Coercive interventions have been the preferred response to substance use in many countries. When evaluated, these programs are documented to have success rates lower than four percent. Beyond their marginal benefits, forced treatment programs come with their own downsides, including heightened risk of fatal drug poisonings.
In Massachusetts, where involuntary treatment has been the law of the land since 2018, the state public health department found that the risk of fatal overdose was twice as likely compared to post-voluntary treatment.
Last year the Red Deer Recovery Community opened its doors. The provincially funded 75-bed treatment centre is managed by Edgewood Health Network, a for-profit health care company which operates 11 similar sites across Canada. For Edgewood’s services in Red Deer, the province has found itself dishing out $13 million a year.
With so much profit to be made, Bay Street has rushed to insert itself into the equation. Expecting huge returns, Peloton Capital Management (PCM), a billion-dollar Toronto-based private equity firm, began financing Edgewood Health Network’s expansion 2021.
If all we cared about was saving the lives of the already-addicted, all we’d have to do is prescribe medical-grade opioids of known dosage to anyone who says they’re an addict, and the death rate would instantly plummet—not to zero, but to something around the much lower status quo from before the “epidemic” began, when prescription opioids were more easily available. Most of these people die because they’re taking adulterated drugs, or drugs of unknown concentration that they can’t dose properly. With a cheap, secure supply, they’d have more leeway to sort out other aspects of their lives, and some of them would eventually quit the drugs voluntarily.
Problem is, we’re more worried about people not becoming addicted in the first place, and everyone seems to think that the best way to do that is to restrict the legal supply. The two pull in opposite directions.
If we can find a better way of fixing the second problem, maybe we can fix the first one too, but I’m not holding my breath. In the meanwhile, governments will insist on grasping at straws in order to deal with the unintended consequences they themselves have created, and some of the straws they clutch at are going to be downright evil, like this one.
I had never looked at it like this before. Your proposal makes much more sense than any other I’ve seen. It really illuminates the fact that (most) politicians are far less interested in solving problems than they are in keeping their seats.
Welcome aboard!
That’s literally what almost every harm reduction activist has been saying for decades, but I’m not saying this to shame you. I barely did it sooner, I was beyond my 30’s when I finally got it. The fact that it takes so long for someone to encounter the rationale for all the effort going into decriminalization, destigmatization, safer-supply and supervised consumption sites… speaks volumes about who really is holding the megaphone of the media apparatus!