Guest: Dr. Kevin Sabet (Co-Founder of PROSPER)
On this edition of Journal, my guest is a drug and addiction expert, Dr. Kevin Sabet, who believes we are in the midst of a devastating addiction and overdose crisis in Canada.
Why is that, when 25 years ago, Vancouver’s mayor at the time, Philip Owen, introduced the Four Pillars strategy to deal with this serious issue?: prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and enforcement. You have to have all four initiatives, working together to get at this gnarly problem.
The problem is that we didn’t follow through on all four pillars. The one that got the most attention, the most policy follow through, and the most financial support in the years since has been harm reduction.
But you can’t have a four-legged stool standing on a single leg. You soon tip over.
Slowly, we slipped into accepting – even promoting – drug use with decriminalization and its sister policy, safe supply. That experiment has been a disaster across our province with open drug use and street disorder the result. As well, only a paltry number of treatment beds or recovery programs are available to support our addicted brothers and sisters. This is not compassionate care.
Kevin Sabet knows a lot about this topic. He is a drug policy scholar who has served as an advisor to the White House on Drug Control Policy. And he did so under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Currently he is the co-Founder of PROSPER, a non-profit – Policy Roundtable On Substance Prevention, Education and Recovery – based in Vancouver.
Their stated goal: meet people where they are at, but don’t leave them there.
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