Women Are Leading Canada’s Safe Supply Movement

published on March 10, 2021 by Matthew Bonn in Filter

Everyone deserves access to health care. It should be unconditional. If you have diabetes and still enjoy the occasional unhealthy snack, a doctor will still prescribe you insulin—and yet equivalent humane treatment is often withheld from people who use drugs. This population is dying at alarming rates, leaving patients and advocates fighting for evidence-based responses including decriminalizationsafe consumption sites and safe supply.

Here in Canada, the safe supply movement in particular—the push for a legal, federally regulated supply of drugs like heroin and meth so that people may consume them more safely, free of dangerous adulterants—has been led primarily by women. When it comes to research, prescribing and, crucially, sharing their experiences around drug use, women are driving this movement.

Many of these women were calling for safe supply long before it was a widely known concept. People who do this work are often criticized by the public, and even by a large majority of the addiction medicine field; most addiction medicine doctors have not yet been able to wrap their head around this new way of prescribing…

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