NotANarc

Mandatory recovery treatment doesn't solve homelessness, building affordable housing does.

I CAN'T BELIEVE PEOPLE HAVE A HARD TIME UNDERSTANDING THIS .....

Alt text: Bar chart showing the monthly counts of drug poisoning deaths in Alberta from January 2016 to June 2025. The chart shows a steady increase over time, with deaths rising sharply around mid-2020 and peaking in several months between 2021 and 2025, reaching highs around 80–90 deaths per month.

When the Alberta government claims that deaths from the toxic drug crisis are decreasing or stabilizing, take a look at this graph — it tells a very different story.

Involuntary care won’t fix this.
Compassion, harm reduction, on-demand voluntary treatment options, and real supports will.

9 years of advocating and fighting for the rights of people who use drugs .. not once did they acknowledge families who have tried forced treatment within my community. I have no words .. just a lot of anger and sadness at the harm this will cause so many folks.

Implementation pushed back to 2027 (originally promised for Spring 2026). Guess it’s been harder than expected to ring fence at-capacity voluntary treatment infrastructure for unproven, forced care.

Event graphic for "Fighting Copaganda Under Authoritarianism: How to Advance Narratives That Undermine Authoritarianism & Increase Solidarity," taking place place on October 15, 3-4 PM ET, virtual, with Andrea J. Ritchie, Lewis Raven Wallace, and Dean Spade. The event information is in black text on a background of a collage of a thick red pain mark, tape, cutouts of a hand writing, an eye with electricity coming out of it, and a crossed-out mouth, as well as yellow and black scribbles.

🗓️ Oct. 15 at 3-4 PM ET online: Please join us for a discussion of how to advance narratives that undermine authoritarianism and increase solidarity, featuring @dreanyc123.bsky.social, @lewispants.bsky.social, and @deanspade.bsky.social!

Register: www.interruptingcriminalization.com/events/all/f...

Alberta EMS responses to opioid related events, demonstrating a gradual upward trend since 2018 with the exception of a partial decrease in 2024.

Claim #5: "The Alberta model works." Does it, though?

“Grasping at straws,” experiences of Canadian parents using involuntary stabilization for a youth's substance use In Canada, involuntary stabilization programs are used to apprehend and confine youth who use drugs for the purpose of stabilization, assessment, and …

Claim #4: Experiences of harm from involuntary care are "anecdotes". Fair, but these harms also appear in the literature. Involuntary treatment may increase the risk of post-tx overdose, and can also seriously damage trust in personal/professional relationships. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

One-page-home - WHY SCS WHY SCS: Information About Supervised Consumption Services in Canada

Claim #3: "SCS don't work." Supervised consumption services SAVE LIVES. Try as the Alberta government might to disinform us otherwise via bogus review panels and white papers, the evidence base demonstrating SCS benefits is more robust than available evidence for involuntary care. www.whyscs.ca

At Home At Home Learn More In 2008, the Government of Canada allocated $110 million to the MHCC to undertake a research demonstration project on mental health and

Claim #2: "Housing First doesn't work." Housing First HOUSES PEOPLE. When the unhoused are as over-represented in our grim drug poisoning stats as they are, housing becomes a critical ingredient for health, recovery, and survival during a toxic drug crisis. mentalhealthcommission.ca/what-we-do/a...

PWUD-reported unmet health and social service needs include housing (55%), income support (36%), medical care (25%), basic necessities (23%), mental health care (21%), and drug treatment (14%). 40% were hesitant to access medical care and 27% were denied medical care because they use drugs.

Claim #1: "Most people in active addiction don't want treatment." Many PWUD have accessed or tried to access treatment, and 49% of Alberta PWUD in a recent survey would accept it if offered tomorrow. Sadly, access barriers, judgment, and ineffective treatments are common along the way.

© CBC/Radio-Canada 2025. All rights reserved.

A heavy conversation today about the "Compassionate Care" Act on @cbcradiocanada.bsky.social Cross Country Checkup. A couple of claims raised our eyebrows, and some fact checking is in order. www.cbc.ca/listen/live-....

Opinion: Criminalizing drug use won't solve addiction It’s easy to cheer for more enforcement against drug users and for abandoning them to deadly consequences if they don’t comply.

calgaryherald.com/opinion/colu...

It’s absolute bullshit to say you can’t help people until they stop using. We can and do work on safety, housing, health, and dignity while people use.

The Drug war was built for control, not care. Now history is repeating itself. 🧵

On 'Ruining Downtown' Safety, addictions and housing solutions

"Who is served by narratives that spread fear and even dehumanize people who are struggling, narratives that play on citizens’ deepest fears and desire for safety?" On 'Ruining Downtown' open.substack.com/pub/civicgoo...

Local woman wakes up, reminds everyone that safer communities are tied more to healthcare, housing and public services and less to police, makes oatmeal.

Reflections: Those Who Walk Away from Omelas From: The Wind’s Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin

Public safety and prosperity returned? For whom? At what cost? medium.com/@amyriddlede...

Introduce legislation designed to "compassionately" disappear the people hit hardest by austerity measures. Down the hatch, out of sight, out of mind. bsky.app/profile/sena...

Bring public discomfort with the consequences of austerity to a boil. Invoke fear, threat, and safety narratives and let simmer. Sprinkle misattribution of social disorder to drugs and let stand.

Mix these ingredients just enough to create the conditions for an increase in the use of public space, not just to pass through, but to exist at all. Season liberally with the criminalization of existing in public spaces.

Key ingredients: 1) Deprive people of a liveable income, especially people who the state believes do not "benefit the economy". 2) Defund public housing, passing the buck to whatever level of government other than yours is convenient. 3) Defund drop-in and other low-barrier public spaces.

We are still overwhelmed by disability application forms, and thought it was time to share why austerity measures like this 👇 are a hard-to-digest recipe for involuntary treatment. 🧵

Please read this excellent thread from a long time Edmontonian. Involuntary treatment is an attempt to disappear what makes us uncomfortable. As healthcare professionals, we have a choice: Are we complicit in this violence? Or do we interrupt it?

Remember that when politicians come to your IOAD event that most of the drug policy approaches that have been done in the name of "ending" overdose have just made the problem worse. 1. Drug seizures - claimed to lower drug use, but we know the opposite is true. 2. Criminalization and incarceration - often framed as "saving people" by locking them up, but this only lowers tolerance and increases overdose risk at reentry. Add to that the barriers of a criminal record-family separation, housing, employment, healthcare-and you set people up for more chaotic use. 3. Coerced, forced, or involuntary treatment - for the same reasons. In the name of "saving people," we statistically increase their risk of overdose.

4. Reducing opioid prescribing - removing regulated opioids created a vacuum filled by fentanyl. This has killed hundreds of thousands and harmed pain patients who are now pushed to the illicit market or toward suicide. 5. Abstinence-based treatment and recovery - people in treatment are still rarely taught about overdose prevention or the risk of returning to use. Talking about it is seen as "triggering" or "enabling." The result: so many die within weeks or months of discharge. So what are solutions that could reduce overdose? Harm reductionists have been screaming these ideas from the rooftops for decades. Providing a regulated supply (not just for people with OUD, as is often the pitch of safe supply efforts). Ending criminalization. Opening overdose prevention centers. Getting police out of pain management decisions between a doctor and patient. Removing barriers to medication access, methadone in particular. Improving mental health care. Building a more kind and just society, one that makes it safe for people to use drugs around one another so that overdose can be spotted and reversed. Anyway... lots to think about. I miss my friends. Let's do better.

When politicians show up at your #ioad event… remind them that almost every policy approach to overdose has made it worse and that’s by design.

Reject reactionary drug policy: Canada must not continue to follow the United States’ path of punitive and moralistic policy choices. B.C. must not continue emulate the regressive course taken by Alberta.

#bcpoli #cdnpoli #ioad #harmreduction

Address the root causes of the crisis: regulate the drug supply. Invest in housing, mental health services, and voluntary addiction treatment. Recommit to the decriminalization of substance possession for personal use.

#bcpoli #cdnpoli #ioad #harmreduction

End political interference in evidence-based health care and prescribing practices.

#bcpoli #ioad

Evidence-based solutions exist. We demand:

1) Legalization and regulation of the entire drug supply.
2) Ready access to detox and treatment services.
3) An expanded decriminalization “pilot.”
4) Abundant public housing for all income levels.

#bcpoli #cdnpoli #ioad #harmreduction

Rather than adding to bloated police budgets and failed drug war tactics, governments should address the social determinants of health.