I became an accidental advocate due to the drug poisoning death of my youngest son Danny. I will be speaking to you from the perspective of families whose loved ones have been affected by problematic substance use and what we feel are important measures the minister of health should take.

Some of these changes amount to a paradigm shift in this country and the minister will have her work cut out for her. As families who have been deeply impacted by the drug poisoning crisis, our focus is on saving lives, keeping people healthy and giving them hope for the future.

The following recommendations are those supported by MSTH families, other family groups and countless advocates across this country, including people who use drugs.

Here is what I will do as the minister of health.

Define the problem: First, I will have to redefine the problem: We call it an overdose or even opioid crisis, but in reality, it is a policy crisis.

Voice of people who use drugs: The problem with our current drug policies is that they were drafted without input from people with lived and living experience, who are too often absent from conversations. Our son started using illicitly obtained prescriptions and switched to street drugs when Oxycontin was reformulated to OxyNeo. Nobody asked him or others like him how he would be impacted by that change. It meant a switch to toxic substances that eventually killed him and thousands of others. This is just one of countless drug policy failures that have cost lives.

To guide my actions in the future, I will appoint a prominent person who uses drugs as a deputy minister focused on substance use. People with lived experience need to be at the table in a decision-making capacity because they have the knowledge needed.

Alternatively, I can appoint a task force that includes people who use drugs, their families, health professionals, researchers and policy makers to determine what immediate and long-term actions are needed and to guide these actions to their implementation.

Decrim and Safer Supply: In my tenure I will make decriminalization of people who use drugs and a safer supply an immediate priority.

Decrim: The first step on decriminalization is to stop arresting people for using drugs, followed by required legislative changes. There are people on this panel who know more about needed changes than I do, but I know that it is in the power of each police force to stop arresting people for possession. I hear from law enforcement that they no longer arrest, but I know for a fact this is not true. To work towards decriminalization, I will urge the prime minister to strike a cabinet committee to draft legislation and recommended relevant changes to the RCMP Act and other laws.

Safer Supply: Safer supply means providing pharmaceutical alternatives to people who need them, so we can eliminate the use of illicit substances and all the negative consequences associated with illicit use.

It is well documented in surveillance reports that most overdose victims die from toxic street drugs and not from pharmaceuticals. To be truly effective safer supply must be rolled out on a large-scale public health level, not unlike vaccinations. As stated by a panel on safer supply at this conference there needs to be low barrier access. Bill Moore from the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs correctly noted that to be effective, it must be available to everyone.

What has been done around safer supply has been positive, but insufficient! We have a few treatment programs offering safe substances as an injectable alternative in Opioid Agonist Treatment (iOAT), there are some safer supply trials happening in ON and BC, and there are a handful of brave physicians prescribing pharmaceuticals. These are pockets of innovation that reach too few and have too high a threshold of entry, while too many continue to die.

Models that have been proposed and could be a basis for broad implementation involve biometric dispensing machines, suggested by Dr. Mark Tyndall or compassion clubs as outlined in a BCCSU white paper, drafted by PWUD and researchers. A concept document by CAPUD, the Canadian Association of People Who Use Drugs, outlines 5 possible options for dispensing pharmaceuticals, ranging from observed use and prescribing to models like those used for alcohol and cannabis. Ultimately, we will need a range of options, depending on the substance, the situation and the end user.

As a minister I will also encourage and fund research and innovation into safer supply alternatives for substances other than opioids.

Harm reduction: We know from a study in BC that the death toll in that province would have been 2.5 higher without harm reduction, yet access to these services across Canada is inconsistent or absent.

Harm reduction needs to be enshrined in regulation, so that life saving health services are not threatened with every change of government. In the last four years more has been done for harm reduction than in decades before, but instead of moving forward and expanding what we know saves lives and connects people with much needed services, Harm reduction is under threat by provincial governments who practice ideologically based, rather than evidence-based healthcare.

In the short term, while we work on decriminalization and safer supply, I will take steps to protect and adequately fund essential harm reduction services, especially supervised consumption and overdose prevention sites threatened by closure or service reductions. We don’t want to send the people who need these services back outside behind a dumpster to use their drugs unsafely.

Drug Policy Reform: Decriminalization and harm reduction only go so far. More fundamental changes in drug policy are urgently needed. I would strike a public inquiry into the drivers of the crisis, with a mandate to propose legislative changes.

We are losing a generation. Recently released data from Statistics Canada showed that life expectancy in this country is no longer increasing for the first time in four decades and is in fact declining in British Columbia and Alberta. We need to change our archaic drug policies and bring them in line with current evidence by legally regulating all substances based on the harm they cause, not with a commercial, but with a public health focus.

We have heard throughout this conference about the harms caused by alcohol. This was powerfully told in the keynote address by Harold Johnson at the beginning of this conference. Yet we promote alcohol use through TV ads and government endorsed bargain pricing. That is not public health. We need to look at each substance and regulate it based on the potential harms and with a focus on minimizing and mitigating such harms.

Apart from that we need to acknowledge that prohibition is a failure and let adults make adult decisions within a regulatory framework, while we create awareness and adjust regulations, just as it was done with tobacco.

Conclusion: People believed my son died because he made bad choices and I in turn questioned myself as a mother. Since his death I have discovered that the war on drugs and the resulting drug policies are to blame for the death of our youngest. While this awareness comes too late for Danny, I now work to change this before thousands more die.

Bad drug policies cost people their lives. Political inaction is fatal. As the Minister of Health, I have the power - and the duty - to change that.

In closing I would ask for your help to illustrate the devastation caused by this policy crisis, starting with my fellow moms in the audience: Those of you who lost someone you love please rise. - Those of you who know someone who lost someone please rise. - Those of you who have heard of someone who lost someone please rise.

Thank you for letting me be your minister of health today!

The full panel discussion it available on Sixthestate Facebook Live Channel.