For more than a decade, communities across Canada have been experiencing tremendous harms associated with the growing toxicity of the unregulated drug supply. Responses to this crisis remain fragmented, and too often they are shaped more by politics than by evidence or need. In recent years, the already limited landscape of harm reduction services has contracted further as governments across Canada have cut funding and reduced support. However, harm reduction did not begin as government-funded policies or programs. It began as collective care. Roots of harm reduction Harm reduction in Canada originated in approaches built by people who use drugs...

Canada is facing a drug policy contradiction. Governments continue to describe toxic drug deaths as a “serious public health crisis”, yet some are dismantling parts of the public health response designed to prevent overdoses, reduce infections and connect people to treatment and social supports. Public debate often asks whether programs such as supervised consumptions services (SCS) and safer supply  should have been implemented in the first place. That question matters. But once these programs exist and you take them away, another ethics question arises: what do governments owe people who have come to depend on these programs for survival? Ending...

Across Canada, harm reduction is under attack. Innovative and evidence-informed programs have been cut, reversed and shuttered. Politicians are retreating from progressive drug policies. Where Canadians were once global leaders in harm reduction, now governments at all levels are retreating from harm reduction principles and practices. The contrast with where Canada once was and current Canadian drug policy is striking. Harm reduction advocates and their allies are fighting back. They are producing evidence briefs about health benefits and preventable deaths, making arguments about costs and launching legal challenges. But these efforts have not been enough to prevent shutting down harm...