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Addictions

Kensington Market’s overdose prevention site is saving lives but killing business

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17 minute read

By Alexandra Keeler

Business owners and residents weigh in on the controversial closure of Kensington Market’s overdose prevention site

Toronto’s Kensington Market is a bohemian community knit together by an eclectic symphony of cultures, sounds and flavours.

However, debate has been raging in the community over the potential closure of a local overdose consumption site, which some see as a life-saving resource and others consider a burden on the community.

Grey Coyote, who owns Paradise Bound record shop, believes that the Kensington Market Overdose Prevention Site is fuelling theft and property damage. He plans on shutting his store, which is adjacent to the site, after 25 years of operation.

Other nearby business owners have decided to stay. But they, too, are calling for change.

“The merchants in the market are the ones taking the brunt of this … especially the ones closest to [the overdose prevention site],” said David Beaver, co-owner of Wanda’s Pie in the Sky, a nearby bakery.

“There’s a larger issue at hand here,” Beaver said. “We have to help these people out, but perhaps [the status quo] is not the way to go about it.”

In an effort to change the status quo, Ontario recently passed a law prohibiting overdose prevention sites from operating within 200 metres of schools or daycares. The law could force the Kensington Market Overdose Prevention Site to close, although it is challenging the decision.

Coyote says he plans on leaving the neighbourhood regardless. The high concentration of social programs in the area will make continued theft, property damage and defacement likely, he says.

“They’re all still going to be there,” he said.

The garden car on Augusta Avenue in Kensington Market; Oct 30, 2022.

Court challenge

Ontario’s decision to close supervised consumption sites near schools and daycares affects 10 sites across the province.

The province plans to transition all nine provincially funded overdose prevention sites into Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hubs. These hubs will offer drug users a range of primary care and housing solutions, but not supervised consumption, needle exchanges or the “safe supply” of prescription drugs.

The tenth site, Kensington Market Overdose Prevention Site, is not eligible to become a HART Hub because it is not provincially funded.

In response, The Neighbourhood Group, the social agency that runs the Kensington site, has filed a lawsuit against the province. It claims the closure order violates the Charter rights of the site’s clients by increasing their risk of death and disease.

“There will be a return of [overdose] deaths that would be preventable,” said Bill Sinclair, CEO of The Neighbourhood Group.

“Our neighbours include people who use these sites and … they are very frightened. They want to know what’s going to happen to them if we close.”

In response to the lawsuit, the province has initiated an investigation on the site’s impact on the community. It has enlisted two ex-police officers to canvas the market, question locals and gather information about the site in preparation for the legal challenge.

“Ontario is collecting evidence from communities affected by supervised consumption sites,” said Keesha Seaton, a media spokesperson for Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General.

“Ontario’s responding evidence in the court challenge will be served on January 24.”

Kensington Market Overdose Prevention Site in Toronto; Dec. 18, 2024. [Photo credit: Alexandra Keeler]

Bad for business

The Kensington Market Overdose Prevention Site sits at the northern entrance of Spadina Avenue, a key thoroughfare into the heart of Kensington Market. It is located within St. Stephen’s Community House, a former community centre.

The site was added to the community centre in 2018 in response to a surge of overdoses in the area. It is funded through federal grants and community donations.

Within the site’s 200-metre radius are Westside Montessori School, Kensington Kids Early Learning Centre and Bellevue Child Care Centre. Bellevue is operated by The Neighbourhood Group, the same organization that operates the overdose prevention site.

The site serves an average of 154 clients per month. It reversed 50 overdoses in 2024, preventing fatalities.

But while the site has saved lives, shop owners claim it is killing business.

“[Kensington] is a very accepting market and very understanding, but [the overdose prevention site is] just not conducive to business right now,” said Mike Shepherd, owner of Trinity Common beer hall — located across the street from the site — and chair of the Kensington Market Business Improvement Area.

Shepherd says it has become more common to find broken glass, needles and condoms outside his bar in recent years. He has also had to deal with stolen propane heaters and vandalism, including a wine bottle thrown at his car.

Shepherd attributes some of these challenges to a growing homeless population and increased drug use in the neighborhood. He says these issues became particularly acute after Covid hit and the province cut funding for community programs once offered by St. Stephen’s.

Inside his bar, he has handled multiple overdoses, administering naloxone and calling ambulances, and has had to physically remove disruptive patrons.

“I don’t have problems throwing people out of my establishment when they’re … getting violent or causing problems, but my staff shouldn’t have to deal with that,” he said.

“I’m literally watching somebody smoke something from a glass pipe right now,” he said, staring across the street from his bar window as he spoke to Canadian Affairs.

Trinity Common beer hall and restaurant in Toronto’s Kensington Market; January 19, 2025. [Photo credit: Alexandra Keeler]

Still, he is empathetic.

“A lot of people who are drug addicted are self-diagnosing for mental traumas,” said Shepherd. “Sometimes, when they go down those deep roads, they go off the tracks.”

Other business owners in the area share similar concerns.

Bobina Attlee, the owner of Otto’s Berlin Döner, has struggled to deal with discarded syringes, stolen bins and sanitation concerns like urine and feces.

These issues prevented her from joining the CaféTO program, which allows restaurants and bars to expand their outdoor dining space during the summer months.

Sid Dichter, owner of Supermarket Restaurant and Bar, has dealt with loitering, break-ins and drug paraphernalia being left behind on his patio day after day.

Some business owners, like Coyote, expressed harsher criticisms.

“Weak politicians and law enforcement have been infiltrated by the retarded, woke mafia,” Coyote said, referring to what he sees as overly lenient harm reduction policies and social programs in “liberal” cities.

Toronto Police Service data show increases in auto and bike thefts and break-and-enters in Kensington Market from 2014 to 2023. Auto thefts rose from 23 in 2014 to 50 in 2023, bike thefts from 92 to 137, and break-and-enters from 103 to 145.

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Kensington Market’s city councillor, Dianne Saxe, said she has received numerous complaints from constituents about disorder in the area.

In an email to Canadian Affairs, she cited complaints about “feces, drug trafficking, harassment, shoplifting, theft from yards and porches, trash, masturbation in front of children, and shouting at parents and teachers.”

However, Saxe noted it is difficult to determine what portion of these problems are linked to the overdose prevention site, as opposed to factors like nearby homeless encampments.

Encampments emerged at the Church of Saint Stephen-in-the-Fields on Bellevue Avenue in the spring of 2022 and were cleared in November 2023.

Supermarket Bar and Variety in Toronto’s Kensington Market; January 19, 2025. [Photo credit: Alexandra Keeler]

‘Fair share’

Wanda’s Pie in the Sky is located just a few doors down from the Kensington Market Overdose Prevention Site. Beaver, the store’s co-owner, says Wanda’s has always provided food and coffee to clients of the site.

However, issues escalated during the pandemic. Beaver had to deal with incidents like drug use in the restaurant’s restrooms, theft, vandalism and violent outbreaks.

“We try to deal with it on a very compassionate level, but there’s only so much we can do,” said Beaver.

Despite the messes left on his patio, Dichter, who owns the Supermarket Restaurant and Bar, has also developed relationships with site clients.

“I’ve talked to a lot of them, and most of them are very good human beings,” he said. “For the most part, they just have bad luck in life.”

Wanda’s Pie in the Sky bakery and cafe in Toronto’s Kensington Market; January 19, 2025. [Photo credit: Alexandra Keeler]

Reverend Canon Maggie Helwig has been a priest at Church of Saint Stephen-in-the-Fields since 2013. She described the overdose prevention site as a safe, well-run space where many people have connected to recovery resources.

“It’s clear to me that the overdose prevention site has been a positive influence in the neighbourhood,” she told Canadian Affairs in an email.

“We need more access to harm reduction, not less, and … closing the site will lead to more public drug use, more deaths from toxic drugs, and fewer people connecting to recovery resources.”

Sinclair, CEO of The Neighbourhood Group, described Kensington Market as “an accepting place for people who are sometimes different or excluded from society … it’s been a place where people have practised tolerance.”

“But sometimes it does feel that some neighbourhoods are doing more than their fair share,” he added.

Shepherd, of Trinity Common beer hall, counted five different social service agencies within a two-block radius of the market. These range from food banks and homeless shelters to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

“When you have that kind of social services infrastructure in one area, it’s going to draw the people that need it to this area and overburden the neighbourhood,” said Shepherd.

Late-Victorian bay-and-gable residential buildings in Toronto’s Kensington Market; January 19, 2025. [Photo credit: Alexandra Keeler]

Systemic issues

Some sources pointed to potential root causes of the growing tensions in Kensington Market.

“We mostly blame the provincial government,” said Beaver, referencing funding cuts by the Ford government that began in 2019.

“They cut the funding to the city, and the city can only do so much with whatever budget they have.”

Provincial funding reductions slashed millions from Toronto Public Health’s budget, straining harm reduction, infectious disease control and community health programs.

“The [overdose prevention site] closure is a provincial decision,” said Councillor Saxe. “I was not consulted [and] I am not aware of any evidence that supports Ford’s decision.

A Toronto Public Health report tabled Jan. 20 warns that closing overdose prevention sites could increase fatal overdoses and strain emergency responders.

The report, prepared by the city’s acting Medical Officer of Health Na-Koshie Lamptey, urges the province to reconsider its decision to exclude safe consumption services from the HART Hubs.

The province’s decision to close sites located near schools and daycares came after a mother of two was fatally shot in a gunfight outside a safe consumption site in Toronto’s Riverdale neighbourhood.

Ontario has also cited crime and public safety concerns as reasons for prohibiting supervised consumption services near centres with children. Police chiefs and sergeants in the Ontario cities of London and Ottawa have additionally raised concerns about prescription drugs dispensed through safer supply programs being diverted to the black market.

For some Kensington Market business owners, the answer is to move overdose prevention sites elsewhere.

“Put our safe injection sites as a wing or an area of the hospital,” said Shepherd, referring to Toronto Western Hospital, on the east side of the Kensington Market neighbourhood.

But another local resident, Andy Stevenson, argues for leaving things as they are. “Leave it alone. Just leave it alone,” said Stevenson, whose home is a five-minute walk from the site. “It’s going to become chaotic if they close it down.”

Stevenson says she has felt a deep connection to the market since her teenage years. She spends her leisure time there and continues to do all her shopping in the area.

“When you choose to live around here, it’s a reality that there are drug addicts, homeless people and street people — It’s a fact of life,” she said.

“So you can’t [complain] about it … move to suburbia.”


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.

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Addictions

There’s No Such Thing as a “Safer Supply” of Drugs

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By Adam Zivo

Sweden, the U.K., and Canada all experimented with providing opioids to addicts. The results were disastrous.

[This article was originally published in City Journal, a public policy magazine and website published by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. We encourage our readers to subscribe to them for high-quality analysis on urban issues]

Last August, Denver’s city council passed a proclamation endorsing radical “harm reduction” strategies to address the drug crisis. Among these was “safer supply,” the idea that the government should give drug users their drug of choice, for free. Safer supply is a popular idea among drug-reform activists. But other countries have already tested this experiment and seen disastrous results, including more addiction, crime, and overdose deaths. It would be foolish to follow their example.

The safer-supply movement maintains that drug-related overdoses, infections, and deaths are driven by the unpredictability of the black market, where drugs are inconsistently dosed and often adulterated with other toxic substances. With ultra-potent opioids like fentanyl, even minor dosing errors can prove fatal. Drug contaminants, which dealers use to provide a stronger high at a lower cost, can be just as deadly and potentially disfiguring.

Because of this, harm-reduction activists sometimes argue that governments should provide a free supply of unadulterated, “safe” drugs to get users to abandon the dangerous street supply. Or they say that such drugs should be sold in a controlled manner, like alcohol or cannabis—an endorsement of partial or total drug legalization.

But “safe” is a relative term: the drugs championed by these activists include pharmaceutical-grade fentanyl, hydromorphone (an opioid as potent as heroin), and prescription meth. Though less risky than their illicit alternatives, these drugs are still profoundly dangerous.

The theory behind safer supply is not entirely unreasonable, but in every country that has tried it, implementation has led to increased suffering and addiction. In Europe, only Sweden and the U.K. have tested safer supply, both in the 1960s. The Swedish model gave more than 100 addicts nearly unlimited access through their doctors to prescriptions for morphine and amphetamines, with no expectations of supervised consumption. Recipients mostly sold their free drugs on the black market, often through a network of “satellite patients” (addicts who purchased prescribed drugs). This led to an explosion of addiction and public disorder.

Most doctors quickly abandoned the experiment, and it was shut down after just two years and several high-profile overdose deaths, including that of a 17-year-old girl. Media coverage portrayed safer supply as a generational medical scandal and noted that the British, after experiencing similar problems, also abandoned their experiment.

While the U.S. has never formally adopted a safer-supply policy, it experienced something functionally similar during the OxyContin crisis of the 2000s. At the time, access to the powerful opioid was virtually unrestricted in many parts of North America. Addicts turned to pharmacies for an easy fix and often sold or traded their extra pills for a quick buck. Unscrupulous “pill mills” handed out prescriptions like candy, flooding communities with OxyContin and similar narcotics. The result was a devastating opioid epidemic—one that rages to this day, at a cumulative cost of hundreds of thousands of American lives. Canada was similarly affected.

The OxyContin crisis explains why many experienced addiction experts were aghast when Canada greatly expanded access to safer supply in 2020, following a four-year pilot project. They worried that the mistakes of the recent past were being made all over again, and that the recently vanquished pill mills had returned under the cloak of “harm reduction.”

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Most Canadian safer-supply prescribers dispense large quantities of hydromorphone with little to no supervised consumption. Patients can receive up to 40 eight-milligram pills per day—despite the fact that just two or three are enough to cause an overdose in someone without opioid tolerance. Some prescribers also provide supplementary fentanyl, oxycodone, or stimulants.

Unfortunately, many safer-supply patients sell or trade a significant portion of these drugs—primarily hydromorphone—in order to purchase more potent illicit substances, such as street fentanyl.

The problems with safer supply entered Canada’s consciousness in mid-2023, through an investigative report I wrote for the National Post. I interviewed 14 addiction physicians from across the country, who testified that safer-supply diversion is ubiquitous; that the street price of hydromorphone collapsed by up to 95 percent in communities where safer supply is available; that youth are consuming and becoming addicted to diverted safer-supply drugs; and that organized crime traffics these drugs.

Facing pushback, I interviewed former drug users, who estimated that roughly 80 percent of the safer-supply drugs flowing through their social circles was getting diverted. I documented dozens of examples of safer-supply trafficking online, representing tens of thousands of pills. I spoke with youth who had developed addictions from diverted safer supply and adults who had purchased thousands of such pills.

After months of public queries, the police department of London, Ontario—where safer supply was first piloted—revealed last summer that annual hydromorphone seizures rose over 3,000 percent between 2019 and 2023. The department later held a press conference warning that gangs clearly traffic safer supply. The police departments of two nearby midsize cities also saw their post-2019 hydromorphone seizures increase more than 1,000 percent.

The Canadian government quietly dropped its support for safer supply last year, cutting funding for many of its pilot programs. The province of British Columbia (the nexus of the harm-reduction movement) finally pulled back support last month, after a leaked presentation confirmed that safer-supply drugs are getting sold internationally and that the government is investigating 60 pharmacies for paying kickbacks to safer-supply patients. For now, all safer-supply drugs dispensed within the province must be consumed under supervision.

Harm-reduction activists have insisted that no hard evidence exists of widespread diversion of safer-supply drugs, but this is only because they refuse to study the issue. Most “studies” supporting safer supply are produced by ideologically driven activist-scholars, who tend to interview a small number of program enrollees. These activists also reject attempts to track diversion as “stigmatizing.”

The experiences of Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Canada offer a clear warning: safer supply is a reliably harmful policy. The outcomes speak for themselves—rising addiction, diversion, and little evidence of long-term benefit.

As the debate unfolds in the United States, policymakers would do well to learn from these failures. Americans should not be made to endure the consequences of a policy already discredited abroad simply because progressive leaders choose to ignore the record. The question now is whether we will repeat others’ mistakes—or chart a more responsible course.

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Addictions

Should fentanyl dealers face manslaughter charges for fatal overdoses?

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Tyler Ginn prior to his death from a fentanyl overdose in 2021. [Photo credit: Gayle Fowlie]

By Alexandra Keeler

Police are charging more drug dealers with manslaughter in fentanyl overdose deaths. But the shift is not satisfying everyone

Four years ago, Tyler Ginn died of a fentanyl overdose at the age of 18. Tyler’s father found his son unresponsive in the bedroom of their Brooklin, Ont., home.

For Tyler’s mother, Gayle Fowlie, the pain of his loss remains raw.

“He was my kid that rode his bike to the store to buy me a chocolate bar on my birthday, you know?” she told Canadian Affairs in an interview.

Police charged Jacob Norn, the drug dealer who sold Tyler his final, fatal dose, with manslaughter. More than three years after Tyler’s death, Norn was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison.

“I don’t think you can grasp how difficult going through a trial is,” Fowlie said. “On TV, it’s a less than an hour process. But the pain of it, and going over every detail and then going over every detail again … it provides details you wish you didn’t know.”

But Fowlie is glad Norn was convicted. If anything, she would have liked him to serve a longer sentence. Lawyers have told her Norn is likely to serve only two to four years of his sentence in prison.

“My son’s never coming back [and] his whole family has a life sentence of missing him the rest of our lives,” she said. “So do I think four years is fair? No.”

Norn’s case reflects a growing trend of drug dealers being charged with manslaughter when their drug sales lead to fatal overdoses.

But this shift has not satisfied everyone. Some would like to see drug dealers face harsher or different penalties.

“If we say that it was 50 per cent Tyler’s fault for buying it and 50 per cent Jacob’s fault for selling it … then I think he should have a half-a-life sentence,” said Fowlie.

Others say the legal system’s focus on prosecuting low-level drug dealers misses the broader issues at play.

“[Police] decided, in the Jacob Norn case, they were going to go one stage back,” said Peter Thorning, who was Norn’s defence lawyer.

“What about the person who gave Jacob that substance? What about the person who supplied the substance to [that person]? There was no investigation into where it came from and who was ultimately responsible for the death of that young man.”

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Manslaughter charge

At least 50,000 Canadians have died from drug overdoses since 2016. Last year, an average of 21 individuals died each day, with fentanyl accounting for nearly 80 per cent of those deaths.

Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. A dose as small as a few grains of salt can be lethal.

Given its potency, police and prosecutors have increasingly turned to manslaughter charges when a dealer’s product results in a fatal overdose.

A recent study in the Canadian Journal of Law and Society found that the number of manslaughter charges laid for drug-related deaths in Canada surged from three cases in 2016 to 135 in 2021.

Individuals can be convicted of manslaughter for committing unlawful, reckless or negligent acts that result in death but where there was no intention to kill. Sentences can range from probation (in rare cases) to life.

Murder charges, by contrast, require an intent to kill or cause fatal harm. Drug dealers typically face manslaughter charges in overdose cases, as their intent is to distribute drugs, not to kill those who purchase them.

Joanne Bortoluss, a spokesperson for the Durham Regional Police, which charged Norn, said that each of their investigations follows the same fundamental process.

“Investigators consider the strength of the evidence, the dealer’s level of involvement, and applicable laws when determining whether to pursue charges like manslaughter,” she said.

The Canadian Journal of Law and Society study also found that prosecutions often target low-level dealers, many of whom are drug users themselves and have personal connections to the deceased.

Norn’s case fits this pattern. He struggled with substance abuse, including addiction to fentanyl, Xanax and Percocet. Tyler and Norn were friends, the judge said in the court ruling, although Fowlie disputes this claim.

“[Those words] are repulsive to me,” she said.

The Crown argued Norn demonstrated “a high degree of moral blameworthiness” by warning Ginn of the fentanyl’s potency while still selling it to him. In a call to Ginn, he warned him “not to do a lot of the stuff” because he “didn’t want to be responsible for anything that happened.”

Fowlie’s outrage over Norn’s lenient sentencing is compounded by the fact that Norn was found trafficking fentanyl again after her son’s death.

“So we’ve killed somebody, and we’re still … trafficking? We’re not worried who else we kill?” Fowlie said.

Trafficking

Some legal sources noted that manslaughter charges do not necessarily lead to harsh sentences or deterrence.

“If you look at how diverse and … lenient some sentences are for manslaughter, I don’t think it really pushes things in the direction that [victims’ families] want,” said Kevin Westell, a Vancouver-based trial lawyer and former chair of the Canadian Bar Association.

Westell noted that the term “manslaughter” is misleading. “Manslaughter is a brutal-sounding title, but it encapsulates a very broad span of criminal offences,” he said.

In Westell’s view, consistently charging dealers with drug trafficking could be more effective for deterring the practice.

“What really matters is how long the sentence is, and you’re better off saying, ‘We know fentanyl is dangerous, so we’re setting the sentence quite high,’ rather than making it harder to prove with a manslaughter charge,” he said.

Trafficking is a distinct charge from manslaughter that involves the distribution, sale or delivery of illicit drugs. The sentencing range for fentanyl trafficking is eight to 15 years, Kwame Bonsu, a media relations representative for the Department of Justice, told Canadian Affairs.

“Courts must impose sentences that are proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender,” Bonsu said, referencing a 2021 Supreme Court of Canada decision. Bonsu noted that aggravating factors such as lack of remorse or trafficking large quantities can lead to harsher sentences.

‘Head of the snake’

Some legal experts noted the justice system often fails to target those higher up in the drug supply chain.

“We don’t know how many hands that drug goes through,” said Thorning, the defence lawyer.

“Are the police going to prosecute every single person who provides fentanyl to another person? Jacob [Norn] was himself an addict trafficker — what about the person who supplied the substance to him?”

Thorning also questioned whether government agencies bear some responsibility. “Is some government agency’s failure to investigate how that drug came into the country partly responsible for the young man’s death?”

Westell, who has served as both a Crown prosecutor and criminal defence lawyer, acknowledged the difficulty of targeting higher-level traffickers.

“Cutting off the head of the snake does not align very well with the limitations of the international borders,” he said.

“Yes, there are transnational justice measures, but a lot gets lost, and as soon as you cross an international border of any kind, it becomes incredibly difficult to follow the chain in a linear way.”

Bortoluss, of the Durham police, said even prosecuting what appear to be obvious fentanyl-related deaths — such as Tyler Ginn’s — can be challenging. Witnesses can be reluctant to cooperate, fearing legal consequences. It can also be difficult to identify the source of drugs, as “transactions often involve multiple intermediaries and anonymous online sales.”

Another challenge in deterring fentanyl trafficking is the strong financial incentives of the trade.

“Even if [Norn] serves two to four years for killing somebody, but he could make a hundred thousand off of selling drugs, is it worth it?” Fowlie said.

Thorning agreed that the profit incentive can be incredibly powerful, outweighing the risk of a potential sentence.

“The more risky you make the behaviour, the greater the profit for a person who’s willing to break our laws, and the profit is the thing that generates the conduct,” he said.

A blunt instrument

Legal experts also noted the criminal justice system alone cannot solve the fentanyl crisis.

“Most people who have [lost] a loved one [to drug overdose] want to see a direct consequence to the person that’s responsible,” said Westell. “But I think they would also like to see something on a more macro level that helps eliminate the problem more holistically, and that can’t be [achieved through] crime and punishment alone.”

Thorning agrees.

“These are mental health .. [and] medical issues,” he said. “Criminal law is a blunt instrument [that is] not going to deal with these things effectively.”

Even Fowlie sees the problem as bigger than sentencing. Her son struggled with the stigma associated with therapy and medication, which made it difficult for him to seek help.

“We need to normalize seeing a therapist, like we normalize getting your eyes checked every year,” she said.

“Pot isn’t the gateway drug, trauma is a gateway drug.”


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.


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