Let's All Be Like Vancouver

Free fentanyl, tested drugs, decriminalization, oh my!

A safe containing dozens of doses of meth, heroin and cocaine at the Drug User Liberation Front’s office.

A few weeks ago, I traveled to Vancouver to report on how communities there are responding to the overdose crisis, and what I saw was truly shocking to me, in a good way: safe injection sites where people can use drugs under medical supervision, a doctor who prescribes fentanyl to people who are reliant on it (and she receives governmental permission and funding to do so), an autonomous activist group that tests drugs for purity and then sells them at below-market-rates to users. 

I told some of the people I interviewed, “If you were doing this in the U.S., I’m pretty sure you’d have the DEA knocking at your door in the next 20 minutes,” to which they all replied with a somewhat puzzled, “really?”