Is safe supply for opioid use effective? Here’s what the experts, data say

“It's very difficult to compare pre-2015 levels of overdose to what's happening now because the supply chain has totally changed,” one expert cautioned.

Front-line workers of Canada’s opioid crisis say harm reduction approaches like safe supplies for those navigating substance use are clear even amid renewed political debate around the issue.

Debate around safe supply recently reignited after Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre posted a video to his Twitter account saying initiatives like safe consumption sites and offering a safer supply of drugs to people in the throes of addiction “will only lead to their ultimate deaths.”

Global News spoke to experts who have been working on the frontlines of the opioid crisis to hear their experiences, and those who weighed in voiced concerns. A growing body of data, experts suggested, indicates initiatives like safe supply and harm reduction actually decrease overdose deaths and hospitalizations and help connect people to more health care and treatment options.

“To describe safe supply as causing homelessness, as causing an increase in crime is really just the opposite of what we’re seeing from the research itself,” said Mish Waraksa, clinical lead for the Parkdale Queen West Safer Opioid Supply Program in Toronto.

Here’s what the data and experts say about the effectiveness of safe supply.

The video, “Everything is broken,” was shared in November on the Conservative leader’s Twitter account.

It shows Poilievre in the foreground, pointing behind him to a collection of tents along a shoreline in Vancouver, B.C., saying the people in the tents are “hopelessly addicted to drugs, putting poisons in their bodies.”

“The addictions that we see, that have terrorized these people and our communities, they are the result of a failed experiment,” Poilievre says in the video.