The latest news articles featuring BC Centre on Substance Use.
Swept aside: Study links Vancouver’s ‘street sweeps’ of homeless to greater risk of overdose, violence
September 03, 2025 | Vancouver Sun
Controversial “street sweeps” carried out by the City of Vancouver between 2021 and 2023 to clear makeshift housing and personal belongings from public spaces put homeless residents at greater risk, a new Simon Fraser University study suggests. The study found that those who had items confiscate...
Canada Releases First Smoking Cessation Guideline for Adults
August 26, 2025 | Medscape
The Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care has released practical guidance, along with a menu of options, to help adults quit smoking tobacco. The guideline includes evidence-based behavioral and drug therapies — and for the first time, a natural health product, cytisine — that can be tai...
Caring for young people during a toxic drug crisis: Q&A with Dr. Danya Fast
August 22, 2025 | BC Children's Hospital Research Institute
“It’s important to discuss the toxicity of the drug supply,” says Dr. Danya Fast, an investigator at BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute. In 2007, she started her research with people as young as 13 years old who use drugs in the context of unstable housing and homelessness. A med...
Trade workers among those most susceptible to toxic drug deaths: B.C. Coroners Service
August 02, 2025 | CBC British Columbia
The B.C. Coroners Service has released data on the toxic drug crisis showing the occupations of those who died over a three-year span in the province. As Michelle Morton reports, trade workers are seeing the largest numbers of drug fatalities. [Video]...
Crackdown: A revolutionary testament from the frontlines of the drug war
July 29, 2025 | Spring Magazine
In a political moment when right-wing forces mobilize to dismantle even the most modest harm reduction measures, Garth Mullins’ memoir-manifesto arrives as an essential weapon of resistance, exposing the brutal violence of prohibition while charting a path toward collective liberation through user...
