Crackdown

The next episode is delayed a few weeks. In the meantime, here’s what we’ve been up to.

In 2015, Crackdown editorial board member, Jeff Louden, was on morphine pills for chronic pain. When Jeff’s doctor cut down his medication, he turned to the street to outrun dopesickness. Five years later, Garth investigates what happened to Jeff.

Garth interviews Tim Slaney. Tim is a harm reduction worker at the supervised consumption site in Lethbridge, Alberta – one of the busiest in the world. And the government is shutting it down.

The first thing that the plague brought to Vancouver was exile. In March, People vanished. The city looked like a ghost town. But on the Downtown Eastside, the sidewalks were still packed…

As BC faces its worst ever month for fatal overdoses, Laura Shaver takes Mallinckrodt, the College of Pharmacists, and the Ministry of Health to Court.

Dave Murray was a veteran drug user activist. He was a mentor to the next generation of organizers like me. He’s pretty much the reason why there is a prescription heroin program in Vancouver today. And he was our friend.

The government has finally agreed to provide us with a safe, medical alternative to black market drugs. On Episode 15, we dig deep into the new policy and tell the story of advocacy that made this possible.

Since the first coronavirus case was confirmed in British Columbia, around 150 people have died from a contaminated drug supply. Four people have died from COVID-19. Now we face both crises at once.

We follow Tanis Rose’s journey through four recovery homes to tell the story of a broken system and one family’s struggle to stay together.

You can’t understand Canada’s overdose crisis without knowing the truth about this country – and that’s the story of colonization: a centuries-long effort to steal land and erase Indigenous peoples.

We haven’t had a big win in a while. And 2019 feels a bit like a depressing blur. But it was also a year where we fought back. In the last Crackdown episode of the year, we tell four stories about surviving the drug war.

In 2018, Scotland had a higher rate of drug-related deaths than Canada or the U.S. — even though fentanyl hasn’t taken over the U.K.’s drug supply. In Episode 10, CRACKDOWN crosses the Atlantic to try and figure out what’s going on.

Crackdown investigates the relationship between the BC government and Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals. Many people on methadone complain that Methadose® “doesn’t have legs.” Why hasn’t the government provided them with a more effective option?

We don’t have a full documentary this month – for a pretty good reason.

Men are dying at a higher rate than women during the opioid crisis, which means women sometimes get left out of the conversation. On Episode 8 of Crackdown, we go to SisterSpace, North America’s first women-only safe consumption site.

The Vancouver Police say they’re for harm reduction, but everyone we talk to in the Downtown Eastside says otherwise. On Episode 7 of Crackdown, Garth asks the cops to stand down.

What happens when your options are being kicked out on the street or living in a room filled with mould, trash and rats? Episode 6 of Crackdown looks at how the housing and overdose crises are intertwined, and what happens when tenants fight back.

This month Crackdown is exploring the pernicious connections between North America’s overdose crisis and the housing crisis.

Garth goes to Portugal to figure out whether the country has found a solution to North America’s overdose crisis.

Someone is to blame. This is not just some force of nature.