Dr. Andrea Sereda addresses Moms Stop the Harm online.

From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

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.” 

RELATED: Trudeau gov’t earmarks over $27 million for ‘safe supply’ drug program linked to overdoses and violence

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.” 

[This article is part of Break The Needle’s “Experts Speak Up” series, which documents healthcare professionals’ experiences with Canada’s “safer supply” programs] By: Liam Hunt

Dr. Lori Regenstreif, an addiction physician with decades of experience on the frontlines of Canada’s opioid crisis, is sounding the alarm about the country’s rapidly expanding “safer supply” programs.

While proponents of safe supply contend that providing drug users with free tablets of hydromorphone – a pharmaceutical opioid roughly as potent as heroin – can mitigate harms, Dr. Regenstreif expresses grave concern that these programs may inadvertently perpetuate new addictions and entrench existing opioid use.

She sees ominous similarities between safer supply and the OxyContin crisis of the late 1990s, when the widespread overprescribing of opioids flooded North American communities with narcotics, sparking an addiction crisis that continues to this day. Having witnessed the devastating consequences of OxyContin in the late 1990s, she believes that low-quality and misleading research is once again encouraging dangerous overprescribing practices.

Flashbacks to the OxyContin Crisis

Soon after Dr. Regenstreif received her medical license in Canada, harm reduction became the primary framework guiding her practice in inner-city Vancouver. This period coincided with Health Canada’s 1996 regulatory approval of oxycodone (brand name: OxyContin) based on trials, sponsored by Purdue Pharma, that failed to assess the serious risks of misuse or addiction.

Dr. Regenstreif subsequently witnessed highly addictive prescription opioids flood North American streets while Purdue and its distributors reaped record profits at the expense of vulnerable communities. “That was really peaking in the late 90s as I was coming into practice,” she recounted during an extended interview with Break The Needle. “I was being pressured to prescribe it as well.”

Oxycodone addiction led to the deaths of tens of thousands of individuals in the United States and Canada. As a result, Purdue Pharma faced criminal penalties, fines, and civil settlements amounting to 8.5 billion USD, ultimately leading to the company’s bankruptcy in 2019.

During the OxyContin crisis, patients would regularly procure large amounts of pharmaceutical opioids for resale on the black market – a process known as “diversion.” Dr. Regenstreif has seen alarming indications that safer supply hydromorphone is being diverted at similarly high levels, and estimated that, out of her patient pool, “15 to 20 out of maybe 40 people who have to go to a pharmacy frequently” have reported witnessing diversion.

Between one to two thirds of her new patients have told her that they are accessing diverted hydromorphone tablets – in many cases, the tablets almost certainly originate from safer supply.

Injecting crushed hydromorphone tablets pose severe health risks, including endocarditis and spinal abscesses. “I’ve seen people become quadriplegic and paraplegic because the infection invaded their spinal cord and damaged their nervous system,” said Dr. Regenstreif. While infections can be mitigated by reducing the number of times drug users inject drugs into their bodies, she says that safer supply programs do not discourage or reduce injections.

She further noted, “I’ve seen a teenager in [the] hospital getting their second heart valve replacement because they continue to inject after the first one.” The pill that nearly stopped the patient’s heart was one of the tens of thousands of hydromorphone tablets handed out daily via Canadian safe supply programs.

Her experiences are consistent with preliminary data from a scientific paper published by JAMA Internal Medicine in January, which found that safe supply distribution in British Columbia is associated with a “substantial” increase in opioid-related hospitalizations, rising by 63% over the first two years of program implementation — all without reducing deaths by a statistically significant margin.

While Dr. Regenstreif has worked in a variety of settings, from Ontario’s youth correctional system to Indigenous healing facilities in the Northwest Territories, her experiences in Australia, where she worked during a sabbatical year from 2013 to 2014, were particularly educational.

Australia has far fewer opioid-related deaths than Canada – in 2021, opioid mortality rates were 3.8 per 100,000 in Australia and 21 per 100,000 in Canada (a difference of over 500%). Dr. Regenstreif credited this difference to Australia’s comparatively controlled opioid landscape, where access to pharmaceutical narcotics is tightly regulated.

“Heroin had been a long-standing street opioid. It was really the only opioid you tended to see, because the only other ones people could get a prescription for were over-the-counter, low-potency codeine tablets,” she said. To this day, opioid prescriptions in Australia require special approval for repeat supplies, preventing stockpiling and street diversion.

No real evidence supports “safer supply”

Critics and whistleblowers have argued that Canadian safe supply programs, which have received over $100 million in federal funding through Health Canada’s Substance Use and Addictions Program (SUAP), were initiated without adhering to the rigorous evidentiary standards typically required to classify medication as “safe.”

Dr. Regenstreif shares these concerns and says that no credible studies show that safer supply saves lives, and that little effort is invested into exploring its possible risks and unintended consequences – such as increased addiction, hospitalization, overdose and illicit diversion to youth and vulnerable individuals.

Most studies which support the experiment simply interview recipients of safer supply and then present their answers as objective evidence of success. Dr. Regenstreif criticized these qualitative studies as methodologically flawed “customer satisfaction surveys,” as they are “very selective” and rely on small, bias-prone samples.

“If you have 400 people in a program, and you get feedback from 12, and 90% of those 12 said X, that’s not [adequate] data,” said Dr. Regenstreif, criticizing the lack of follow-up often shown safer supply researchers. “Nobody seems to track down the […] people who were not included. Did they get kicked out of the program? [Did they engage in] diversion? Did they die? We’re not hearing about that. It doesn’t make any sense in an empirical scientific universe.”

Safe supply advocates typically argue that opioids themselves are not problematic, but rather their unregulated and illicit supply, as this allows for contaminants and unpredictable dosing. However, studies have found that opioid-related deaths rise when narcotics, legal or not, are more widely available.

Dr. Regensteif is calling upon harm reduction researchers to build a more robust evidence base before calling for the expansion of safer supply. That includes more methodologically rigorous and transparent quantitative research to evaluate the full impact of Canada’s harm reduction strategies. Forgoing this evidence or adequate risk-prevention measures could lead to consequences as catastrophic as those resulting from Purdue’s deceptive marketing of OxyContin, she said.

Critics propose solutions despite bullying

Dr. Regenstreif has faced pressure and exclusion for speaking out against safe supply. She estimates that while only a quarter of her local colleagues shared her doubts a few years ago, “now I would say more than half” harbor the same concerns. However, many are reluctant to voice their reservations publicly, fearing professional or social repercussions. “People who don’t want to speak out don’t want to be labeled as right-wing […] they don’t want to be labeled as conservative.”

While she acknowledges that safe supply may play a limited role for a small subset of patients, she believes it has been oversold as a panacea without adequate safeguards or due evaluation. “It doesn’t seem as if policymakers are listening to the people on the ground who have experience in doing this,” she said.

She contends that the solution to Canada’s addiction crisis lies in a more holistic, recovery-oriented approach that includes all four pillars of addiction: harm reduction, prevention, treatment, and enforcement. Her vision includes a national network of publicly-funded, rapid-access addiction medicine clinics with integrated counseling and wraparound services.

Additionally, Dr. Regenstreif stresses the importance of building upon established opioid agonist treatments (OAT), like methadone and buprenorphine, rather than solely relying on novel approaches whose social and medical risks are not yet fully understood.

At the core of Dr. Regenstreif’s advocacy lies a profound dedication to her patients and to the science of addiction medicine. “I like to think I kind of am fear-mongering with my patients, [by] trying to make them afraid of not getting better,” she explains. “I don’t want them to end up in the hospital and not come back out. I don’t want them to end up dead.”

[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.]