER North Island in Campbell River at $2.02 million.
The Trudeau government’s funding for increased drug use comes after the program proved such a disaster in British Columbia that the province recently requested Trudeau recriminalize drugs in public spaces. Nearly two weeks later, the Trudeau government announced it would “immediately” end the province’s drug program.
Beginning in early 2023, Trudeau’s federal policy, in effect, decriminalized hard drugs on a trial-run basis in British Columbia.
Under the policy, the federal government began allowing people within the province to possess up to 2.5 grams of hard drugs without criminal penalty, but selling drugs remained a crime.
Since being implemented, the province’s drug policy has been widely criticized, especially after it was found that the province broke three different drug-related overdose records in the first month the new law was in effect.
The effects of decriminalizing hard drugs in various parts of Canada have been exposed in Aaron Gunn’s recent documentary, Canada is Dying, and in U.K. Telegraph journalist Steven Edginton’s mini-documentary, Canada’s Woke Nightmare: A Warning to the West.
Gunn says he documents the “general societal chaos and explosion of drug use in every major Canadian city.”
“Overdose deaths are up 1,000 percent in the last 10 years,” he said in his film, adding that “(e)very day in Vancouver four people are randomly attacked.”
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