BC overdose response being defunded by the same law enforcement organizations whose practices drive the crisis
On April 14th, we grieve, gather, and demand better.
Alongside the defunding, closure and re-criminalization of harm reduction-based interventions, law enforcement budgets have continued to balloon, while policing organizations have increasingly joined in on coordinated electoral campaigns to demand even more power.
April 14th will mark nine years since the public health emergency was declared. A ninth year that feels like forever for those of us who grieve thousands.
We will meet at Victory Square at 2:00pm to gather, grieve for people who we have already lost, and to demand better so we can all be permitted to urgently reduce and stop preventable deaths.
We know that for the law enforcement organizations, overdose deaths are not merely policy failures, but features of policies that they campaign on the expansion of, and what is reflected in their everyday practices.
As police presence and harassment ramps up under the Vancouver Police Department’s (VPD) new $5 million Task Force Barrage and modes of incarceration increase under Dr. Vigo and David Eby’s involuntary treatment plans, people who use drugs are pushed further into isolation, and harm reduction sites and overdose prevention services become more dangerous to access.
The thing is – we know the public health solution, as it was gifted to us all by the Drug User Liberation Front (DULF), who showed us both how-to run a community-based compassion club and measured its wide-ranging benefits.
But the VPD raided and shuttered that as well.
As David Graham, a member of P.O.W.E.R. says, “DULF had the perfect formula for saving lives, and they got shut down by a carceral response.”
We must build toward compassion, care and community, not unaccountable punishment bureaucracies.
BACKGROUND
International Journal of Drug Policy: A scoping review of law enforcement drug seizures and overdose mortality in the United States
The Tyee: How Police Drug Seizures Are Making Life Worse on the Downtown Eastside
TheBind.ca: It's time for journalists to stop reporting uncritically on drug busts
International Journal of Drug Policy: Policing space in the overdose crisis
CTV News: DTES healthcare workers say police near overdose prevention sites deter people from accessing care
American Medical Association Journal of Ethics: How Structural Violence, Prohibition, and Stigma Have Paralyzed North American Responses to Opioid Overdose
The Maple: Minor Drug Seizures By Vancouver Police Increased After ‘Decriminalization,’ Data Indicates
Drug and Alcohol Review: ‘It just doesn't stop’: Perspectives of women who use drugs on increased overdoses during the COVID-19 pandemic