Krykant’s knack for public speaking and passion for helping people transform their lives were already clear from his past work and advocacy in Alcoholic Anonymous. But his campaigning became more urgent as he continued to see too many people hurting and dying around him. With British drug policy infamously resistant to change, he took action. He knew that something needed to change to keep people alive. Not in a few years, not after lengthy data collection processes, not after a shift in political priorities—now.

After running the van for as long as he could with donations and savings—he was arrested for it in 2020, though the charges were ultimately dropped—Krykant’s activism went global. He fought for harm reduction over drug prohibition, and for community support, mutual aid, and radical love and care among people unfairly criminalized for how they live their lives.

His work was recognized worldwide, amplifying harm reduction’s reach. Richard Branson congratulated him, he had politicians volunteering at the van or condemning his arrest, and he even met the Queen. Besides Filter and TalkingDrugs, he was covered in Al Jazeera, Sky News, the BBC,  the Guardian multiple times, the Daily Record, the New York Times, Vice, Pharmaceutical Journal, the Conversation, the Times, Big Issue, and many, many more.

Peter Krykant didn’t wait for the right time: He seized moments, attention and opportunities to make things happen.

Whether in text or multiple times on TV, he spoke with powerful authenticity on issues where he had deep lived experience—ranging from the overdose crisis and the drug supply to homelessness and tobacco harm reduction.

Krykant’s activism was imperfect—just as grassroots activism always is, by necessity. The van had issues, didn’t drive well and needed repairs—but it was good enough to work. He struggled with balancing everything, but always gave his full heart to support those around him. He traveled the world sharing his experiences—including the barriers he faced.

After his sudden death, even British politicians joined the flood of global tributes, mourning his loss and recognizing the life-saving value of his actions.

Peter Krykant didn’t wait for the right time: He seized moments, attention and opportunities to make things happen. Often, you can’t predict how things will change when you take action. You only know that if you don’t take action, nothing will change.

Below are some tributes and recollections from people who knew him well.  

Photograph via X

Gillian Shorter

Reader at Queen’s University Belfast, who led evaluation of Krykant’s van

I met Peter through Twitter, asking if he and his volunteers needed any research support on the van. A few weeks later I had designed a data collection form, had ethical approval, and we were regularly in contact about life on the van, the clients and volunteers. We would talk semi-regularly on Wednesdays or Fridays, sometimes with his lovely family too; he loved his sons so very much.

It was an honor to bear witness to the stories of people who used the van, and how Peter and the volunteers had helped. It was undoubtedly hard and heavy work with limited resources; there were stories of despair, trauma, poverty and much frustration at systems of stigma and oppression. But there were also wondrous stories of hope and joy, agency, health care, love and kindness, and community. Lives were saved.

Thanks to generous donations and Peter’s family savings, many van clients got items sorely needed like new clothing/shoes, food, water and even a wheelchair. Peter won over community businesses and built trusting, respectful partnerships with clients. I’ll be forever grateful that he chose me to evaluate the first drug consumption room in the UK. What an honor it was to tell that story (with my co-authors), have those conversations with Peter, and to become friends. Please read the independent evaluation of his van here and continue to recognize and remember his harm reduction pioneering work.

A note to Krykant from a 21-year-old woman who had overdosed in the van. Photograph via X

Leo Jeffreys

Harm reduction consultant and drug-user activist with the European Network of People who Use Drugs

Peter was my friend second, and an inspiration first. Throughout my life in this vocation, I have been fortunate to share tables with people who are brave, imperfect, hilarious and loving. Peter was all of these things.

We first met in Prague in 2021, at the European Harm Reduction Conference. I had seen him earlier that day, and made a mental note to try and grab him for a coffee. Since moving to Dublin from Vancouver in 2016, I was at the mercy of watching my friends, colleagues and neighbors back home die in the thousands from preventable deaths due to prohibitionist drug policies. I felt isolated and helpless at times. My advocacy work through UISCE on the ground in Ireland and EuroNPUD at a regional level helped with this, and I had a renewed sense of determination.

Reading about Peter and his van, the first drug consumption site in Scotland and in the UK, I was inspired to start Dublin Overdose Prevention and Education (DOPE), a grassroots group focused on naloxone training and distribution in Ireland, as well as a European Naloxone solidarity group that sourced naloxone from countries that had access, distributing to those who had none. This was because of Peter. Because the bravery and actions of one can inspire so many.

Peter and I did officially then meet in Prague after a conference session where we both walked out of the room, along with another colleague who would become my friend and comrade, Magdalena Harris. We walked out because for three presentations in a row in that one session, the same graph of rising drug deaths was displayed and discussed like those lives were numbers on a page. Cold, clinical and without compassion. The three of us found each other in the hallway, in tears, and in comradeship.

Peter’s passing is for me not a loss but a challenge to a renewed stronger sense of hope. As his family said at his memorial gathering, it’s up to us to carry his legacy, and for me to be a part of that is an honor. RIP my friend.

“Peter made his own phrase: ‘Drugs are not forbidden because they are dangerous, they are dangerous because they are forbidden.”’

Aura Roig

Director of Metzineres, a nonprofit cooperative in Barcelona providing shelter for womxn who use drugs

The first time I met Peter was in a webinar organized by Juan Fernández Ochoa. We had been invited to speak about how both of us had set up safe havens for people who, until then, had been left out of all care and support networks simply because they used drugs—isolated from their communities and families, and marked by multiple layers of violence and vulnerability: gender-based violence, racism, extreme poverty, family breakdown, criminalization, psychiatry, among others. What we both proposed was a response rooted in unconditional love and radical tenderness.

Peter made his own phrase: “Drugs are not forbidden because they are dangerous, they are dangerous because they are forbidden.” Once he realized that prohibition had made him believe his only problem was the drugs—hiding the violence, trauma, isolation, stigma, guilt and shame he had carried since childhood—he felt betrayed. 

In a Scotland where families struggled to survive a social and economic crisis that left them unemployed, with little else to do but go to church or to the pub, Peter tried both: He didn’t believe in the first, and the second he enjoyed too much, though it didn’t suit him either.

Discovering harm reduction first and anti-prohibitionism later was liberating for him. For the first time, he felt free, able to transform guilt and shame into action for himself and for his people. And yet, even though he understood the theory of harm reduction, he never really managed to apply it to the substances he had learned to use to cope with his pain. Because those wounds don’t simply disappear—neither through abstinence nor through medicalized harm reduction strategies that still focus only on consumption.

Yes, when life became overwhelming for Peter, he could not find other tools to cope with his emotions or to help him navigate through them. What kept him most tethered to life were his children and his community, but in the end it was not enough.

What became clear to me during the time we walked together is that Peter was a person of action. He shone when surrounded by friends—and his friends were not just anyone, but people from all over the world, leading different responses, because we know from experience that what has been tried for decades only works for a few. To point the finger at drugs and ignore the impact that “tough love” has on people is deeply irresponsible—and deadly. To exploit families’ despair and sense of helplessness, convincing them that “hitting rock bottom” is the only way, is cruel to those of us who later have to mourn our loved ones.

Yes, perhaps it has worked for some. But we are here to grieve for those who cannot tell their story. And Peter knew that well. What saves us is community, love and mutual recognition.

Photograph of Krykant by Nigel Brunsdon

Aamer Anwar

British lawyer and activist

Peter was a force of nature who single-handedly took on the state to deliver safe drugs consumption rooms. I first met Peter as his lawyer, when he kitted out an ambulance for an illegal mobile injection unit near the High Court.

If it had not been for Peter, his single-bloody-mindedness and refusal to back down when arrested, it is unlikely that the appalling drugs deaths toll in Scotland would ever have made it to the front pages of our tabloids or the top of our political agenda.

Formerly addicted and a victim of childhood sexual abuse, Peter had once lived on the streets but channeled his pain into a force to be reckoned with. He wasn’t a professional campaigner, but his lived experience and fiery compassion for those dying through drugs allowed him to tear through the red tape.

In the last year of his life, those of us who were close to him saw his rapid descent into a hell he had tried so hard to leave behind. Sadly, it was seen as an opportunity by some to openly dismiss his achievements—that clearly hurt, as doors were rapidly closed on Peter.

I hope one day his two boys can take comfort from how much Peter loved them and how very proud he was of them.

I hope very much, my friend, that you are at peace now, but in years to come you should be recognized for the revolutionary pioneer you were, tearing down the hypocrisy of our drug laws.

There are men and women who because of Peter’s love and compassion are alive today; for that, as a society, we will forever be in your debt.

Photograph via X

“Peter was a man of integrity and courage. He saw a need and stepped up … I hope people in the UK understand the magnitude of what he gave and what he endured.”

Zoë Dodd

Drug policy activist and organizer in Canada

Hard to believe I’m writing this and that Peter is no longer with us. It still feels completely surreal that he’s gone. What’s rarely talked about in the UK is its record-breaking number of drug deaths and how a so-called “recovery-oriented system of care,” combined with criminalization and the erosion of the social safety net, has failed people. Prioritizing abstinence above all else is not saving lives. There’s an urgent need for real action and evidence-based policy.

This is what Peter Krykant showed the UK when he took matters into his own hands. He bought a van and proved how simple it could be to save lives—offering harm reduction services, overdose prevention and care. In the face of government abandonment, Peter and a handful of volunteers risked arrest and endured bullying and vitriol from conservatives and segments of the recovery movement, who attacked him both online and in person.

It was hard to witness this from across the ocean. As someone who helped establish the first overdose prevention site in Toronto, I knew how essential community support was. We had allies and a network of volunteers who stood behind us. At Moss Park OPS, which ran illegally in a park for a year, 150 volunteers came together—people who used drugs, nurses, workers and others (several of them sober, in fellowships, but standing in solidarity because they understood the importance of harm reduction). Watching the UK, especially Scotland, struggle with devastating HIV rates and overdose deaths greater than our own, was and is heartbreaking.

I first met Peter during COVID, on Zoom, shortly after he opened the mobile overdose prevention site in Glasgow. I’d already seen him in the media and was so proud of what he was doing. Honestly, I was a bit awestruck when we finally spoke. A small group of us had come together to support others opening overdose prevention sites, and I felt honored to be part of it. After that meeting, Peter and I started messaging and became friends. Comrades offering one another care and encouragement.

A couple of years later, we met in person in Brighton, at the Social Justice Conference Peter helped organize. It was there that I learned how deeply entrenched the UK’s politics were and how so many people were stuck in incrementalism and respectability politics, even in the face of mass death.

Peter was a man of integrity and courage. He saw a need and stepped up, even as the toll of isolation and resistance weighed heavily on him. Without the kind of community we had here, he still forged ahead. I hope people in the UK understand the magnitude of what he gave and what he endured. He was arrested, he was praised, he was attacked, he was respected. He carried an immense responsibility.

If Scotland and the rest of the UK want to confront the drug deaths crisis, they must embrace other ways of knowing and doing. They must move beyond an abstinence-only mindset—it’s not pragmatic, realistic, or saving lives. Abstinence can be one path, but it cannot be the only one, especially in a culture that normalizes heavy consumption of alcohol and other drugs.

My hope is that Peter’s death becomes a lesson: a call to build community, to act collectively, to offer mutual support and care. The UK once led the world in harm reduction; it’s time to reclaim that legacy. Stop pandering to regressive politics. Stop catering to those who lack the urgency to save lives. Do it for the thousands who’ve died over the past decade. Do it for Peter.

This article is a co-publication with Talking Drugs.

Top photograph of Peter Krykant by Nigel Brunsdon

The post Remembering Peter Krykant, Who Knew Harm Reduction Couldn’t Wait appeared first on Filter.

The August 8 decision was not a complete surprise. In a June ruling, Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Lawrence P. Fletcher-Hill had indicated the city would not receive nearly as much as it had hoped. He found the city’s lawyers failed to prove their claim that opioid distributors McKesson and Cencora (formerly AmerisourceBergen) were responsible for 97 percent of opioid-related damages the city has experienced. In that ruling, Fletcher-Hill rejected the city’s $5.2 billion request for abatement and said he would allow for a new trial, effectively reversing a 2024 jury verdict that won the city $266 million for “public nuisance” damages.

Under an arrangement between the judge and the city, Baltimore now has until August 22 to decide whether to accept the proposed abatement award in addition to watered-down public nuisance damages, or opt for a new trial completely. If the city takes the deal, it will walk away with a total of about $152 million.

“The Court concluded … that these two Defendants were responsible, at most, for just under 20% of the total amount of past and future damages claimed by the City.”

“The Court concluded, based on the evidence presented to the jury, that the largest verdict that would not be considered legally excessive would be premised on a conclusion that these two Defendants were responsible, at most, for just under 20% of the total amount of past and future damages claimed by the City,” Fletcher-Hill wrote in his August 8 ruling.

It is not immediately clear whether the city plans to challenge the abatement ruling. Regardless of the outcome, Baltimore is still guaranteed to receive hundreds of millions of dollars from previous opioid settlements and the ongoing case.

“We have received the court’s abatement ruling and are considering all options at this time,” the office of Mayor Brandon Scott (D) said in a statement. “We remain committed to securing justice for all Baltimore residents disproportionately impacted by the opioid crisis. We will respond in due time in the appropriate judicial forum.”

The city has argued that the pharmaceutical giants recklessly peddled prescription opioids and misled the public about their addictive potential, leaving Baltimore with a growing addiction and overdose crisis that has claimed thousands of lives, at a rate higher than any other major city in the United States.

The projected abatement funds have been the cornerstone of the city’s plans to address the crisis. Officials put together a 15-year, five-point plan to use billions of dollars to bolster Baltimore’s harm reduction and treatment infrastructure—including by opening overdose prevention centers (OPC).

“If the City believes this [OPC] approach is valuable, it is up to City leaders both to resolve the legal issues … and to convince the community that these sites are valuable and appropriate.”

In the August 8 ruling, Fletcher-Hill directly addressed the city’s plans for the facilities, noting the fact that they remain illegal under state law after numerous failed attempts to pass legislation legalizing the sites in the General Assembly in recent years.

“The concept is extremely controversial. Defendants even argue that this feature could not be ordered by the Court because the sites are not legal under Maryland law,” Fletcher-Hill wrote.

“Without making any determination whether this strategy is valuable from a public health perspective, the Court will not require this feature in the abatement plan,” he continued. “If the City believes this approach is valuable, it is up to City leaders both to resolve the legal issues with this type of site and to convince the community that these sites are valuable and appropriate.”

Baltimore already has numerous harm reduction and treatment programs, but expert witnesses who testified at trial said the current level of services is inadequate and must be expanded. The model used by the city estimates that more than 32,500 residents at any given time have opioid use disorder.

Under the plan, the city could reduce overdoses by 50 percent and triple the number of people in treatment, witnesses said.

In the month leading up to the judge’s latest ruling, officials held numerous public hearings and listening sessions about the overdose crisis.

The city’s aim to reduce opioid prescriptions by 55 percent is controversial, however—given damaging implications for pain patients, and the relationship between a national crackdown on opioid prescribing and the overdose crisis reaching unprecedented levels. Some advocates argue that opioid lawsuits themselves contribute to a harmful chilling effect on prescribing.

In the month leading up to the judge’s latest ruling, officials held numerous public hearings and listening sessions about the overdose crisis. This ended more than a year of relative silence on the issue, as the mayor’s administration had argued that public discourse might jeopardize the litigation.

Public hearings were held by Baltimore City Council members, while the mayor’s new Office of Overdose Response held four community listening sessions specifically to garner feedback on its draft strategic plan to address the crisis. That sweeping plan has proved to be less ambitious than the abatement plan presented in court; it aims to reduce fatal overdoses 40 percent by 2040, without explicitly calling for OPC.

At least one Council member has recently reiterated his support of city-sanctioned OPC—the kind of step taken by New York City—when efforts seeking state authorization have repeatedly failed. But the plan makes no mention of the facilities. To date, the mayor has refused to use his powers to unilaterally open the sites.

The plan does, however, state that one of the city’s priorities is to “increase access to a full array of low-barrier harm reduction services (including naloxone distribution, drug checking, syringe service programs, and other evidence-based strategies.” The latter phrase might include OPC.

It’s unclear just how much the judge’s ruling on the case, which dates back to 2018 and has faced numerous delays, will impact the city’s overdose prevention plans—though city officials have conceded it will make things significantly more difficult.

Baltimore will likely have to adjust its plans to operate on almost $215 million less, depending on whether it accepts the judge’s proposal or opts for a new trial.

After the $266 million jury verdict in November, based on the “public nuisance” caused by the companies’ practices, the city had expected its overdose prevention war chest to come to nearly $670 million, excluding any abatement dollars. Now, Baltimore will likely have to adjust its plans to operate on almost $215 million less, depending on whether it accepts the judge’s proposal or opts for a new trial.

The city asserted in court that the overdose crisis was largely caused by “pill mills” dishing out opioids they received from companies like Cencora and McKesson. But defense attorneys said the city failed to identify faults in the companies’ practices. They also questioned the legitimacy of the city’s statistical model estimating OUD prevalence, which underpins the cost estimates for its abatement plan, and suggested the plan did not factor in existing overdose prevention programs that may already be funded.

The city’s witnesses responded that funding for existing programs will run out, while the plan focused on fully funding initiatives over 15 years by putting the funds in a trust that accrues interest. They dismissed concerns regarding the statistical model and emphasized that the severity of the crisis demands a response of equivalent ambition.

Though Baltimore’s fatal overdose rate remains the highest in the nation, according to city officials, the number of deaths in the city has continued to decline, in line with trends seen nationwide.

Preliminary data recently published by the Maryland Department of Health showed the city recorded 777 deaths in 2024, a fall of nearly 26 percent from 2023. Subsequent monthly data suggest the downward trend has continued, with fewer than 600 deaths in the 12-month period ending in June.

While the trajectory is positive, the crisis continues to have a disproportionate impact on older Black men, and people living in areas such as West Baltimore.

Photograph of Baltimore City Circuit Court Elijah E. Cummings Courthouse by Logan Hullinger

The post Judge Offers Baltimore $100 million for OD Crisis—Far Less Than City Sought appeared first on Filter.

Police in Ontario are increasingly interfering with the operation of health services, our recent study found. This obstructs people from accessing life-saving care. “People would like to access our services but cannot,” one service provider told us.

Our study, which is set to be released in September, was led by the co-executive directors of the HIV Legal Network and a criminologist at Toronto Metropolitan University. As part of a research project examining the health impacts of Canada’s current drug laws across four Ontario cities, we interviewed 22 people who use drugs and were previously charged with a drug offense, as well as eight service providers, five drug policy experts, and six lawyers who observe the impacts of drug laws on their clients and the broader communities they serve.

Communities across Canada continue to experience the devastating toll of the toxic drug crisis. While some regions have scaled up harm reduction initiatives, including supervised consumption services and safer supply programming, these efforts have been limited and are facing growing attacks and hostile legislation, leading to closures and bans in some provinces. 

Members of the research team heard about frequent unannounced police visits to local harm reduction programs.

One drug policy expert explained that “overdose prevention sites are only as effective as they are accessible … People are continuing to be at risk just for traveling to these sites.” 

Members of the research team heard about frequent unannounced police visits to local harm reduction programs. Our community-based colleagues told us that during these visits, police would enter the premises, search clients’ belongings, interrogate staff, and at times arrest service users for a breach or outstanding warrant, mirroring excessive and questionable practices documented elsewhere. 

“The police keep an eye on the clientele that’s gathering when they’re going by,” explained one service user.

Participants in our study spoke about this kind of interference as a major part of their experience accessing programming. “In the past little bit, the police presence has gotten a lot higher … they’ve ramped up the police presence for sure,” explained a service user in a separate city.

This was reflected by service providers as well: “You won’t see someone around for a while because they’re trying to avoid a warrant,” one said. “Or again they will be trespassed from the property [by police] for dealing. That one’s been happening more frequently … it makes it difficult for that person to access services.”

Police opposition to supervised consumption sites has been longstanding, based on unfounded beliefs that the sites contribute to “public disorder” and generate crime. This has in many cases led to direct police surveillance of health services (e.g., parking outside, interrogating service users); the seizure and destruction of harm reduction supplies during interactions with clients; and intensive street-level policing in close proximity to the sites. 

Previous research has established that police surveillance of or presence at supervised consumption sites creates barriers in accessing essential health care. When faced with surveillance and potential criminalization, people will often instead choose to avoid services altogether. This leads to practices that aggravate risk of overdose and other harms, including using in isolation, rushed consumption, choosing not to carry harm reduction supplies, and interruptions to medical treatment. 

“The data over many, many years now indicates that fear of policing and criminalization, even short of arrest, and that can include things like being stopped or ID’d/carded/searched, causes people to use in more isolation,” one drug policy expert told us. 

“People are being pushed into more dangerous, more marginal situations by police involvement.” 

Aggressive policing and interference of this kind often leads people to think that health services are, in the words of one of our research participants, a “trap.” 

These fears and related avoidance are often amplified for parents, migrants with precarious status, people involved in the distribution or selling of drugs or other informal economies, and racialized and Indigenous people who are already subject to profiling and targeted enforcement by police. Health care avoidance in turn drives health inequity among people who are disproportionately impacted by the toxic drug supply. 

“Police are increasing their patrols; you might be forced to use at a house that is honestly not very safe for you but is the best option, because better to run the risk of nodding off and getting robbed versus getting run in by the police and having everything confiscated or getting more charges or seeing there’s an active warrant and ending up in jail …” one service provider said. “People are being pushed into more dangerous, more marginal situations by police involvement.” 

 This sentiment was echoed by supervised consumption site users: “People who are actively using, in case they go down in a fentanyl overdose, they’re afraid to go there,” said one. 

Previous efforts have been made between health care/harm reduction organizations and local police to foster ”cooperative” relationships—for example, through negotiated boundary agreements. While in some places these informal agreements worked reasonably well in the past, our study shows that they are quickly eroding or have been replaced with outright hostility from law enforcement. 

Police surveillance and obstructionism aren’t limited to supervised consumption sites, but also include hindering or interfering with outreach workers trying to support their clients. 

“I’ve had police threaten to arrest me before because we wouldn’t allow them into our workplace,” one provider told us.

“Sometimes we were unable to access certain places because the police would say, ‘No you cannot go in there, the clients that you’re trying to see are trespassing. You can’t go in. They can’t be there. And if we catch you in here, we’re going to arrest you,’” one service provider said. “That again is isolating clients because people will still stay there. If we get caught providing services, there is a risk for arrest.”  

“I’ve had police threaten to arrest me before because we wouldn’t allow them into our workplace …” another provider told us. “I’ve had police say, ‘You know, whatever you think that they are, they’re criminals at the end of the day and you’re protecting criminals,’ and like, reprimanded me, and they can get aggressive.” 

These experiences are evidence of a growing and troubling trend. In addition to the belief among law enforcement that harm reduction “enables” drug use, it appears that they also think harm reduction “enables” crime. Alarmingly, they are targeting health care and harm reduction workers who deliver lifesaving services in the context of an unprecedented public health emergency.  

“We have had harm reduction workers be followed and considered part of drug investigations because of our proximity to places and spaces where drugs are being purchased and sold and consumed,” one service provider explained.

These practices create a climate of fear and risk eroding the long tradition of harm reduction offering a sanctuary or “demilitarized” zone in drug law enforcement. They are also a violation of the right to health, and undermine the privacy and confidentiality of people accessing key services. 

“It makes it harder for us to actually connect with the people that we’re trying to connect with …” a service provider told us. “The community is terrified now of outreach workers because they’re afraid that someone will notice and call the police on them.”  

“If simple possession was decriminalized, people could reasonably access sites without being scared that it’s a trap.”

The growing crisis of police interference and obstruction highlights the precarious gains made by harm reduction and health care allies in Ontario. An increasingly hostile political and legal environment appears to be directly translating into greater police interference with health services. Recent legislation providing police with additional powers risks worsening an already untenable situation. 

“I’m anticipating relationships with the police will only get worse as [our city] seems to be defunding harm reduction,” one service provider said.

The recent closure of roughly half of supervised consumption sites in Ontario, and the denial of Toronto’s decriminalization request, risk adding fuel to the fire. 

“If simple possession was decriminalized, people could reasonably access safe injection or supervised injection sites without being scared that it’s a trap or that when they leave, police are going to arrest them—they wouldn’t have necessarily been using on the street and been in the crosshairs of the police,” one of the lawyers we interviewed told us.  

We are facing a pressing need for public health leadership to reign in excessive and abusive police practices. The situation demands meaningful protections in the form of binding buffer zones around all health services, formal non-interference perimeters defined by clear policies and protocols, and provincial directives barring police from surveilling health care facilities—as well as the broader overhaul of prohibitionist and punitive drug laws. 

“That’s what prohibition does …” as one Ontario service provider summarized; “reducing the ability for us to do our work, folks to access our work, because of the stigma that comes with these laws [which] is huge and honestly going to become more and more of a concern.”   

The study described was funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada, Intersectoral Action Fund.

Dylan De Marsh is the digital and strategic communications officer at HIV Legal Network. He previously worked with PARN-Your Community AIDS Resource Network in Peterborough for 12 years.

Ann De Shalit is a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow and adjunct professor at the University of Windsor in Ontario. She has been involved in community-based research on drug policy and harm reduction for 10 years.

Top photograph (cropped) of police car in Toronto by Dominik drz via Pexels 

The post Police in Ontario Increasingly Obstruct Harm Reduction Service Delivery appeared first on Filter.

The state authorized such facilities in 2024, and this is slated to be the first to open—though a number of steps remain before that will happen, including determining the exact location, so the timeline is unclear. At the Downtown Health Project, as it will be known, people will be able to use drugs that they bring with them, with harm reduction workers on hand to keep them safe and provide various forms of support.

“This won’t work if it’s not somewhere downtown,” said Council Member Evan Litwin (D), as local news reported. “It’s not gonna work if it’s in an area that isn’t accessible and near the folks who need the service.”

“We cannot arrest away substance use disorder,” added Council Member Melo Grant (Progressive Party). “We have to have the part that is harm reduction.”

On March 11, the city had chosen Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform (VCJR) to operate the prospective site. The organization is a harm reduction, treatment and recovery services provider. The state health department will provide $1.1 million in opioid settlement money to support the OPC in its first year, with the intention to continue funding it through fiscal year 2028.

“We’ve been preparing for several years in the hopes this legislation would go through and we would be selected.”

Tom Dalton, VCJR’s executive director, spoke with Filter about the plans.

“Is the $1.1 million enough to cover [the costs]?” he asked. “It’s a complicated question because there are many unknowns, such as the cost of the site. But we’re an existing organization with a budget. We’ve been preparing for several years in the hopes this legislation would go through and we would be selected, and have put the ancillary services in place through other funding. We feel we will be able to cover the expenses with what we have.”

These preparations, he added, have included talks with the operators of the few other authorized OPC in the United States—OnPoint in New York City, and Project Weber/Renew in Providence, Rhode Island.

“From our perspective, we’re hoping to implement this in the context of a broader array of services, building on what we already offer,” Dalton said. “We see overdose prevention centers as an important tool, but only part of a bigger range of support people benefit from—harm reduction, medical, drug treatment and other services onsite.”

Besides supervising drug use and responding to any overdoses, the site will need to provide drug checking, first aid, safe sex supplies and STD testing, and direct referrals to treatment and mental health services.

According to guidelines issued by the state health department, Vermont will also allow mobile OPC. Importantly, the guidelines require an indoor smoking area at brick-and-mortar locations, to protect people who smoke drugs as well as those who inject—though the requirement of a separate ventilation system from the rest of the building could present challenges.

“What we’re doing isn’t working. Fentanyl and xylazine are here, and they’re not going anywhere. We have to get creative and do what we can.”

Vermont is facing multiple public health crises, underscoring the need for new approaches. CDC data show that overdose deaths soared from a total of 78 in 2015 to 257 in 2023. Meanwhile, the state ranks fourth in the nation for its homelessness rate, with 53 out of every 10,000 residents unhoused.

“What we’re doing isn’t working,” Council Member Litwin told Filter. “Fentanyl and xylazine are here, and they’re not going anywhere. We have to get creative and do what we can … It’s a large population of people who are unhoused and struggling with substance use disorder. If we can move some of this activity out of hidden places where people can overdose and die—where they shouldn’t be using, that’s impacting public life and spaces—then everyone benefits.”

Burlington is facing budget problems, amid an $8 million deficit in its municipal spending. The mayor and Council are considering cuts. As the unhoused population has grown faster than the availability of shelter beds, the city has debated how to respond—in 2024, it agreed to distribute necessities like water, dumpsters and portable toilets to several encampments. The issue of homelessness has been a major sticking point between the state legislature and Governor Phil Scott (R)—who has repeatedly vetoed a budget bill that would extend an existing hotel-motel voucher program, which Scott has described as a “failed system.”

“This is a huge strain on our public safety resources,” Litwin said. “The constant rolling of ambulances, fire trucks, police and Narcan has a cost, in the millions. We’re in a fiscal hole as a municipality, and we’re not getting the financial support we need from our governor and legislature.”

“One of the commitments is to site the facility in the area where most overdoses happen, because we need people to access it and most people will do so on foot.”

Like Litwin, Dalton sees a downtown location for the Burlington OPC as essential.

“We know the city has been collecting data about where overdoses are occurring, and it has a ‘heat map’ showing that,” he said. “One of the commitments is to site the facility in the area where most overdoses happen, because we need people to access it and most people will do so on foot.”

But several steps remain before the OPC can open. VCJR and the city will have to work to find a suitable building, and hire and train staff. They’ll also have to get feedback from residents and businesses near the proposed location.

“[VCJR] will have to come back to us with a contract to get approved, and when they need a zoning amendment once a site is located,” Litwin said. “My guess is that will be a big conversation. I wouldn’t be surprised if we run into some concerns about, ‘Do I really want this in my neighborhood?’ [Personally], I certainly don’t think it should be near a school.”

Finding a proposed location is likely to be tough. “A million dollars doesn’t build you a new building,” Litwin said. “We don’t have a ton of building stock around the city that can be retrofitted, so that will limit how many sites we really have to choose from.”

Reaching this point has taken a long political fight. In 2024, the bill to authorize OPC in Vermont advanced passed both the state House and Senate after amendments. Then Gov. Scott vetoed it when it reached his desk. But in a dramatic turn of events on June 17, the legislature very narrowly mustered the votes to overturn Scott’s veto.

Photograph of Burlington by Bill Badzo via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

The post Burlington Plans to Open Vermont’s First Overdose Prevention Center appeared first on Filter.

Instead, platforms released by the major parties ahead of the April 28 election reflect a long-running retreat from lifesaving policies, in favor of “tough-on-crime” legislation.

There’s been a years-long political backlash against harm reduction in Canada, in what experts and people who use drugs have called a moral panic.

Of the four national parties’ platforms, only one is explicitly pro-harm reduction. The other three either ignore the toxic drug crisis, or talk of ramping up enforcement or outright attack harm reduction.

The Green Party is promising to expand harm reduction. The party’s platform includes increased funding for supervised consumption sites and other services, full decriminalization of drug possession for personal use, and establishing a federally managed safe supply program. The Greens are polling in the low single digits, however.

The Liberals and the Conservatives are pursuing a trend of prohibitionist entrenchment, focusing either on law enforcement or on dismantling harm reduction.

The center-left New Democratic Party (NDP), also polling below 10 percent, is promising to expand mental health coverage, to end homelessness and to improve health care—all issues firmly adjacent to drug use—but its platform makes no mention of non-prescription drugs, of overdose or even of addiction.

Meanwhile the Liberals and the Conservatives—the only parties with any chance of forming the next government, according to the polls—are pursuing a trend of prohibitionist entrenchment, focusing either on law enforcement or on dismantling harm reduction.

The Liberals are in the former category. The party has been in power for almost a decade, and had been facing a resounding defeat to the Conservatives until the Trump administration’s attacks on Canada changed the picture. It’s now favored to win.

Until recently, the Liberals were receptive to harm reduction measures—though were commonly criticized by experts for watering down policies to a point of irrelevance.

More recently, their retreat from harm reduction has accelerated. The Liberals’ current election platform focuses entirely on treatment and enforcement.

In the platform’s health care section, the single reference to the crisis is to add $500 million to the Emergency Treatment Fund to help communities “confront the toxic drug and overdose crisis and connect more people to treatment and vital services faster.”

The Liberals promise to increase Canada Border Services Agency funding; expand the Coast Guard’s mandate to include drug enforcement; and allow Canada Post to search for drugs in the mail.

The other mentions of drugs come in the platform’s national security and public safety sections.

The party is promising to increase Canada Border Services Agency funding to add 1,000 more officers and more equipment to search for drugs at the border; to expand the Coast Guard’s mandate to include drug trafficking enforcement; and to allow Canada Post to search for fentanyl and other contraband in the mail through a general warrant.

The Liberals also promise to “put those profiting from fentanyl behind bars by prosecuting more complex drug trafficking and organized crime offenses,” through further funding of the prosecution service.

The Conservatives place even heavier emphasis on enforcement.

That includes imposing a life sentence for people convicted of trafficking fentanyl “at a large scale.” The platform itself doesn’t define “large scale,” but the party has previously put it at a figure of just 40 milligrams.

The party’s “tough-on-crime” agenda includes laws that the Supreme Court of Canada has already found unconstitutional. Among them were mandatory minimum sentences and consecutive life sentences that would leave some people with no chance of parole ever, as well as “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” legislation, mirroring laws in the United States that have been correlated with increases in homicides.

This is despite mountains of evidence showing so-called tough-on-crime legislation does not reduce crime and can even increase crime rates.

The Conservatives have also committed to funding treatment for 50,000 people.

The Conservatives have promised to end safe supply, calling it a “failed … experiment that has flooded streets with taxpayer-funded addictive opioids, keeping people hooked instead of helping them heal.”

While the Liberals and NDP have remained tight-lipped about harm reduction, the Conservatives have been all too happy to keep it in the conversation.

The party has gone on the offensive against supervised consumption sites and overdose prevention sites, saying it would ban them within 500 meters of schools, parks and seniors homes, “and impose strict new oversight rules to ensure they are pathways for treatment and recovery.”

That follows an Ontario government law to ban the sites within 200 metres of a school or daycare. Opponents of that law obtained a temporary injunction against it, but most sites closed anyway due to concurrent funding constraints imposed by the province.

The Conservatives have also promised to end safe supply, calling it a “failed … experiment that has flooded streets with taxpayer-funded addictive opioids, keeping people hooked instead of helping them heal.”

Their planned national assault on harm reduction follows a years-long buildup of resentment against it on the right. 

But it isn’t just the right wing that is participating in the dismantling of harm reduction. The NDP’s provincial counterpart in British Columbia, for instance, has long been acquiescing to the attacks—severely limiting access to safe supply, effectively ending the decriminalization pilot, and curbing programs to distribute naloxone and needles and pipes.

“I think it’s quite shocking that these politicians have stooped so low that they would be putting the broader society at risk of the rise in the spread of infectious diseases, worsening the burden on our health care system, just for a handful of political points,” Anmol Swaich, a community organizer with the Surrey Union of Drug Users in BC, told Filter last September.

And the federal Liberal Party has been at the BC NDP’s side, through both the rise of harm reduction policies and the subsequent retreat.

The Liberals allowed an expansion of safe supply programs, but in a highly restrictive manner, allowing only pilot programs with limited timelines in medicalized settings.

Similarly, the Liberal government allowed the BC decriminalization pilo—which was criticized long before it began, however, for setting unrealistic thresholds for personal possession.

Power will fall either to the Conservatives or to the Liberals, who have been cowed into mimicking conservative talking points and positions on drug use.

The 2025 election platforms seem to confirm that the war on Canada’s relatively progressive harm reduction provision—often spearheaded by provincial conservative parties—will continue to escalate at a federal level.

In a 2023 interview I conducted for The Maple, Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users member Garth Mullins, host of the Crackdown podcast, said that moral panic around supposed public disorder linked to drug use was able to take hold because people do genuinely feel unsafe.

However, he said concerns around safety were really more economic in nature—people being unable to afford housing and groceries, and facing troubles with debt and stagnant wage increases.

“Those feelings are all around us, and I think they make everybody feel insecure and unsafe,” he said. “And so the right puts their finger on something — you feel scared, you are worried — but then they pivot and they say, ‘Well, what you should be worried about is there’s people roaming around with no house, who are mentally ill drug users.’”  

The solutions proposed, then, are more cops and less funding for programs that, as the right puts it, “coddle” drug users, Mullins said. “So they’re playing politics, and then the BC NDP is playing it right back.”

After the election, power will fall either to the Conservatives or to the Liberals, who have similarly been cowed into mimicking conservative talking points and positions on drug use. The right’s strategy, at least for the time being, will have won.

Photograph (cropped) by Dennis Sylvester Hurd via Flickr/Public Domain

The post Canada’s Election Guarantees Grim Outlook for Harm Reduction appeared first on Filter.

In 2023, Minnesota lawmakers and Governor Tim Walz (DFL) approved legislation that established grants for “safe recovery sites.” The bill defined these as including provision of sterile syringes, naloxone, fentanyl test strips, referrals and education, as well as “safe injection spaces.”

The state authorized a grant program, “to promote health, wellness, safety, and recovery to people who are in active stages of substance use disorder.” Grants are prioritized for “organizations that are culturally specific or culturally responsive and that commit to serving individuals from communities that are disproportionately impacted by the opioid epidemic,” including Black and Indigenous residents.

Earlier in April, state officials posted details about grants that will be offered to four to six programs, with contracts until 2029 unless extended. But “safe injection spaces” are not included in the language. A representative for the state’s Department of Human Services (DHS), Behavioral Health Administration confirmed that the state government is not pursuing them in the immediate future.

“More work needs to be done on a state and federal level before these services can be implemented.”

“The Safe Recovery Site Legislation did not include any protection for programs operating safe injection sites, or to participants accessing them,” Scott Peterson told Filter in an email. “This is why the Request For Proposal (RFP) does not include this service. More work needs to be done on a state and federal level before these services can be implemented in a way that is safe for participants and Harm Reduction programs.”

“The State understands that this potential service will require careful consideration and extensive engagement with tribes, community partners, people who use drugs, elected officials and law enforcement,” he continued.

Peterson also noted that there are two legislative proposals in the Senate, which would cut a total of $25.5 million in potential funding to Safe Recovery Sites over a four-year period. He said the DHS will be working with the Senate, but did not clarify its position on these cuts.

According to a report in the Star Tribune, Teresa Steinmetz, a DHS assistant commissioner, clarified that state officials remain committed to opening safe-use spaces at a future point. DHS representatives have visited the two overdose prevention centers (OPC) in New York City (which are sanctioned by the city, rather than the state) and met with Rhode Island health officials about their own groundbreaking OPC, which opened in January. Within Minnesota, the department has met with 13 local harm reduction programs, and several Tribal Nations to discuss the plan further.

“My understanding is DHS is now thinking, the safe injection part now is not so palatable, so we’re going to take that piece out of the safe recovery site.”

Brian Warden, the harm reduction director of Anything Helps Minnesota, providing harm reduction and recovery services, said that state officials are likely being more cautious due to political hostility to OPC under the Trump administration.

“There was a lot of progress made during the pandemic,” he told Filter. “There was a recognition of the overdose disparities that exist and [the need to] make services available to everyone. The governor’s office has made plans to increase access to harm reduction and use opioid settlement money to help programs like ours that directly work with the BIPOC community.”

But after the 2024 election, there was a notable shift, he said. “With harm reduction, the political dynamics directly inform how programming is rolled out … My understanding is DHS is now thinking, the safe injection part now is not so palatable, so we’re going to take that piece out of the safe recovery site.”

Mary McCarthy, executive director of the Rural AIDS Action Network, said that the planned safe recovery sites—even if they don’t function as OPC—would still be valuable. Her organization, centered in several counties throughout Minnesota, is not currently applying for the grants due to being short-staffed.

“It’s very similar in scope to our syringe service programs,” she told Filter. “The main difference is it looks to provide more space for folks to just be there and attend to other needs—like taking a shower, or washing clothes, and be in a safe and low-barrier space. Many times these folks are ostracized from other spaces. The more practical element is it provides people an opportunity who use drugs to be in a safe place, so the overdose response might look very different than if they were out on their own somewhere.”

Naloxone and other resources like oxygen therapy would still be available on-site to protect people, she noted.

“Minnesota has to do it well, because we don’t want to be the place that screws it up for other folks. It’s something we have to be incredibly intentional and thoughtful about.”

However, not permitting drug use on site makes it less likely that those resources will be in the right spot when they’re needed.

Asked if she thinks Minnesota is ready to open OPC, McCarthy, who disclosed that she formerly worked for the DHS Behavioral Health Administration, was hesitant.

“Safe injection is a challenge. I understand the rationale for the state’s [hesitance] to go to that level,” she said. “We don’t know if we’re prepared to take that on. There are successful programs that are running [elsewhere]. Minnesota has to do it well, because we don’t want to be the place that screws it up for other folks. It’s something we have to be incredibly intentional and thoughtful about to ensure we’re providing the best level of service we can, and make sure there are no adverse complications to cause any conflicts.”

Among these complications, McCarthy expressed that certain populations might oppose safe injection spaces, and that people who use drugs might fear the facilities would invite greater police scrutiny. She sees the state health department’s current plan—for safe recovery sites with harm reduction resources but without safe injection—as the resulting compromise.

As overdose deaths continue in Minnesota, Warden feels that harm reduction programs like his are on the defense and thinking about how to survive the next four years. Thankfully, his program has sources of private funds.

“We’re responding how we always have,” he said of the delay with OPC, “by hoping for the best and fighting, but preparing for the worst.”

Photograph by Photo Claude TRUONG-NGOC via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 3.0

The post Will Minnesota, Which Authorized OPC, Actually Open Them? appeared first on Filter.

Seventeen “medical emergencies” occured at the site in this period. Without the OPC, said Pat Togher, chief officer of Glasgow’s health and social care partnership, “It is highly likely that a number of these would have resulted in a fatality.” With care and resources on hand, none of them did.

In a historic move back in September 2023, the city of Glasgow approved a proposal to create a pilot OPC—known in the UK as a safer drug consumption facility—in the city’s east end, to be run by a local health clinic. After much planning, the Hunter Street Health Centre opened the Thistle, as the OPC is called, on January 13.

Scotland’s government, under the Scottish National Party, endorsed the site and funds it; Scotland’s top law enforcement official has promised not to enforce drug laws against it. The Labour Party government in London, where parliament sets UK drug policy, has said it does not plan to open OPC but will not interfere in Glasgow, according to the BBC.

“The team has done an excellent job of trying to engage the neighborhood … The feedback from the people using the service has been very positive.”

The facility’s rules state that it is open to participants over 18, who can bring their own drugs to use but cannot share substances or assist other people in using drugs there. Staff provide sterile injection equipment and naloxone to take home. They supervise each person using, offer harm reduction advice and intervene in case of overdose. Staff can also connect participants to resources like HIV or hepatitis C care, substance use disorder treatment and sexual health services.

Jan Mayor is the practice and innovation lead for alcohol and other drugs at Turning Point Scotland, a charity and social care provider. Her organization was not involved in establishing the OPC, but some of its clients are participants at the new site.

“It was always designed to meet the needs of a very specific subset of drug users, and I think it’s doing that very well,” she told Filter. “The team has done an excellent job of trying to engage the neighborhood … The feedback from the people using the service has been very positive.”

At the same time, Mayor noted, the site operates under some constraints that are likely to limit its impact. “One of the constraints is we weren’t able to allow inhalation,” she said, which is a significant limitation after “a shift in drug use where people who were predominantly injecting heroin are now injecting cocaine and smoking both.”

Scotland has a pressing need for harm reduction. It has the highest rate of drug-related deaths among the UK nations, and in Europe. In 2023, Scotland’s rate of 224 deaths per million population was about 10 times higher than the 2022 European Union average of 22.5 deaths per million. The rate in Glasgow is higher still. Scotland lost 1,172 lives to overdose in 2023—a total lower than in most recent years, but over four times higher than in 2000. Opioids, such as heroin and morphine, were involved in 80 percent of deaths.

“In Scotland, fentanyl has never really taken off. But we do have the same problem—the quality of the heroin was really diminished.”

Unlike in North America, fentanyl has not been a major element in Scotland’s crisis. The supply has still become riskier, with a surge in deaths involving benzodiazepines since 2015.

“In Scotland, fentanyl has never really taken off,” Mayor said. “But we do have the same problem—the quality of the heroin was really diminished. We already had a street benzodiazepine issue, so very few people were using heroin and not using benzodiazepines. What’s happening is people are moving more towards cocaine, and the heroin they’re buying is more contaminated with xylazine, street benzodiazepines and synthetic opioids like nitazenes. We’ve had a spate of near-fatal overdoses in the last couple of months.”

As in other countries, Scotland’s overdose crisis is also economic: In areas with the highest levels of economic deprivation, rates of drug use are estimated to be 17 times higher than in the wealthiest areas. An estimated 21 percent of Scottish people live in relative poverty after adjusting for housing costs.

Throughout Scotland, Mayor said, abstinence-based recovery and the Twelve Steps remain the dominant approach to substance use disorder, and local governments have resisted adopting harm reduction. Seeing a need for public gathering spaces for people currently using drugs, Turning Point Scotland launched “harm reduction cafes.” There, people can get soups and sandwiches, access education and resources, work on arts and crafts, and join discussions about drug safety and policy advocacy.

“There’s loads of places to go and get support if you’ve stopped using drugs,” Mayor said. “But if you’re using drugs, [there’s nowhere]. So we thought it would be nice to have a space where people are still using drugs and don’t even need to say they want to stop, can come and access advice and activities.”

“We make it very clear they can come intoxicated,” she emphasized. They can’t use on the premises, but they can go around the corner, use, come back in, they’re not going to get thrown out. It’s about an inclusive and welcoming space.”

“There is a really good grassroots campaign in Edinburgh for a safe consumption room. They are pushing for something less clinical, less health-led, more peer-led, more informal.”

Meanwhile, the Scottish Affairs Committee, a body of the UK Parliament which recommended as far back as 2019 that the UK government support an OPC in Glasgow, is conducting an inquiry around the Thistle.

“The inquiry will focus specifically on the legal and policy challenges faced in setting up and running the facility, its current legal position and the challenges this presents, as well as the facility’s effectiveness in reducing drug-related deaths in Scotland,” the Committee stated. “The inquiry will consider what legal changes at UK level might be necessary to enable the facility to operate sustainably beyond its three-year pilot.”

Mayor hopes this won’t be the last OPC in Scotland, and that future examples will be able to accommodate different types of drug consumption.

“There is a really good grassroots campaign in Edinburgh for a safe consumption room,” she said. “They are pushing for something less clinical, less health-led, more peer-led, more informal. The site in Glasgow really meets the need of one part of Glasgow, not the whole. They’re a high-risk group, but they’re a very small population. We need overdose prevention sites for a much bigger population.”

The movement to open overdose prevention centers in Scotland goes back many years. In 2020, a group of Glasgow volunteers took matters into their own hands, launching an unofficial mobile OPC out of a van. Over nine months, the van hosted nearly 900 injections, with just nine cases of overdose requiring intervention and no deaths.

Photograph (cropped) of Glasgow by Lewis Ashton via Pexels

The post Scotland’s Overdose Prevention Center Up and Running: Will There Be More? appeared first on Filter.

Two participants at supervised consumption sites (SCS), Katharine Resendes and Jean-Pierre Aubry Forgues, along with SCS operator the Neighbourhood Group Community Services, have applied with the Ontario Superior Court for an interim injunction to stop the new law taking effect.

The matter is expected to go to a hearing in the coming days, with applicants hoping for a decision before the legislation’s implementation date.

The application seeks a finding that the Community Care and Recovery Act is unconstitutional.

Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party passed legislation in December to ban SCS within 200 metres of schools, childcare centers and similar facilities—a law that would shut down 10 of the province’s 17 sites.

The application seeks a finding that the Community Care and Recovery Act (CCRA) is unconstitutional, claiming the law goes beyond the powers of the Ontario government.

Under the Canadian Constitution, federal law has “paramountcy,” and the closure of the sites, the applicants say, would go against Controlled Drugs and Substances Act exemptions for SCS approved by the federal government.

A factum they filed also alleges the law violates Sections 7 and 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms—respectively, the right to life, liberty and security of the person, and the right to equality.

Under the former, the legal filings argue the law increases the risk of death for Resendes and Forgues, calling the effects “arbitrary, overbroad and grossly disproportionate to the objective it ostensibly seeks to obtain.”

The legislation was introduced with the ostensible aim to improve public safety, citing public drug use outside the sites.

“In Toronto, around 90 percent of the people who use these sites are unstably housed or homeless. People will instead use what is readily available: public places.”

But Colin Johnson, co-chair of the Toronto Harm Reduction Alliance, said in a March 20 public video conference about the case that the law wouldn’t address that—and in fact would exacerbate it.

“In Toronto, around 90 percent of the people who use these sites are unstably housed or homeless, meaning they don’t have a place indoors of their own,” he said. “People will instead use what is readily available: public places, such as alleyways, parks. People will use public washrooms, in libraries, businesses and community centers.”

Injecting drugs in unhygienic spaces will increase people’s risk of infections and abscesses, Johnson added. People will also be more likely to share drug-use supplies like syringes in the absence of SCS, increasing the risk of HIV and hepatitis C transmission. And when people are not using in places designated for drug use, response times to overdoses will increase, putting people at risk of brain damage and death.

SCS closures “will, without doubt, cause unnecessary and preventable harm to some of the most marginalized people in our communities,” Johnson said.

With respect to Section 15, the court filings say the closure of SCS “imposes disproportionate burdens on those experiencing substance use disorder, a recognized disability,” adding that the approach “perpetuates and exacerbates existing disadvantages that this group already experiences, including the false and pernicious stereotype that these individuals are dangers to the community, not members of it.”

Resendes and Forgues contrasted the stigma they experienced in abstinence-based treatment with their positive experiences at SCS, where they found community and stability.

The two individual applicants, Resendes and Forgues, are both aged 36 and have long experienced substance use disorders.

In affidavits referenced in the filings, the two contrasted the stigma they experienced in abstinence-based treatment with their positive experiences at SCS, where they found community and stability.

The factum, referencing case conferences that heard expert testimony from both parties, notes that the applicants are backed by strong evidence showing SCS have a positive effect on health in their surrounding neighborhoods, that they don’t affect crime rates and that Ontario’s legislation is likely to increase overdose deaths.

“Ontario’s experts did not conduct any studies of the effects of SCSs in Ontario and therefore could not provide any positive evidence about this issue; they only critiqued the evidence of the applicants’ experts,” the factum reads.

The filings add that there were “several issues” with those critiques. Whereas the applicants’ experts were “candid and noted where their opinions had limitations,” the factum claims the government’s experts “lacked similar candour, and several of them seemed to misunderstand the appropriate role of an expert.”

That refers, among others, to Dr. Sharon Koivu, an addictions doctor with no criminology experience, who “gave opinion evidence on bias in the reporting of crime. When confronted with the fact that this was an opinion that was outside the area of her expertise, Dr. Koivu asserted that she felt it was within her duty to give such opinions.”

Lawyers note that finding real estate not in an area where the new legislation bans SCS “will be akin to finding a needle in a haystack.”

Dr. Robert Platt, meanwhile, reportedly gave evidence on the ease with which an SCS could relocate, “despite having not had any discussions with any of the operators of SCSs in Ontario, having no expertise on the real estate or rental market in Toronto and not having reviewed the map in Ontario’s record setting out the CCRA restricted locations.”

In the factum, lawyers note that finding real estate not in an area where the new legislation bans SCS “will be akin to finding a needle in a haystack,” with “only a few slivers of land here and there [that] are left uncovered.”

“And that is without considering zoning issues or pre-existing structures on that land [that isn’t covered by the ban],” the factum reads.

The legal filing includes a map of the Toronto area, with circles indicating the areas where SCS are due to be banned.

Sites that are set to close can’t simply relocate, the factum adds, as the law also “prohibits municipalities and local boards from applying for federal [Controlled Drug and Substances Act] exemptions to operate an SCS without the Minister’s approval.”

This doesn’t just affect sites in Toronto, which will lose half of its SCS if the legislation comes into effect, noted Zoë Dodd, a co-organizer at the Toronto Overdose Prevention Society.

“They’re also closing the only sites in several cities, including Hamilton, Guelph and in Thunder Bay,” she said in the video conference. “They wouldn’t fund two amazing sites in Timmins and Sudbury that were doing great, and saving lives. And those sites had to close last year.”  

“By forcing the site in Thunder Bay to close, they are closing the last site in the northern part of this province, where the death rate from overdose is double the rate in the southern part,” Dodd added.

Sites have also already closed in Ottawa and Peel, and Dodd said that this has resulted in increases in public use and in overdoses.

“The government defunded these in August,” she noted. “They gave organizations a letter saying they were being defunded before the legislation even passed.” 

“We already know the impacts, people are already seeing people overdose elsewhere and trying to respond,” Dodd continued. “And we know that in places that they’ve already closed, they’ve had to ramp up paramedics and outreach workers to respond to people outside.”

“How do we not get fooled by stigma and fear?”

The Canadian Drug Policy Coalition is acting as an intervener in the case, and executive director DJ Larkin said during the video conference that they intend to clarify for the court the harms that will arise from closing the sites.

“The job has to be to assess what is the real and most important harm that we have to prevent,” Larkin said.

“How do we not get fooled by stigma and fear, and how do we make sure that government doesn’t get to impose a law that is harmful in order to try to hide people and harm people who are already suffering from failures of government around housing, around health care, around treatment services, around basic essentials of life and dignity?”

Screenshot from film of overdose prevention center in Providence, Rhode Island, by Marilena Marchetti

The post Last-Ditch Court Bid Aims to Block Ontario Consumption Sites Shutdown appeared first on Filter.

March 17 was “Crossover Day” in Maryland—the date by which bills must pass one chamber of the General Assembly in order to be guaranteed a vote in the other by the end of the legislative session in April. As lawmakers rushed to pass numerous bills, those cross-filed in both chambers that would legalize overdose prevention centers (OPC) and decriminalize drug “paraphernalia” languished in committee. 

When the deadline passed at midnight, neither had proceeded to a floor vote. 

“There doesn’t seem to be the will to pass either of these bills,” Dan Rabbitt, policy director at Behavioral Health System Baltimore, told Filter before the deadline had passed. “It’s unfortunate. Our top priority as a state and city should be preventing overdoses, and both of these measures would help advance efforts to prevent overdoses. We’re disappointed.”

The bills have failed to gain traction in the Democrat-controlled legislature despite ardent support from public health experts and Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D), who declared both proposals “legislative priorities” this session. During hearings, advocates passionately urged lawmakers to help combat an overdose crisis that has devastated Baltimore, in particular.

“Every year since this bill was introduced, countless lives have been lost from drug overdoses. These deaths are preventable.”

The OPC legislation would allow six centers to open throughout the state in areas with high rates of overdose deaths. It is sponsored by Senator Shelly Hettleman (D-Baltimore County) in the Senate and Delegate Joseline Peña-Melnyk (D-Anne Arundel County) in the House, who have asserted that myriad evidence shows their efficacy in saving lives.

“I and the many co-sponsors of House Bill 845 will continue to fight for the bill in the event that the bill does not move forward this session,” said Del.Peña-Melnyk, who chairs the Health and Government Operations Committee, in a statement. “Every year since this bill was introduced, countless lives have been lost from drug overdoses. These deaths are preventable.”

Sen. Pamela Beidle (D-Anne Arundel County), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, confirmed to Filter that there was not enough support to justify putting the bill to a vote. Sen. Hettleman noted the OPC issue has been “politicized so much over the years,” adding she will reevaluate before determining whether she’ll push for the bill in future sessions.

Meanwhile, legislation to decriminalize drug “paraphernalia” has had a mixed past in the General Assembly. It cleared both chambers in 2021 before being vetoed by former Governor Larry Hogan (R). This session, it’s sponsored by Sen. Cory McCray (D-Baltimore City) and Del. Karen Simpson, (D-Frederick County). Its key purpose, supporters say, is to allow people to utilize syringe service programs without fear they could be arrested for possessing the supplies they receive.

“There is no data indicating this decades[-long] ‘war on drugs’ law has ever reduced use or crime,” Simpson said in a statement. “However, this law is an obstacle to the workers and volunteers who are trying to save lives amid our overdose crisis. I will reintroduce [the bill] until this antiquated obstacle to health and safety is repealed.”

Over the years, harm reduction advocates and sponsors have described multiple obstacles preventing the bills from becoming law. This time around, House members indicated to Filter that they believed they had the votes to pass the OPC legislation, but a lack of support in the Senate dissuaded them from pushing it to a floor vote.

“I do think that some of it is a racist idea of, ‘Whatever happens to that community happens to that community.’”

This may reflect an ideological gulf between the two chambers. Despite a Democratic trifecta in the state, lawmakers in the upper chamber are seen as having a more conservative bent. For example, sources told Filter that Senate leadership had the votes to override Hogan’s veto of the decriminalization legislation in 2021, but chose not to.

Catherine Tomko, a harm reduction advocate and a social scientist focusing on substance use and mental health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, suggested a troubling factor at play.

“So many of the overdoses and drug harms that are happening [in Maryland]  happen in Baltimore City, which is a majority-Black city,” she told Filter. “So I do think that some of it is a racist idea of, ‘Whatever happens to that community happens to that community,’ so there isn’t as much of a political will and urgency.”  

With the bills now expected to once again die in committee, the spotlight may shift toward Baltimore’s mayor—who leads a city which has had the highest fatal overdose rate in the nation—and the possibility of unilateral implementation at the city level.

Mayor Scott’s office has repeatedly dodged questions about OPC, refusing to say whether he would take matters into his own hands, as New York City did in 2021, rather than rely on state-sanctioned sites. 

In a statement on March 17, the mayor only said he would “evaluate every option” going forward.

“It is extremely disappointing that these life-saving measures once again face a roadblock due to the General Assembly’s failure to advance them,” Scott said. “We have taken every opportunity to bring attention to how these strategies can save lives as part of a comprehensive approach to tackling overdose and substance use disorder in cities like ours, and we will continue to advocate for them at every turn. As we regroup after this disappointing setback, we will evaluate every option and tool at our disposal to ensure we’re putting forth the most robust overdose response possible.”

In February, Scott appointed Baltimore’s first-ever executive director of overdose response, Sara Whaley, who endorsed OPC and safe supply programs in principle in a recent interview with Filter.

Crossover Day was not a total defeat for harm reduction advocates: It appears that drug-induced homicide legislation will also die in committee.

Despite the setbacks, Crossover Day was not a total defeat for harm reduction advocates: It appears that drug-induced homicide legislation will also die in committee. The bill is just one of many iterations of legislation at the state and national level to punish people who supply drugs involved in an overdose death more harshly. 

Advocates condemn such legislation as an escalation of the drug war. They point out that many people charged under these laws are friends or family members of the person who died, who had been sharing drugs that both were using.

Maryland’s bill would create a maximum prison sentence of 20 years for people distributing fentanyl that results in death. Paired with legislation passed in 2017 which increased the maximum sentence for selling fentanyl to 30 years, opponents of the bill say it could lead to prison sentences as long as half a century, deterring people from reporting overdoses in which they could be found complicit.

Maryland’s legislative session ends April 7. Barring any last-minute pushes, the bills will all die in committee. But those on the frontlines of the overdose crisis say they’ll fight on.

“With these [OPC and decriminalization] bills, we’ll fundamentally save lives and improve the health of the people of Baltimore,” Rabbitt said. “It’s the right thing to do. The fact there isn’t political support in the legislature or among leadership today doesn’t mean there never will be. The political whims change.”

Photograph of Maryland State House by Logan Hullinger

The post OPC and “Paraphernalia” Decrim Bills Miss Key Deadline in Maryland appeared first on Filter.

Whaley, previously the top public health advisor to Mayor Brandon Scott (D) and program director of the Bloomberg Overdose Prevention Initiative, was named Baltimore’s first-ever executive director of overdose response on February 12. In an exclusive interview with Filter on March 3—weeks before a ruling in a landmark opioid lawsuit is expected to drop—she made her support for harm reduction plain.

Whaley praised the important work being done by the city’s existing harm reduction infrastructure. However, she emphasized there is more to be done to save lives.

“I see my role as bringing us together so that we’re all working toward the same goals and objectives,” she said. “The other role is overseeing restitution funds, and I think these two roles work really well together because the city’s response is going to be holistic. The restitution funds are just one piece of a big pie.”

While her role will inevitably be limited by state and federal laws, Whaley herself backs key harm reduction measures that are missing from the overdose prevention plans of many cities in the United States—including Baltimore.

“OPC can work really well. If our end goal is to save lives, the number one thing we can do is provide a space where people will not die of an overdose.”

These include both overdose prevention centers (OPC) and safe supply programs—initiatives that are mostly seen in other countries but have been proven to prevent overdose deaths. She wants decriminalization of drug “paraphernalia,” too.

Mayor Scott has vocally supported current state bills to legalize OPC and decriminalize paraphernalia across Maryland. However, OPC legislation has repeatedly died in committee in recent years, and former Governor Larry Hogan (R) vetoed a previous iteration of the paraphernalia bill in 2021. Lawmakers have held committee meetings on both bills this legislative session, but it’s unclear whether they’ll advance to floor votes.

“We’ve seen [OPC] can work really well,” Whaley said. “If our end goal is to save lives, the number one thing we can do is provide a space where people will not die of an overdose. And the way that we do that is by having folks who are readily available to reverse that overdose.”

Similarly, when asked about safe supply programs, Whaley said: “If we want to keep people alive, like, if that is the end goal and we have a chaotic drug market that is contaminated with really deadly and dangerous things, regulate it. We’ve done it with other substances like alcohol, marijuana and psilocybin.”

City officials have been mum, however, about whether they’ll unilaterally push for OPC at the city level (the approach taken in New York City), instead emphasizing their support for state-sanctioned facilities. Such a move would ultimately be the mayor’s decision. When asked about the possibility of local OPC and safe supply programs, both Whaley and a member of the mayor’s administration who was sitting in on the interview declined to comment, instead reiterating the mayor’s current goals.

As part of Baltimore’s ramped-up efforts to combat the overdose crisis, the mayor also appointed Whaley as one of three non-voting members of a new 20-person Opioid Restitution Advisory Board, tasked with advising the city on how to spend restitution funds. She’s additionally a member of the mayor’s Overdose Cabinet.

“Baltimore has an immense opportunity.”

Whaley has entered the role at a crucial juncture in the city’s overdose crisis. Data released by the Maryland Department of Health in February showed that Baltimore recorded 680 lives lost to overdose in 2024—a 35 percent decrease from the year prior. That’s still 680 preventable deaths. But it was the largest single-year drop on record, and the toll was the lowest in nearly a decade.

Meanwhile, the city is slated to receive hundreds of millions of dollars from litigation against opioid distributors and manufacturers by the end of 2025, representing a big chance to drive deaths down further.

When combining the money from five settlements reached in 2024 and the money awarded by a jury in the first phase of an ongoing trial against two opioid distributors in November, the city should have nearly $670 million to put into a trust from which dollars will be distributed over the next 15 years.

The city could receive an additional boon if it’s successful in the second phase of the ongoing litigation, where it’s seeking $5.2 billion to fund its abatement plan. A ruling is expected in the coming weeks.

“Baltimore has an immense opportunity,” Whaley said.

The new data and incoming funds offer a glimpse of hope to the beleaguered city, which is still reeling from the impacts of a national public health catastrophe. Most of the thousands of Baltimoreans who have died in the past decade were among the city’s most vulnerable people, with older Black men worst impacted.

“I think there is a mistrust in white institutions. That’s a valid concern, which is why I think harm reduction is so beautiful: It tears down walls and meets people where they are.”

Whaley attributed both the surge in overdose deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent decline to a variety of factors, stressing that the issues are multi-faceted. Along with an increasingly dangerous drug supply contaminated with substances such as xylazine and medetomidine, the pandemic worsened existing inequalities stemming from systemic racism, she said.

That significantly impacted social determinants of health, with drug users experiencing more severe isolation and economic hardships, Whaley said. All of this is exacerbated by government agencies and other programs not having earned the full trust of the city’s majority-Black population.

“I think in general there is a mistrust in white institutions,” Whaley said. “That’s a valid concern, which is why I think harm reduction is so beautiful: It tears down those academic or institutional walls and meets people where they are.”

“We talk about social determinants of health, poverty, lack of opportunities, racism and redlining,” she continued. “All of those things have contributed to communities that are disenfranchised, and when there is a lack of opportunity and trauma, I understand why communities might be distrustful of these institutions.”

Those factors—working in tandem with the criminalization of drug use and fears of police-led responses—helped propel Baltimore’s fatal overdose rate to the highest of any major US city.

“All the harm reduction tools, building relationships with people. All of those initiatives are key.”

However, the recent decline in deaths indicates the city is catching up with trends seen nationwide, albeit late. Whaley repeatedly emphasized Baltimore’s unique, robust harm reduction infrastructure and peer community when discussing how the city has made headway.

“I think there are a lot of factors, and to point out a single one is foolish,” she said. “Access to low-barrier treatment for those who are ready. A big one is harm reduction. Getting naloxone into the hands of folks who need it is one of the biggest factors contributing to our decrease in overdose deaths. All the harm reduction tools, building relationships with people. All of those initiatives are key. One we don’t talk about as much is that we are finally leveling out after COVID, so I think there are some environmental factors as well.”

Roadblocks to further progress abound. To the problems posed by existing federal laws, we must now add President Donald Trump, who is striking fear into harm reduction organizations with promises to slash federal funding and redouble the drug war.

The times are “unprecedented,” Whaley said, and the uncertainty among officials and harm reduction advocates is immense.

“The sense of community here is beautiful, and it’s something that is really, really special about this city.”

However, what’s also unprecedented is Baltimore’s opportunity to effect change through a historic windfall of funds to combat the overdose crisis—funds that she will oversee.

Even prior to Whaley’s appointment, the city had earmarked millions from opioid settlements to support local harm reduction initiatives. The entities standing to benefit offer critical services such as naloxone distribution, syringe service programs, testing strips and drug treatment coordination. Under Whaley’s leadership, such initiatives are expected to receive an even larger infusion of funds.

But at the heart of the city’s response to the crisis, she emphasized, is not money, but compassion and collective resiliency.

“I didn’t necessarily want to stay here after school,” she said of Baltimore. “But the sense of community that is here is beautiful, and it’s something that is really, really special about this city. We often talk about resilience at the individual level; putting everything on the individual to get better or be resilient in the face of adversity. But resiliency really is the community coming together to offer resources and support.”

Photograph courtesy of Sara Whaley

The post Baltimore’s First Overdose Response Chief Endorses OPC and Safe Supply appeared first on Filter.