Doctors Are Prescribing Fentanyl to Help People Addicted to Opioids

published on January 28, 2022 by Manisha Krishnan in VICE

Over the past 40 years, Jeff Louden has used many different types of opioids, including heroin and fentanyl, and he’s been arrested time and time again because of it.

“When you’re sick, there’s not much you won’t do to get better—sell dope, rob banks, break into houses, whatever,” said Louden, a resident of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, ground zero for Canada’s drug-poisoning crisis. According to Crackdown, a drug war podcast of which Louden is a director, he was taken from Curve Lake First Nation when he was a baby and adopted by a white family, under a racist government policy known as the Sixties Scoop that targeted Indigenous communities. He first tried opioids when he was 9.

“I’ve spent most of my life in prison from trying to support the habit and get by,” he told VICE World News.

But things changed in 2019, when Louden, now 55, started receiving prescription fentanyl patches paid for by the British Columbia government to manage his opioid use disorder…