IN NEWS - 2025

We have created this webpage as a hub for articles and news updates featuring our work and collaborations with our allies.

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• April 8, 2025 - Cutting Child and Youth Support program harms vulnerable young Albertans. The escalating toxic drug crisis and the disproportionate number of Indigenous children in care necessitate expanded family supports and the reinstatement of CYSP in Alberta. We can’t leave any young Albertans behind.

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• April 5, 2025 - ‘I came out of there a better drug user’

  Brandon Shaw was forced into treatment twice under Alberta’s Protection of Children Abusing Drugs program (PChAD), which allows legal guardians to order youth into detox for up to 15 days.

  He said that mandated treatment only made things worse.

  “I was a child who needed love and support, not to be roughed up or treated like a criminal,” he said. “When I went to this PChAD place, there was no extensive counseling … I was thrown in a room with a bunch of people who were just like me.

  “I came out of there a better drug user. I came out of there more equipped, more prepared and with a chip on my shoulder.”

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• April 3, 2025 - The Oceanside Community Action Team has organized a free event called 'Bridging the Gaps 2: Next Steps in the Toxic Drug Crisis', and invites the community to discuss what to do next in the present crisis. The event will go from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Bayside Resort (240 Dogwood St.) in Parksville on April 14.Moms Stop the Harm, elected officials, concerned citizens and representatives of addiction, mental health and social services agencies will be in attendance.

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• March 28, 2025 - Jackie Dives has been photographing the overdose crisis for almost a decade. A wider selection of her work is part of a touring 2025 exhibition which includes shows in Moncton, N.B., Hamilton, Ont., and Powell River, B.C.

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• March 27, 2025 - Here's the conversation we really need to be having as people continue to die i the toxic drug crisis. "Out of Harm's Way: Innovation, Insight and Action to End the Toxic Drug Crisis," explore the moral panic that stops us from treating 17,000+ (in BC) deaths in the last nine years like the major public health crisis that it is. Why are the opinions of politicians, police and media shaping our response to a toxic and unregulated illicit drug supply, even while medical professionals, researchers with long-standing evidence for effective interventions, and substance users themselves aren't listened to?

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• March 27, 2025 - "But when he was ready to go to detox, there was no detox. He was often ready," Costaz said. Santos was put on a waiting list for the Red Fish Healing Centre for Metal Health and Addiction in Coquitlam, and Costaz was told it would take nine to twelve months for intake. Costaz told the centre Santos would be dead by then.

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• March 24, 2025 - His death has changed me forever and devastated me. His family and friends are also impacted; I don’t want anyone else to go through this loss, but, sadly, it is happening every day,” said Chantal Costaz, a local member of MSTH.

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• March 20, 2025 - Moms Stop the Harm co-founder Leslie McBain welcomes the move by the university. “Naloxone blocks the opioid, thereby letting the person who has ingested it, breathe and people die of overdose because they can no longer breathe. That’s the mechanism, so Naloxone prevents that,” she explained.

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• March 18, 2025 - “I’m not sure exactly what’s contributed to that reduction in numbers. I mean, they’re hopeful, and we’re optimistic, but we do want to approach this news cautiously. There are a lot of increases in other areas,” said Amber Jensen with Moms Stop the Harm.

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• March 15, 2025 - Garth Mullins has been taking methadone since 2002. That means he’s paid between $11,000 and $19,300 to be able to stay on medication fully covered by the Medical Services Plan. “Why is it a public health-care system for everyone but us?” he said. “This is life or death medication.”

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• March 15, 2025 - Moms Stop the Harm, a network of Canadian families impacted by substance use-related harms and deaths who advocate for changes to drug policy, have also raised criticism. "What this type of announcement does is instill fear in people," Traci Letts, board chair, said. "Every drug user thinks they are going to get picked up and held involuntarily and forced into treatment." 

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• March 15, 2025 - Nobody can look at the faces in this Moms Stop the Harm video of lost loved ones without questioning what's going on, with more than 17,000 people dead in BC since 2016 and us seemingly powerless to act. (We aren't, but I've already written about that, so more on that later.)

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• March 14, 2025 - A Constitution-based injunction hearing began at the Red Deer Justice Centre on Friday, seeking to prevent the closure of the local overdose prevention site (OPS). Opened in October 2018, it was last fall the provincial government announced its funding would not be renewed and therefore it would close by March 31, 2025. Avnish Nanda

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• March 13, 2025 - Edmonton setting opioid poisoning records while Province quietly hid medical examiner review. Edmonton EMS dispatches for opioid poisoning have hit their highest weekly count ever. While other provincial governments issue warnings, Alberta has been hiding a key mortality report that could have informed solutions on the ground.

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• March 3, 2025 - Should we force people into treatment for drug addiction, even if it's against their will? On the show, we hear two first person accounts from both sides of the forced treatment conversation. Angie Staines weighs in on the discussion.

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• March 3, 2025 - The Flawed Logic of Million-Dollar Fines in Drug Trafficking: A Perspective from Lived Experience - Watching the Saskatchewan government announce million-dollar fines for drug trafficking stirred something deep in me—shame. Not just a little, but a lot.

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• February 28, 2025 - Grieving mother Michelle Miller continues to raise awareness about toxic drug poisoning, urging parents in Prince George to educate themselves. Toxic drug poisoning is not just a problem on the streets of Prince George. Miller lost her son, Tanner, in 2019 when his drug of choice, methamphetamine, was laced with a fatal dose of fentanyl.

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• February 28, 2025 - Compassionate Intervention is "Criminalization" By Another Name. Alberta says it will build two involuntary care centres for people with severe drug addictions, laying the foundation for the first legislation of its kind in Canada that would allow adults to be forced into treatment without their consent.

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• February 27, 2025 - Alberta says it will build two involuntary care centres for people with severe drug addictions, laying the foundation for the first legislation of its kind in Canada that would allow adults to be forced into treatment without their consent.

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• February 25, 2025 - A man who turned his own life around from substance use disorder will be giving a talk in Williams Lake on Wednesday, Feb. 26. Guy Felicella is an international public speaker and advocate for drug policy reform.

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• February 24, 2025 - The province of Alberta is planning to spend $180M dollars to build two involuntary drug addiction treatment centres in Calgary and Edmonton, but some healthcare experts and drug policy advocacy groups have concerns.

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• February 21, 2025 - Leslie McBain with the advocacy group Moms Stop the Harm said she was "blindsided" by what she also called a political move. She said people who have stabilized their lives by participating in the program were being "put in an ugly position. Instead of going to the pharmacy four times a day or three times a day to be witnessed, they will just go back to the black market, which is much easier, and then there will be more toxic overdoses and more fatalities," she said.

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• February 21, 2025 - “This will undoubtedly result in deprescribing and forced tapering,” said the advocacy group Moms Stop the Harm on Instagram.

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• February 21, 2025 - Changes to the provincial program that provides prescription alternatives to toxic street drugs, is a step backward, a longtime Kelowna advocate for safer supply said. Helen Jennens has been advocating alongside other members of Moms Stop the Harm for a safe supply for after her boys were both killed by overdoses. When a safe supply was made available through a prescription model, she thought it was a step in the right direction.

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• February 18, 2025 - Note: Contents of this piece may evoke trauma among readers who have been involved with forced abstinence.

  Scathing details of youth being held Angela Welz and her son Max shared their experiences losing Zoe to a drug poisoning just four months after her second admission to PChAD — Welz pleading that "before any more support is given to PChAD, a review should be conducted of the act and its policies.

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• February 18, 2025 - In the group’s release, it’s noted that Moms Stop the Harm co-founder Leslie McBain and former B.C. chief coroner Lisa Lapointe, along with numerous doctors and non-doctor volunteers, will be attending this week’s pop-up near Royal Jubilee in support.

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• February 18, 2025 - Moms Stop the Harm – a network of Canadian families impacted by substance-use-related harms and deaths that advocates for drug policy changes, provides peer support to grieving families and assists those with loved ones who use or have used substances – voiced its appreciation and respect for the “courageous leadership” spearheading sites in Victoria and Nanaimo. Correne Antrobus is a staunch supporter in the fight to have a safe consumption and overdose prevention sites on hospital grounds.

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• February 16, 2025 - Petra Schulz, one of three founding directors of Moms Stop The Harm — a Canadian network of families advocating for harm reduction and drug policy reform — says border security measures are important, but won’t help ease the staggering death toll because its focus is on supply.

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• February 9, 2025 - MSTH cofounder Petra Schulz spoke on CBC Rosemary Barton Live about our position on the new fentanyl Czar and explained that supply side interventions, like border control, do not save lives if we do not provide demand side interventions like rapid access to treatment, regulated alternatives to toxic drugs and addressing underlying conditions.

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• February 7, 2025 - Drug-poisoning deaths in Alberta have dropped nearly 40 per cent since 2023, according to data from the provincial government. But a deeper look is needed to understand the full picture, harm reduction advocates say.

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• February 7, 2025 - “History will view the acts of Dr. Wilder as heroic, while your actions only serve to perpetuate more harm and death,” Moms Stop the Harm Executive Director J. Steward wrote to Island Health. “The citizens of British Columbia deserve more of what Dr. Wilder and others are doing to save lives, not less.”

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• February 6, 2025 - “Amber Jensen, spokesperson for Moms Stop the Harm said, “Either way you look at it, the unregulated drug supply (in Lethbridge) is very harmful,” she said. “Had there been a regulated supply and more safety measures in place, this might not have happened.”

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• February 6, 2025 - A letter from J. Stewart, executive director of advocacy group Moms Stop the Harm, that is addressed to Island Health says the actions of Nanaimo hospital leadership “amid a public health emergency were unconscionable.” She says Wilder’s actions are heroic, and that Island Health’s actions are “perpetuating more harm and death.” “At a time when you could choose to be leading, you eliminated one of the few health professionals who was actually responding to this crisis and prioritizing patient care,” Stewart writes.

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• February 5, 2025 - “Those are our loved ones. People who we cared for. The grief that this is caused is unimaginable. Over 70% of the people who are passing away are men who are housed, and we have an increase of 50% in women,” said Michelle Miller with Moms Stop the Harm.

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• February 5, 2025 - Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says if elected he'll see all drug 'kingpins' convicted of trafficking what he calls major quantities of fentanyl get a mandatory life sentence. Leslie McBain, the co-founder of Moms Stop The Harm, says Poilievre’s plan ‘will not work’ and that that increasing border security with the U.S. will have only a minor impact on fentanyl consumption.

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• February 5, 2025 - Petra Schulz co-founded Moms Stop the Harm after her son died of an accidental fentanyl overdose. She weighs in on the government's plan to create a fentanyl czar as part of negotiations with the U.S.

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• February 5, 2025 - The coerced resignation of Dr. Jess Wilder, co-founder of Doctors for Safer Drug Policy, from her harm reduction lead role at BC's Island Health is reverberating across the province. Thirteen BC-based community groups say it sends another chill through BC’s harm reduction movement.

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• February 5, 2025 - J. Stewart, executive director of Moms Stop the Harm, a network of families affected by substance-use-related harms and deaths, said people shouldn't read too much into the recent decline in drug deaths.

  "We're about nine years into this public health emergency and a couple months of data skewing in a particular direction — I don't think it's cause for anyone to celebrate at this particular point in time," said Stewart.

  "These are actual human beings that are dying every single day," he said.

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• February 5, 2025 - A Mother's (Wanda Leblanc) Letter to the City of Nanaimo: Amid an island snowfall, one mother shares her concerns for the community

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• February 4, 2025 - According to the B.C. health ministry statement, all six beds at Island Crisis Care Society in Nanaimo are “for women who have completed treatment to get longer-term support with their recovery.” Moms Stop the Harm member Correne Antrobus told Filter that the facility is not a substance-use treatment center.

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• January 29, 2025 - Vancouver (BC) St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church community outreach continues to prove positive successes. The church is active in refugee sponsorship, climate action and local social issues such as recovery and the conversation around safe supply with partners like Moms Stop The Harm.

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• January 26, 2025 - Fire devastates Nanaimo (BC) recovery house - It’s adding strain to an already critical shortage of addiction recovery beds in Nanaimo, which can often lead to three-month-long waits and longer for people who want to enter recovery and have just come out of detox, says Wanda Leblanc, a member of Moms Stop the Harm.

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• January 22, 2025 - Opinion: Let’s listen to those impacted by toxic drugs to help end the crisis. As we enter into 2025, it’s crucial not to let the ongoing drug poisoning crisis get lost amid an overwhelming number of critical issues facing our city (Edmonton) and province, Alberta)

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• January 20, 2025 - As soon as members of the Doctors for Safer Drug Policy and Moms Stop the Harm groups showed up at the Comox Valley Hospital on the morning of Jan.20, they were informed they could not set up their overdose prevention site on hospital property.

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• January 20, 2025 - The broadcaster Scott Oake lost his son Bruce to a drug overdose more than 10 years ago, and has worked tirelessly since to help other families avoid that same heartbreak. He talks to Matt Galloway about opening a recovery centre named after Bruce, and his new book For the Love of a Son.

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• January 20, 2025 - Kelowna to get 6 recovery beds for women - Support for women in need of recovery is particularly needed in Kelowna, Helen Jennens of Moms Stop the Harm says. She notes that while the largest percentage of people dying from the toxic drug supply is young men, using alone in their homes, statistics are showing that the number of women affected by the drug crisis are also on the rise.

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• January 20, 2025 - Supporters of Doctors for Safer Drug Policy and Moms Stop the Harm set up an unsanctioned Overdose Prevention Site at the Comox Valley Hospital.

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• January 14, 2025 - Corey Ranger said he is worried that if the Supreme Court decides people can be arrested under the Good Samaritan act, it will lead to more people being “abandoned” at the scene of an overdose.

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• January 9, 2025 - Operating hours were slashed in half at Red Deer, Alberta’s OPS as of Jan. 2, 2025 and anxiety has risen among clients, says a member of a group that supports harm reduction strategies. "It's gone from 24 hours to 12 hours, and people already have nowhere to go," said Samantha Ginter, with Moms Stop The Harm, a network of Canadian families impacted by substance-use-related harms and deaths.

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• January 9, 2025 - Sister of B.C. man lost to toxic drugs launches peer support group for siblings through Healing Hearts Canada. 'Not a lot of attention is paid to sibling loss,' says Stephanie Harrington, who hopes to change that.

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• January 4, 2025 - As we welcome a new year, we reflect on the resilience, strength, and compassion that define our community. Together, we have navigated immense challenges, standing united in our commitment to advocate for better drug policies, honour those we have lost, and support families affected by the unpredictability of the illegal, unregulated drug supply fueling the toxic drug poisoning crisis.

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