Addictions
No, drug prohibition is not ‘white supremacy’
From Break The Needle
British Columbia’s top doctor released a report arguing that the legalization of all drugs combats “racism” and “colonialism.” That’s historically illiterate.
The notion that drug prohibition is inherently racist has become exceedingly popular within the harm reduction world and, by extension, inside many public health institutions and graduate programs. Yet anyone with even a cursory knowledge of history can see that this is absurd. Societies from all across the world have long understood the dangers of addictive substances and supported efforts to criminalize them—so why is this being ignored?
Though the “prohibition is racist” movement usually flies under the public’s radar, it was thrust into the limelight earlier this month when B.C.’s top doctor, Bonnie Henry, released a report calling for the legalization of all drugs. Not only did Henry recommend that dangerous substances—including meth, cocaine and fentanyl—be sold in stores much like alcohol and cannabis, her team asserted that prohibitionist policies are “based on a history of racism, white supremacy, paternalism, colonialism, classism and human rights violations.”
One would hope such sweeping declarations would have been backed with fulsome arguments and historical references, but that didn’t happen here.
Instead, the report simply emphasized how Canada’s original drug laws, dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, were motivated by racist animus against Chinese immigrants. As opium was popular among these immigrants, the drug was believed to pose a special moral threat to white society and was among the first substances to be harshly policed. This, in turn, gave the state a new legal tool to harass Chinese Canadians and, in some cases, deport them.
After briefly explaining this point, Henry’s report concluded that, “Over time, the moral panic associated with drug use expanded to target many more groups of people, including Indigenous people, Black people, women, people of colour, and people of lower socioeconomic status.” This extrapolation was presented as a self-evident fact, without any evidence or citations to explain or substantiate it.
Henry’s recommendations were immediately rejected by the provincial government and savagely ridiculed in the media. Yet the views articulated in her report, shocking as they may have been to many, were not actually exceptional. They only rehashed the dominant beliefs of the harm reduction world—beliefs have also, over the past decade or so, permeated deeply into Canada’s public health bureaucracies.
Henry’s report may be dead in the water, but the underlying ideas which animated it are still very much alive and will, in all likelihood, continue to influence Canadian policymakers within the cloistered hallways of the civil service. This is a shame, because it is difficult to overstate how strange these kinds of beliefs are.
To argue that drug prohibition is broadly based on a history of racism, mostly because it was misused for racist purposes a century ago, is kindergarten-level reasoning. There are ample examples of non-European societies, past and present, embracing criminalization. This is glaringly obvious and, in many cases, common knowledge.
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Non-Western drug prohibition throughout the ages
Perhaps one of the greatest examples of non-European drug prohibition is Sharia law, which has banned the consumption of mind-altering substances since the 7th century. One wonders how harm reduction activists can claim, with a straight face, that prohibition is rooted in “colonialism” and “white supremacy” when Islam’s religious and legal texts supported it centuries before global European empires emerged.
Since harm reduction scholars are so concerned about Chinese experiences, it would be instructive to look toward China itself, where prohibition is also popular.
In the late 18th century, the British began exporting large quantities of opium to the Qing Empire (China), which quickly fomented a wave of addiction and social disorder. Soon after, Qing officials embarked on a multi-decade campaign to criminalize the drug. “Opium is a poison, undermining our good customs and morality. Its use is prohibited by law,” wrote the Daoguang Emperor in an edict issued in 1810.
By the mid-19th century, the Qing worried that, without drastic action, China would be left bereft of money and productive men—so they banned all sales of opium and destroyed any supply of it they could find, including European wares. This angered the British, who profited handsomely off the opium trade, and led them to victoriously wage war against the Qing—not once, but twice—to forcibly stop prohibition.
Narcotics thus continued to flow through the veins of China’s body politic, wreaking havoc for generations. Since then, Chinese nationalists have bitterly remembered the Opium Wars as a colonial crime which marked the beginning of China’s “century of humiliation.”
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The 98th Regiment of Foot at the attack on Chin-Kiang-Foo (Zhenjiang), 21 July 1842, resulting in the defeat of the Manchu government. Watercolour by military illustrator Richard Simkin (1840–1926).
This raises an important question: how exactly can anyone square this history with the ideological framework of the harm reduction movement? Were the Qing embodying some mystical form of white supremacy? Perhaps we should be grateful that the British sent their anti-racist warships to decolonize China’s drug laws.
Even today, the legacy of the Opium Wars continues to inform Chinese attitudes towards drugs—both within China itself (where strict prohibitionism is the norm) and in the diaspora.
In San Francisco, America’s petri dish for drug liberalization, it is Chinese-Americans who are leading a public backlash against progressive policies and calling for greater prohibition. Similarly, Chinese-Canadians were instrumental to Vancouver’s political pivot during the 2022 municipal elections, wherein the centrist ABC party swept the city council and the mayor’s office. Just this spring, Chinese-Canadian protestors in Richmond, the most ethnically Chinese city in North America , thwarted the launch of a new supervised consumption site, only to have a white progressive woman shout “Go back to Hong Kong” at them. No doubt another anti-racist activist.
When I interviewed almost a dozen Chinese-Canadian small business owners and workers in Vancouver’s historical Chinatown last summer, their support for prohibition was clear—and the legacy of the Opium Wars was invoked several times. Many other ethnic groups are processing similar historical traumas, and facing similar erasure. Do harm reduction activists forget, for example, that early European colonists devastated North American Indigenous communities by plying them with alcohol?
Indigenous leaders did not respond to that crisis by calling for more booze. On the contrary, they pushed for prohibition. Illustratively, when Treaties No. 6 and 7 were negotiated during the 1870s, Indigenous representatives asked for the “exclusion of fire water” from Saskatchewan, and that “no intoxicating liquor be allowed to be introduced or sold” on reserves. Even today, dozens of “dry” Indigenous reserves throughout Canada continue to ban alcohol and drugs to whatever extent they can.
When I interviewed over a dozen Indigenous elders and community members in Calgary last summer, their opposition to drug liberalization was clear—some went so far as to condemn decriminalization and “safer supply” programs as “pharmaceutical colonialism.” Ronnie Chickite, chief of the We Wai Kai Nation in British Columbia, told me this spring that his entire band council was “entirely against” decriminalization and that provincial officials had allegedly ignored them.
Building upon these interviews, two senior contacts in the Ontario government confirmed to me earlier this year that Indigenous leaders across the province seem to commonly hold prohibitionist beliefs. Who would have thought that Indigenous people could be such raging white supremacists?
Surveying the world today, it is clear that drug prohibition is actually strongest in non-European states—particularly East Asian and Middle Eastern ones—while liberalization is actually more popular in the West. It is telling that the harm reduction movement seems intent on ignoring this, or, alternatively, positioning non-white prohibitionism as a symptom of corrupting European influences. Both responses are, ironically, more than a little racist—how else can one describe the systematic erasure of non-European voices?
How is it that harm reduction advocates, who make such a theatre of their own “anti-racism,” cannot grasp that non-white communities have intellectual and cultural agency and do not simply let white people dictate their beliefs? In their obsessive disdain for European civilization, these advocates close their eyes to the rest of the world and inadvertently reproduce the same cultural narcissism that they ostensibly condemn—their calls for racial justice conceal a Eurocentric mindset sopping with paternalism.
How is this possible? How has this happened? A glimpse of an answer can be found in the “Acknowledgements” section of Henry’s report this month, where brief biographies of the report’s contributors were provided. Each contributor fixated on their ethnicity and, in many cases, proclaimed themselves as “third generation settlers” or “occupiers.” Unsurprisingly, almost everyone on the team was white. Though there were some Indigenous voices (who were seemingly relegated to working on exclusively Indigenous-related tasks, of course), not a single Asian, black or Middle-Eastern voice could be found.
The B.C. provincial health officer report’s contributors section:
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So it seems that a bunch of white progressive bureaucrats produced a document that fixated on “colonialism” and “racism” while ignoring the actual beliefs of many, if not most, non-white communities. Nothing could encapsulate the harm reduction zeitgeist more perfectly: the privileging of empty gestures over real consultation, the self-indulgent self-flagellation of the white bourgeoisie, the patronizing assumption that minority communities have homogenous political beliefs that happen to align with progressive causes.
All of this would be comedic if lives weren’t at stake.
It should be clarified that there are many valid ways to criticize drug laws from a racial justice lens. Laws are just tools which we use to order society, and, like any tool, they can be abused—so it is fair to explore how some laws, in some contexts, have racist intentions or outcomes.
This is best illustrated by the wealth of scholarship criticizing American cannabis laws—in this case, critics have been able to concretely show that specific laws, in specific contexts, are being enforced unfairly and exacerbating inequities without producing justificatory social benefits.
Yet this mode of analysis, which focuses heavily on outcomes and concrete data, is an entirely different beast from the essentialist arguments recklessly flung around by the harm reduction movement. It makes sense to test measurable hypotheses about specific laws and their implementations. But to argue that drug prohibition is intrinsically “racist” is to succumb to ideological hallucination.
This essay originally appeared in The Hub and has been syndicated to Break The Needle through a co-publishing agreement.
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A B.C. pharmacy scam investigation has led the provincial government to return to a witnessed consumption model for safer supply
More than 60 pharmacies across B.C. are alleged to have participated in a kickback scheme linked to safer supply drugs, according to a provincial report released Feb. 19.
On Feb. 5, the BC Conservatives leaked a report that showed the findings of an internal investigation by the B.C. Ministry of Health. That investigation showed dozens of pharmacies were filling prescriptions patients did not require in order to overbill the government. These safer supply drugs were then diverted onto the black market.
After the report was leaked, the province committed to ending take-home safer supply models, which allow users to take hydromorphone pills home in bottles. Instead, it will require drug users to consume prescribed opioids in a witnessed program, under the oversight of a medical professional.
Gregory Sword, whose 14-year-old daughter Kamilah died in August 2022 after taking a hydromorphone pill that had been diverted from B.C.’s safer supply program, expressed outrage over the report’s findings.
“This is so frustrating to hear that [pharmacies] were making money off this program and causing more drugs [to flood] the street,” Sword told Canadian Affairs on Feb. 20.
The investigation found that pharmacies exploited B.C.’s Frequency of Dispensing policy to maximize billings. To take advantage of dispensing fees, pharmacies incentivized clients to fill prescriptions they did not require by offering them cash or rewards. Some of those clients then sold the drugs on the black market. Pharmacies earned up to $11,000 per patient a year.
“I’m positive that [the B.C. government has] known this for a long time and only made this decision when the public became aware and the scrutiny was high,” said Elenore Sturko, Conservative MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale, who released the leaked report in a statement on Feb. 5.
“As much as I am really disappointed in how long it’s taken for this decision to be made, I am also happy that this has happened,” she said.
The health ministry said it is investigating the implicated pharmacies. Those that are confirmed to have been involved could have their licenses suspended, be referred to law enforcement or become ineligible to participate in PharmaCare, the provincial program that helps residents cover the costs of prescription drugs.
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Witnessed dosing
The leaked report says that “a significant portion of the opioids being freely prescribed by doctors and pharmacists are not being consumed by their intended recipients.” It also says “prescribed alternatives are trafficked provincially, nationally and internationally.”
Critics of the safer supply program say it enables addiction, while supporters say it reduces overdoses.
Sword, Kamilah’s father, is suing the provincial and federal governments, arguing B.C.’s safer supply program made it possible for youth such as his daughter to access drugs.
Madison, Kamilah’s best friend, also became addicted to opioids dispensed through safer supply programs. Madison was just 15 when she first encountered “dillies” — hydromorphone pills dispensed through safer supply, but widely available on the streets. She developed a tolerance that led her to fentanyl.
“I do know for sure that some pharmacies and doctors were aware of the diversion,” Madison’s mother Beth told Canadian Affairs on Feb. 20.
“When I first realized what my daughter was taking and how she was getting it, I phoned the pharmacy and the doctor on the label of the pill bottle to inform them that the patient was selling their hydromorphone,” Beth said.
Masha Krupp, an Ottawa mother who has a son enrolled in a safer supply program, has said the safer supply program in her city is similarly flawed. Canadian Affairs previously reported on this program, which is run by Recovery Care’s Ottawa-based harm reduction clinics.
“I read about the B.C. pharmacy scheme and wasn’t surprised,” Krupp told Canadian Affairs on Feb. 20. Krupp lost a daughter to methadone toxicity while she was in an addiction treatment program at Recovery Care.
“Three years [after starting safer supply], my son is still using fentanyl, crack cocaine and methadone, despite being with Dr. [Charles] Breau and with Recovery Care for over three years,” Krupp testified before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health on Oct. 22, 2024.
Krupp has been vocal about the dangers of dispensing large quantities of opioids without proper oversight, arguing many patients sell their prescriptions to buy stronger street drugs.
“You can’t give addicts 28 pills and say, ‘Oh here you go,’” she said in her testimony. “They sell for three dollars a pop on the street.”
Krupp has also advocated for witnessed consumption of safer supply medications, arguing supervised dosing would prevent diversion and ensure proper oversight of pharmacies.
“I had talked about witnessed dosing for safe supply when I appeared before the parliamentary health committee last October,” she told Canadian Affairs this week.
“I’m grateful that finally … this decision has been made to return to a witness program,” said Sturko, the B.C. MLA.
In 2020, B.C. implemented a witnessed consumption model to ensure safer supply opioids were consumed as prescribed and to reduce diversion. In 2021, the province switched to take-home models. Its stated aim was to expand access, save lives and ease pressure on health-care facilities during the pandemic.
“You’re really fighting against a group of people … working within the bureaucracy of [the B.C. NDP] government … who have been making efforts to work towards the legalization of drugs and, in doing that, have looked only for opportunities to bolster their arguments for their position, instead of examining their approach in a balanced way,” said Sturko.
“These are foreseeable outcomes when you do not put proper safeguards in place and when you completely ignore all indications of negative impacts.”
Sword also believes some drug policies fail to prioritize the safety of vulnerable individuals.
“Greed is the ultimate evil in society and this just proves it,” he said. “We don’t care about these drugs getting into the wrong hands as long as I get my money.”
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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The leaked audit shows from 2022 to 2024, a staggering 22,418,000 doses of opioids were prescribed by doctors and pharmacists to approximately 5,000 clients in B.C., including fentanyl patches.
A confidential investigation by British Columbia’s Ministry of Health, Financial Operations and Audit Branch has uncovered explosive allegations of fraud, abuse, and organized crime infiltration within PharmaCare’s prescribed opioid alternatives program. Internal audit findings, obtained by The Bureau, suggest that millions of taxpayer dollars are being diverted into illicit drug trafficking networks rather than serving harm reduction efforts.
The leaked documents include photographs from vehicle searches that show collections of fentanyl patches and Dilaudid (hydromorphone) apparently packaged for resale after being stolen from the taxpayer-funded “safer supply” program. This program expanded dramatically following a federal law change implemented by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government in 2020, which broadened circumstances in which pharmacy staff could dispense opioids, according to the document’s evidence.
“Prior to March 17, 2020, only pharmacists in BC were permitted to deliver [addiction therapy treatment] drugs,” the audit says.
B.C.’s safer supply program was launched in March 2020 as a response to the opioid overdose crisis, declared in 2016. It allows people with opioid-use disorder to receive prescribed drugs to be used on-site or taken away for later use.
The Special Investigations Unit and PharmaCare Audit Intelligence team identified a disturbing link between doctors, pharmacists, assisted living residences, and organized crime, where prescription opioids meant to replace illicit drugs are instead being diverted, sold, and trafficked at scale.
“A significant portion of the opioids being freely prescribed by doctors and pharmacists are not being consumed by their intended recipients,” the document states.
It suggests that financial incentives have created a business model for organized crime, asserting that “prescribed alternatives (safe supply opioids) are trafficked provincially, nationally, and internationally,” and that “proceeds of fraud” are being used to pay incentives to doctors, pharmacists, and intermediaries.
BC Conservative critic Elenore Sturko, a former RCMP officer, began raising concerns about the program two years ago after hearing anecdotes about prescribed opioids being trafficked. She asserts that the program is a failure in public policy and insists that Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry be dismissed for having “denied and downplayed” problems as they emerged. Sturko also argues that B.C. must change its drug policy in light of U.S. President Donald Trump’s stance linking the trafficking of fentanyl and other opioids to potential trade sanctions against Canada.
The document shows that PharmaCare’s dispensing fee loophole has incentivized pharmacies to maximize billings per patient, with some locations charging up to $11,000 per patient per year—compared to just $120 in normal cases.
Perhaps most alarming is the deep infiltration of B.C.’s safer supply program by criminal networks. The Ministry of Health report lists “Gang Members/Organized Crime” as key players in the prescription drug pipeline, which includes “Doctors, pharmacies, and assisted living residences.”
This revelation confirms long-standing fears that B.C.’s “safe supply” policy—originally designed to prevent deaths from contaminated street drugs—is instead sometimes supplying criminal organizations with pharmaceutical-grade opioids.
The leaked audit shows from 2022 to 2024, a staggering 22,418,000 doses of opioids were prescribed by doctors and pharmacists to approximately 5,000 clients in B.C., including fentanyl patches.
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Beyond organized crime’s direct involvement, pharmacies themselves have exploited regulatory gaps to generate massive profits from PharmaCare’s policies:
- Pharmacies offer kickbacks to doctors, housing staff, and medical professionals to steer patients toward specific locations.
- Financial incentives fuel fraud, with multiple investigations identifying 60+ pharmacies offering incentives to clients.
- Non-health professionals, including housing staff, are witnessing OAT (opioid agonist treatment) dosing, violating patient safety protocols.
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