Vaughn Palmer: The NDP denied safer-supply drugs were being peddled by criminals. When a report proved it, NDP attacked the leaker
VICTORIA — The New Democrats were put on the defensive last year by mounting evidence that government-approved safer supply drugs were being diverted to the illicit market.
“More B.C. detachments report having seized suspected safe supply drugs,” read a March 2024 headline in the Northern Beat online news service, summarizing evidence from the RCMP in Prince George, Campbell River and Nanaimo.
Reporter Fran Yanor later expanded the list to five detachments after she herself witnessed drug transactions outside pharmacies in Victoria and Duncan.
The shocking details of what was happening emerged from a search warrant obtained by reporter Jason Proctor of the CBC.
He disclosed how Prince George RCMP spent 10 days in March “mounting a surveillance operation on a woman who stood outside a downtown pharmacy each morning trading illicit drugs for safer supply medication.
“Police saw the 58-year-old suspect make dozens of hand-to-hand transactions at the time, both buying and selling prescribed pills worth up to $20 a tablet on the street.”
The pharmacy manager told the police that “many of his patients are accosted by individuals outside the pharmacy in the mornings by people who are trying to purchase safe supply drugs.”
With recipients being dispensed as many as 28 pills in one visit, that would equate “to $440 to $480 a day if resold.”
But just as the police were opening up about the extent of the problem, that line of communication was interrupted.
On Mar. 11, an RCMP memo directed all detachments to reroute all communications through headquarters on “hot button” issues, including drug seizures, decriminalization and the like.
Detachments were warned against speaking publicly about “controversial or high-profile topics … in the pre-election time period.”
The memo, which Yanor obtained after the fact, proved to be a gag order. RCMP detachments now routed her questions through headquarters.
Other journalists — Tristin Hopper and Adam Zivo of Postmedia, Paul Johnson of Global TV and Andrea Woo of the Globe and Mail — reported on aspects of diversion, including the questionable involvement of some pharmacies.
The illicit trade had been predicted from the outset of the experiment in dispensing safe supply drugs without supervision.
“As long as (government) gives valuable things away for free, or far below market prices, one should expect there to also be profiteers wishing to profit by obtaining supply for resale,” warned U.S. drug policy expert Jonathan Caulkins.
But each bit of evidence of diversion ran into a stonewall of denials and evasions from cabinet ministers Mike Farnworth (public safety) and Jennifer Whiteside (mental health and addictions) and from public health officials wedded to the ideology of decriminalization and safe supply.
The news reports were dismissed as anecdotal and isolated. The ministers claimed there was “no evidence of widespread diversion.”
The drugs that were seized were not necessarily dispensed through the safer supply program. And in any event, they were safer for consumption than the poisoned supply that was killing a half dozen people a day.
Pushing back was Opposition MLA Elenore Sturko, a former RCMP officer. She cited evidence that the diverted safer supply drugs were ending up with a new generation of users and that organized crime was profiting from the trade.
She said that if the government lacked evidence of widespread diversion, it was only because the New Democrats had not asked police to compile and report data on that score.
You’d think that would have been a starting point in judging what was billed as an experiment. Instead NDP policy was “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Then last week Sturko released a leaked-copy of a confidential briefing document from the Ministry of Health. It had been circulated to police and other officials, detailing an investigation that began in confidence last June.
“A significant portion of the opioids being freely prescribed by doctors and pharmacists are not being consumed by their intended recipients,” it confirmed. “Prescribed alternatives are trafficked provincially, nationally and internationally.”
With those few words, the NDP’s strategy of denial and evasion collapsed.
Yet rather than acknowledge the coverup, Health Minister Josie Osborne blasted Sturko for leaking “a confidential document” that could compromise a continuing investigation.
Sturko set the record straight on that score as well.
“If this had been truly sensitive information that would have jeopardized an investigation, it would not have been put into a PowerPoint and then presented to many, many public servants and officers across the province,” she told the CBC’s Gloria Macarenko.
“I actually confirmed that this will not impact ongoing investigations … with sources that would know whether or not this would jeopardize an investigation. I was told ‘no, it won’t.’”
Still, Osborne sought credit for the government launching the investigation.
“We knew this was happening,” she protested. “There is absolutely no denial of it, there’s no diminishing of it.”
The New Democrats absolutely did deny and diminish the evidence of diversion, including through the provincial election. The only reason the public knew anything about the illicit trade was owing to intrepid news reporting and work by the Opposition.
No wonder the NDP’s final outrage was to condemn the leak that exposed the truth.