Analysis: What’s at stake as battle over opioid crisis erupts in London

published on July 26, 2024 by Randy Richmond in London Free Press

Political silence when the Conservative Party of Canada accuses a London doctor and founder of a harm-reduction program of lying and calls for her medical licence to be revoked.

A police news conference where a small percentage of the drug provided by the program gets far more attention that much larger seizures of much deadlier substances.

Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre making an election-style law-and-order speech in an east end park criticizing London’s organizations and professionals working in addiction help.

There have been plenty of obvious signs the past month that London has become a key front in the country-wide political battle over the opioid crisis.

There are also signs, more subtle, that the city’s progressive stand in that battle may be shifting, or being shifted.

“One of the things that has struck me about London is that there’s always been a real attempt to come together as a community to try to work on these issues,” says Gillian Kolla, a public health researcher with Memorial University in Newfoundland…