On August 31, 2021 MomsStopTheHarm (MSTH), Drug User Liberation Front (DULF), Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) and other drug user groups across BC provided a clean and tested supply of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine to people who use drugs in BC. This giveaway was to be accompanied by a press release in front of Minister Adrian Dix’s Vancouver constituency office with speakers from MSTH, VANDU and DULF. During the press conference, the representative from Moms Stop the Harm provided the substances to VANDU. VANDU received the safe supply and distributed the supply to their members in an equitable and ethical way.
This action is being held in protest of the proposed “Vancouver Model” of drug decriminalization submitted to Health Canada in June and to bring action to safe supply. Drug user groups and advocates have criticized the potential harm of Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s decriminalization proposal, including the plan’s lack of consideration of a safe drug supply and the police’s outsized role in determining drug policy.
The purpose of this action was to demonstrate that compassion clubs are a common-sense and reasonable response to drug poisoning deaths, and that the community of people who use drugs and their allies are willing to take the idea of safe supply from rhetoric to reality.