When a DIY approach to safe supply ends in arrests

In today’s The Big Story podcast, safe supply programs across the country that aim to provide alternatives to street drugs are under scrutiny right now. But today’s story isn’t an official safe supply program, it’s an activist-led attempt to purchase untainted heroin, cocaine and meth and deliver it straight to users.

Omar Mouallem is a filmmaker, as well as a contributing editor and reporter at Maclean’s. “Increasingly there have been people who are blaming safe supply for the overdose crisis when the fact is the overdose crisis precedes the sort of the advent of safe supply,” said Mouallem.

The creators of the program argue that it has saved lives. The federal government says that what they’ve been doing is simply drug trafficking. And it’s charged them accordingly. But is it possible both sides are correct? And what does this truly renegade approach to the overdose crisis tell us about the state of Canadian drug policy?