BSUN is a Brantford peer-based all volunteer organization that seeks to promote the health and defend the rights of local substance users. BSUN will expose and challenge stigma, discrimination, and the criminalization of people who use drugs and its impact on the drug-using community’s health and rights. BSUN will achieve this through processes of empowerment and advocacy at the municipal, provinc
ial and federal level. BSUN is committed to putting an end to the opioid overdose crisis of which over 132 of our family and friends have fatally overdosed since between 2017 and June 2021 and over 24 000 nationally. First and foremost, BSUN opposes drug prohibition and favors decriminalization of all drugs currently listed under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and regards the current opioid crisis as a tragic by-product of the drug war, due to the lack of a safe supply of pharmaceutical grade drugs, but a chronic shortage, and even denial, of supplies and services to prevent overdoses and poisonings, such as safe consumption sites, clean needles, and overdose prevention kits. BSUN views education as key to battling stigma, the latter of which is key to reinforcing the prevailing view that the current crisis as a criminal/law enforcement issue, and not a health crisis. Effectively addressing this stigma through dialogue and education is the first step in creating an environment more supportive of harm reduction initiatives and vital in eventually ending our community’s brutal and inhumane treatment of the users of illicit drugs. What is “harm reduction”? Isn’t it drug users that are causing harm to others? Harm reduction consists of initiatives, practices and policies aimed at stopping or reducing the unintended consequences of drug prohibition and ensures that people who use drugs are meaningfully involved in the creation of programs and policies designed to serve them. These include but are not limited to, overdoses and poisonings, isolation, addiction, the devastation of the lives and those of loved ones through imprisonment and other legal sanctions against the use of some drugs and the physical agony imposed by laws that prevent people from treating themselves in accordance with the doctrine of informed consent. Drug users sometimes do harm themselves and/or others, as do others from all walks of life. BSUN fully supports all law enforcement efforts to apprehend and prosecute any individuals who interfere with someone’s life, liberty, and property through the use of violence. But this is not an issue where the freedom, autonomy, and rights of substance users as a class is or should be at stake. Are substance users not responsible for their own addiction? Why is this the responsibility of the taxpayer? Canada’s third-party payer model of health insurance is premised on the belief that all eligible Canadians should receive adequate coverage for most medical issues, and one that rejects both paternalism and discrimination on the basis or personal moral character. Whether one views addiction as a disease or a choice, it is a phenomenon that presents symptoms that are both psychological and biological. For example, if the user of a substance conventionally regarded as addictive, suffers withdrawal, the sufferer cannot simply wish these physical symptoms away. Reduction of substance use and/or abstinence should never be required in order to receive respect, compassion or services. Moreover, drug prohibition is funded by taxpayers, and those who support and defend it bear some responsibility for the injustices committed in their name. BSUN regards tax funded harm reduction as a legitimate form of restitution, or “damages” under the principle of restorative justice, until or unless steps are taken to end and adequately reverse the devastation caused by drug prohibition.
