Traci Letts

I stayed up late last night as my phone was being blown up by people in recovery who don’t know how they will manage their STABLE lives if they have to visit a pharmacist 4 times a day to take their prescriptions. A 🧵. BC Conservative politicians like leader-in-waiting @ElenoreSturko, @AdamStirling, @AdamZivo and @JohnRustad4BC are excited to take credit for forcing the BC Government to make Prescribed Alternatives (they call it “safer supply”) a witnessed program. They want credit. Let’s give it to them. A quick recap: ➡️ The program was already being monitored, police were cracking down on participants who resold their drugs. ➡️ There’s no evidence (beyond Elenore & Zivo’s secondhand anecdotes) that PA are responsible for teens getting addicted to drugs - no more so than OTHER diverted meds, prescriptions in the family medicine cabinet, or bootlegged booze. ➡️ BC Coroners reports PROVE that hydromorphone (most common prescribed alternative) is not responsible for deaths in any age group. So no Elenore, the change is not an admittance of disaster. It’s an admittance that everyone is sick and tired of your lying and rage-farming. And that, once again, people with substance use disorders don’t matter. Yes, Adam Stirling, we are worried about people who were stable on PA returning to poisoned illicit drugs. You come off as smug in this post. Why? … do you not believe it? Do you think it’s good for people to be forced off the prescriptions that reduce their risk of death? LET’S BE CLEAR: If this was actually because of concern over pain meds being resold on the streets you would have demanded that ALL opioids be taken in front of a pharmacist. But it’s not. It’s about punishing addicts. At last count there were 3,665 people accessing Prescribed Alternatives to illicit opioids … less than 3% of the people who use illicit drugs in BC. And less than . 0006% of BC’s population. A few have been abusing the program … so then let’s make changes to prevent them from reselling their Rx. But most people in the program don’t sell their Rx. They take it, they don’t take street drugs, their risk of death has dropped, they’ve gotten stable, they have jobs, homes, lives. Questions for Elenore, the Adams & John: ➡️ How do you hold down a job if you need to visit a pharmacy 4 times a day to take an Rx? ➡️ How do you function if you live in a remote community and the pharmacy is 45 minutes away? You forced this change based on HYPOTHETICAL HARMS that you guessed at, and now you’re going to cause ACTUAL HARM to people in recovery. If there’s going to be a public inquiry I hope it’s into how much your constant promotion of the program contributed to demand on the streets, and how many people now turn back to poisoned illicit drugs because the bar to access a prescription is just too high. THEN we can give credit where credit is due. Congrats Elenore, Adam, Adam & John. You’re real winners. #ToxicDrugCrisis #BCpoli

An awful lot of you don’t seem to get this: 👉 Many people who use opioids aren't struggling with addiction, they're struggling with CHRONIC PAIN‼️ And if they got under-prescribed, de-prescribed, or can't access a prescription from a doctor, where do you think they will go? Yup, the illegal market, where they might find the Percocet, codeine or hydromorphone they’re looking for. Or they might find counterfeit pills full of fentanyl, benzodiazepines & veterinary drugs. 👆👆That’s why we need ALL THE TOOLS! 👆👆 #ToxicDrugCrisis

"Normalization" of drug use has nothing to do with the drug death of a man in a hospital bathroom. If drug use was “normalized” he would not have had to hide it in the bathroom, and he would not have died. He died alone in that bathroom because there wasn't a supervised consumption site in that hospital.