crysis, DTES, pandemic, vs harm

about what’s happening

Sticky

on the july coroners update
on overdose deaths in BC.

i want to give people some information about this update from the provincial coroner on tuesday. it’s your information, actually, and sometimes facts are hard to come by. i’ll do separate posts because nobody likes one that goes on forever.

first here’s a few things the coroner said.

“The number of people dying in B.C. due to an unsafe drug supply continues to surpass deaths due to homicides, motor vehicle incidents, suicides and COVID-19 combined,” said Lisa Lapointe, chief coroner.

175.

or 5.6 deaths every day. average.

july was the third month in a row when there were 170+ Illicit Drug Toxicity Deaths -> using “illicit” to mean that they *socially* not permitted, so people use alone – and not just illegal. different. and toxicity -> poisoned, not overdose. because you use what you use but there’s not way of knowing this.

this is from the coroner’s service statement:

“Once again, post-mortem toxicology testing data published in this report suggest an increase in the number of cases with extreme fentanyl concentrations (exceeding 50 micrograms per litre) in April, May, June and July 2020 compared with previous months.”

how concentrated is that? compare smooth peanut butter vs crunchy. but you can’t see the crunchy bits.

those tiny numbers at the bottom of this are number of deaths per 100,000 – a measurement to compare. right now what matters is that we’re at 30.5/100,000. in 2018, we were 31. remember 2018?

Housing

the next thing the update looks at is the location of death. this is one thing where the vancouver region is really different from other parts of the province.

the red slice in the two pie charts is for supportive/social/SRO housing.

Private Residence – includes driveways garages, trailer homes and either decedent’s own or another’s residence.
Other Residence – includes hotels, motels, rooming houses, SRO (single room occupancy, shelters, social/supportive housing etc.)
Medical facility – includes hospitals, community care facilities, etc
Occupational site – includes locations where the decedent was at their place of work.
Public buildings – includes restaurants, community centres, businesses, clinics, etc.
Outside – includes vehcles, streets, sidewalks, parking lots, public parks, wooded areas, and campgrounds

so, there were DOUBLE the % of overdose deaths in supportive, social, SRO, and hotels, shelters etc in the VCH region than province-wide! Doesn’t that seem like something that could be directly addressed? Instead, operators lie to the public and to funders about “community” and “looking out for one another” and meanwhile abuse their staff who in turn abuse the residents. demolition by neglect.

And “meeting people where they’re at” or even “wrap-around supports” is obviously not identical single-resident units. when homeless people refuse to live in such housing, it is clearly a signal that the housing is not adequate.

if you are living in an encampment and managing ok, and use drugs, and prefer living to being dead, it’s the rational choice.

but obviously these are shitty choices.

just to make the shittiness clear, here’s the two articles from late last year about how no one even bothers to keep track of how many people die in vancouver’s supportive housing, numbers are going up, an its super fucked up.

No one is monitoring Deaths in Supportive Housing – Travis Lupick, Georgia Straight, Dec 2019

“If it were daycares or hospitals or prisons, and if there were one or two or three deaths, we would have reached a stage that triggered an investigation,” Gagnon argued. “People are dying in these spaces, no one is doing anything about it. No one is even looking into it.”

Deaths Rise Amid Conflicting Rules – Travis Lupick, Georgia Straight

continuing on the housing problem (no one wanting to live in the housing/ everyone being dead)

as i’m finding, there isnt A Solution to this: there are many, and “the solution” is always for People to Have Real Choices, which is very simple and outrageously revolutionary at the same time. you should see the looks i get – i might change my name to WTF.

(also whenever someone who has any power at all says “this is how it is down here” – tells you to accept the unacceptable and get used to it – they are not On Your Side, and now you must fight even harder, often alone, because its real.)

on average, 20% – 40% of regular drug users prefer to / will only use alone: it’s their thing. should they be prioritized for safer supply access?low-income/supportive housing needs to have harm reduction built right into it – not be the same as ever, now! with naloxone.

harm remains a feature of operation: how power is deployed when someone has even a tiny bit.such housing must have using rooms, units for couples, units for street families, drug checking and ☑️ dealers.

housing that acknowledges that drug users exist, in design and policy.formal accountability structures and a complaint process THAT IS DOCUMENTED, and collaborative management between operators and residents. resident committees. yeah low-income co-ops and resident self-management

did you know that not everything needs to become a total clusterdumpsterfire before you can try to fix it? or do something else?

we must dump this idea that 100% shelter rate is only housing worth working for. i would very much prefer to live in the world. what do you think? people out there have often never met people like any of us. i have found that if you give them a chance, most of the time everyone is surprised. and frankly we’re not going to change things any other way.

its like we’ve been behind a wall for 20 years.

Poverty Cycling

the next part of the coroner’s report is on the day/week when the most overdose events occur. let’s talk about what to do about cheque week.this chart is of deaths per day for the province – cheque day is the same day everywhere, but the supply is local. or in transit, from one market to others. as you can see, cheque day seems to be starting to look like other days by the end of 2019 – or was it?

it definitely was not.

the peaks in the lines are cheque week. this chart is of 911 calls for ODs.in 2019, deaths were down by 1/3. calls for serious overdoses were almost exactly the same. as ive said before, it was the changing supply – the benzos. people were very messed up and some will never be ok, but they didnt die.

in the last three months, calls have increased dramatically.

from the gov’t release:

“Paramedics are responding to and reviving overdose patients about 80 times a day, every single day in B.C.,” said Jon Deakin, paramedic practice leader with BCEHS. “It’s a lot. It’s the highest number of daily overdoses BCEHS has ever seen.”

This graph is from the BCCDC – the blue line at the top represents 911 calls throughout the province and the five line nearer the bottom represent the five health regions.

Oh here’s a chart of the % of benzo content in the local down, week by week, since january.

here are those two charts on top of each other. the blue Xs are cheque week.

we can’t have cheque day, or cheque week like this anymore. we don’t have time for another study to find out if people who use drugs prefer being alive. also, fuck the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use and their useless exploitative ‘research’.

we can’t allow the government to continue dumping all the legit money on all the poor people in the province on the same day. when you think about it that way, it’s ridiculous.

so here’s my idea: what if you could decide yourself when and how you’d get your assistance on the regular? work it out, depending on what you want to be doing. twice a month, every week, twice a week, thirty bucks a day, whatever. keep cheque day if you’re lazy. yes, you must get a bank account. do you like getting ripped off? yes, we need our own bank, if pigeon bank isnt working out for you.

the point is for you to make choices for yourself – which is all i hear from people everyday, that’s all they want.

this is the only way that i can imagine that would break this fucked up cycle for real. what do people think?

Click to access illicit-drug.pdf

pandemic, politics, vs harm

COVID amplifies

Sticky

COVID amplifies systemic violence: increasing and accelerating the impacts of already existing policy, policy trends, and practices. the consequences, intended or not, immediately impact people exposed to risk, because they haven’t made any policy choices, and can only react. and these consequences collide and combine in unexpected ways, depending on local context.

so drug users are dying in large and increasing numbers. almost all of us will die, from many things – all of them consequences of injustice.

for example, the guest ban in SROs and supportive housing has directly led to a lot of deaths in the neighbourhood which would otherwise been prevented – and in multiple ways. obviously yes, overdosing because using alone. also, where is the “guest” now? living rough on the street, then dead from a stabbing. the ban prevents a resident with mobility issues from visiting their friend across the street, who would have insisted that they go to the hospital, but that didn’t happen, so they’re dead. lots of that. my own building was decimated in may. ten percent of my neighbours died.

and the supply is toxic. its all over the place in terms of potency, composition, and internal consistency, as has been noted.

there are stupid terrible ways that poor people die. sometimes it’s one little that goes wrong, and then everything falls to pieces. those are consequences, and not causes.

as is poverty, and its cycle (in lockstep with the illicit supply), which is also a killer. we have to stop having cheque day. people must be empowered to design their own assistance schedule, in consultation with an advisor. the government must stop dumping all the legal money on poor people once a month. this needs to stop. it can. it’s a choice.

these are excess COVID deaths. COVID amplifies.

i also discovered that this is happening everywhere, at least in canada, and even more so this US, which makes sense in drug policy terms. 30% -> 50% – 90% mortality, March – April – May, quite consistently. Everywhere I could find overdose data. Because it’s a pandemic, which means everywhere.

“Between March 15 and April 25, British Columbia recorded 372 more deaths than in any of the previous five years for those same weeks — but just 99 of those were confirmed COVID-19 cases.”

Excess deaths, june 19, cbc

so at this rate, by year’s end … well, my advice is to speak directly to users. for once. like we’re human. and say that 98% of drug users will almost definitely be dead by year’s end.

Overdoses – in this sense – are only predominant in an overwhelming tide of death. and will continue to be for a little while. but they are not the cause of death. nor is COVID.

people say they hate drug use, and users, but that’s an excuse: that’s why the drug war is maintained- they need this reason to justify such hate. but as it turns out drug users are oppressed racialized minorities, Black and Indigenous people, people with disabilities, whether physical or mental or emotional, and queer and trans people, and other people denied or unable to access regulated medical care (undocumented migrants, injured contract workers, youth or teens fleeing abusive homes), and often a combination of these, and then add poverty. these are lived political contexts, these are lives lived in great pain, exposed to this system’s violence. and get trapped in it. it looks like the people here. it hurts. a lot. drugs soothe that somewhat. for a time.

that is why this is political and why it is about justice. because injustice is fatal.

art

Laika

Good dog. You’re on the shaggy side of space

Laika I’ll miss you and our long days of fun

Playing with our stick in the big field

Even when you were a bad and stupid dog

Before you were inclined to nation and science –

What did you see then? Cats constellatory,

in revolt? You didn’t find that humbling

Or enough oxygen for more than a week

We sent you up just to spin you around

Puppy, it’s three times around and have a sleep.

We’ll find your brittlèd bones in the Pacific abyss

Encapsulated, diving down & collecting intricate doggy coral

To wave about, shouting Laika! Is this your ball?

Look, Laika’s back. Good dog. It never was, no.

art

One-Offs

or i don’t remember. most of these are from 2009-2013 when i was at Gallery Gachet

art

small worlds

I build things out of the things that the city throws away. In the downtown eastside, we build our culture out of ourselves and for ourselves, and we have no need of experts to define it, set its boundaries, or dictate its form. We can take the bits of mainstream culture that suit us and build something beautiful and real.

Small Worlds is an attempt to look into this world, and imagine another way of looking at our world and imagining other possible worlds, one perhaps better than this one.

An immense and indispensable advantage of history – or poetry – is that it continually presents to us many other possible human ways of being, which might have other arrangements, communication, and patterns.
– Paul Goodman

Small Worlds is a show of diorama objects, ranging from scenes in pill bottles, up to fish tanks and televisions. The scenes are of isolation, of lone figures struggling within their own small worlds. Larger scenes explore public and private living, the political idea of ‘space’ and its many meanings. Some of the individuals within these spaces struggle to be free. The work as a whole examines and confronts contemporary society as it is and the ways in which it oppresses people who are ‘different’ – these tiny people with blank faces who endure the trauma of contemporary life. The project also parallels Ward’s personal journey through mental illness: isolation, invisibility, and poverty, both spiritual and material. And for Ward, the personal is political: moving, as she has, from isolation to engagement, which is the movement this show attempts to enact. Therefore, she uses images and situations drawn from ideas and perspectives unique to the DTES: public spaces, isolated lives, the dramatic effects of gentrification, as well as mental illness, poverty, addiction and alienation.

at Gallery Gachet, May 2013

crysis, vs harm

UNAwareness

on International Overdose Awareness Day 2020

a guest post by Corey Ranger

“More people are dying of illicit drug overdoses in B.C. than due to homicides, motor vehicle incidents, suicides and COVID-19 combined.”

On #InternationalOverdoseAwarenessDay (IOAD2020) I am equal parts enraged and dismayed. You should be too. This day is supposed to be about commemorating those we’ve lost and raising awareness about overdose—instead, we are at a point where life-saving harm reduction services are facing defunding and/or closure.

Here in Canada, our efforts to respond to this devastating crisis have taken backseat to a number of other issues, despite overdose deaths surging in every corner of this country.

We’ve taken major steps backwards at the worst possible time. The collateral impacts of the global pandemic combined with an exponentially worsening drug supply has led to unprecedented death rates.In Alberta, the UCP has systematically gaslit supervised consumption services (SCS) and endeavoured to weaponize paternalistic and antiquated treatment services as an alternative to harm reduction.

Tomorrow, Alberta’s (and the world’s) busiest consumption site is closing down. It sees over 800 visits a day, and is being replaced by a mobile van that has capacity for two people at a time. There are deaths on the horizon because of this decision. But the Alberta government won’t even release their overdose stats, and likely hope that we won’t notice the incoming carnage.

This is the same government that produced a methodologically flawed report on SCS, that leaned on the expertise from TV interventionists and failed to consult anyone who worked at or accessed an SCS. This report has had far-reaching and devastating effects on the future of these services.

In British Columbia, the deaths are all around us. While first responders and community organizations bear the brunt, we have a premier who moralizes overdose by suggesting it is a matter of choice, not failed drug law. This is at a time where BC is at its third consecutive month of 170+ deaths from overdose. Breaking all the wrong records.

Whether you’re witnessing the massive surges in overdose deaths in Ontario, or decrying the closure of Nova Scotia’s only supervised consumption service, the writing is on the wall. We are losing ground.

For this #IOAD2020, I’m asking every one of my friends willing to read this post to share in our outrage. These are our children, parents, siblings, friends, and chosen family. If you want to help, then write to your mayor, MLA, and MP—tell them the time is now for:

👏 Decriminalization

👏Low-Barrier #SafeSupply access

👏 Upscaling local HarmReduction services

To those of you who are grieving today, tomorrow, and for the years to come; I am so sorry.

very local media at the end of the drug wars

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