NotANarc

Addiction Treatment in Context: Principles for a System of Just, Accessible, and Voluntary Care - Canadian Drug Policy Coalition Position Statement Veuillez noter : une traduction française de cette déclaration sera bientôt disponible.  December 30, 2025  This statement outlines the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition’s organization...

drugpolicy.ca/our-work/add...

“Addiction treatment: what it is, where it currently fails, and how it could meet the needs of people and communities.”

Opinion: Why does Canada have such high rates of forced psychiatric hospitalizations? We should push our governments to better report on who’s being involuntarily committed and why, and if they’re more often helped or seriously harmed

“Canada appears to be the country with the highest average rate of involuntary psychiatric detentions in the western world.”

Note this is *before* new forced abstinence measures hit full speed in AB and BC.
www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...

Top left corner reads “Webinar,” with the title underneath: “Solidarity Not Silos: The attack on public healthcare.” Behind the text is an image of an emergency sign at a hospital. In the bottom left corner, text reads: “Across Canada, marginalized communities are being blamed for crises caused by political choices to underfund healthcare and other essential services. Join us as we confront these escalating threats, strengthen cross-movement solidarity, and share actionable solutions.” On the right side, event details read: “December 10, 2025 | 2:00 pm ET | 11:00 am PT | Online Registration.” Below the event details are logos for CDPC, Canadian Health Coalition, and Momentum.

Marginalized communities are being blamed for crises caused by political choices to underfund healthcare & essential services.

Join us on Dec 10 as we confront these escalating threats, strengthen cross-movement solidarity, and share actionable solutions.

Register: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

White banner with black and red words "SCS closures create corpses" hanging from a black steel bridge.

A new banner hanging from the high level bridge in Edmonton on this cold December day #yeg #ableg

BC Government Doubles Down on Forced Drug Treatment - Filter The British Columbia government is doubling down on involuntary treatment for people who use drugs, fast-tracking a law to skirt ...

"It’s a classic example of governments using words to not mean what they actually mean" @dsdp.ca

filtermag.org/bc-governmen...

Alberta government to close Calgary’s sole supervised consumption site in 2026 | CBC News The Alberta government has confirmed it will follow through with a longtime pledge to shutter Calgary’s only supervised drug consumption site at Sheldon Chumir Health Centre, despite criticism from ad...

“The Alberta government has confirmed it will follow through with a longtime pledge to shutter Calgary’s only supervised drug consumption site.”

Alberta’s ongoing policy of social murder.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Group photo on opening day for the Royal Alexandra Hospital Supervised Consumption Site. Former AB minister of health Sarah Hoffman, me (holding a photo of my late son Danny), past medical director of the site Dr. Catherine Dong, former Mayor Don Iveson, standing near the brand new injection booths.

RIP RAH SCS!
Today my love goes out to everyone whose life was saved at the RHA SCS.
To their families.
To SCS staff.
To those who fought to have it opened. 💜
I sent my anger and outrage to a heartless government that does not care if people who use drugs die 💔
#ABpoli

The Compassionate Intervention Act is a COLONIAL act, designed to reproduce and perpetuate colonial harms. It is a regressive piece of legislation in direct opposition to the UNDRIP and the TRC's 94 calls to action. We need to actively resist and disrupt this example of racist, colonial violence.

Forced treatment strips Indigenous people of body and mind sovereignty and subjects them to medical experimentation. Alberta has a long legacy of chemical restraint and surveillance of Indigenous bodies (cf Indian Hospitals, Indian Act "mentally deficient Indian" clause); this is no different.

Forced treatment reproduces the trauma of residential schools and the 60s scoop via the apprehension of Indigenous sons and daughters, the separation of families, and the loss of culture. This is perhaps unsurprising for a government that includes residential school denialists among its ranks...

Forced treatment seeks to disappear people deemed undesirable by the state. This is consistent with the ONGOING and unrepudiated doctrine of discovery and terra nullius, which views Indigenous people as subhuman and not deserving of human rights, thereby justifying land dispossession and conquest.

Indigenous people are disproportionately bearing the brunt of the drug toxicity crisis. Racism, coloniality, and structural oppression inherent to the Indian Act and other policies got us here. By doubling down on carceral approaches for substance use, the AB govt reinforces these harms.

National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak Recognizes 10th Anniversary of Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final Report, Presses for Urgent Action - Assembly of First Nations (December 15, 2025 – Unceded Algonquin Territory, Ottawa) — On the 10th anniversary of the release of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) and its 94 Calls to Ac...

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's final report. Let's review why Truth and Reconciliation matters in any discussion of forced substance use treatment. afn.ca/all-news/pre...

Reminder that Edmonton AND Calgary police used public resources to hold town halls + other events to steer business communities & other stakeholders in favour of UCP drug policy.

The specified timeline for this campaign was “before the May 2023 election.”
drugdatadecoded.ca/alberta-poli...

Keith Gerein: UCP ideological myopia costs Edmonton another safe consumption site, at the worst possible time Alberta's UCP government has an ongoing campaign against supervised drug consumption sites and the latest victim is at Edmonton's Royal Alex.

"While the new clinic may be helpful to people open to treatment, it’s not going to be a favoured destination for those who aren’t — especially if there is any hint that the clinic might act as a gateway to push people into involuntary treatment facilities." edmontonjournal.com/opinion/colu...

Folks, we’re not just a bunch of outlier weirdos calling out forced treatment. Here is another mainstream organization saying the same thing. We don’t want to have any involvement in locking ppl up when we have no reason to believe it will help. csam-smca.org/wp-content/u...

A raised fist, clenched in power. Text reads: "WE REFUSE: Health Workers Against Involuntary Care. A joint statement and call to action from Harm Reduction Nurses Association and Doctors for Safer Drug Policy." Below that are logos for HRNA and DSDP.

We Refuse: Health Workers Against Involuntary Care is now public.

@hrna.bsky.social and DSDP are circulating a joint statement opposing BC’s plan to expand involuntary drug treatment. This approach is ineffective, increases overdose risk, violates autonomy, and harms marginalized communities.

📣📣📣 We cannot be silent. Push back against carceral solutions.

Under the Compassionate Intervention Act, people with substance use disorder can be forced to take any prescription medication without consent. It doesn't matter if they have decisional capacity. While doctors are involved, ultimately a lawyer gets to decide what the treatment order will be. #ableg

“The Lovejoy Trap is a tool people use to construct their identities in a way that makes them appear morally virtuous. It’s also frighteningly effective at packaging extreme inhumanity as being necessary ‘for the children.’”
www.liberalcurrents.com/the-lovejoy-...

URGENT – Stop Alberta's government from overriding the Charter of Rights Alberta Premier Smith has used the Notwithstanding Clause to pass laws that erase rights and silence the courts.

Please sign the petition!

savethecharter.ca

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