Substance Use News provides a monthly collection of news and resources on the social, medical and political responses to the toxic drug supply crisis and harm reduction. To get the latest toxic drug safety alerts, visit Info for People Who Use Substances page from Toward the Heart. Get weekly substance use news by subscribing to our newsletter: scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up. You can also visit our Substance Use and Harm Reduction page for more resources.
In the News
Man jailed for trafficking diverted safer supply drugs, sparking fresh debate over BC drug policies
Ronald Schilling of Nanaimo, BC was sentenced to three years in prison for trafficking street drugs such as fentanyl and meth — as well as government-supplied opioids. When authorities had arrested Schilling two years earlier, they had found him in possession of more than 80 government-supplied opioid pill bottles labeled with other patients’ names. While Schilling’s case is unusual, it adds to the growing body of evidence that provincial safer supply programs are not always being used as intended.(May 26, 2025)
Girls and young women need better access to mental health care, StatsCan report suggests
Waitlists for mental health and substance use services are one of the deterrents for girls and young women in Canada looking for professional help, a new report from Statistics Canada suggests. The report looked at access to support services for mental health and substance abuse among girls and women ages 15 to 29 using 2022 data, the most recent available. Of these girls and young women, nearly four in 10 met the criteria for at least one of generalized anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, social phobia, or alcohol and substance dependence. (May 22, 2025)
We Need Alternatives to Alberta’s Compassionate Intervention Act
Under existing legislation through Alberta’s Mental Health Act, it must be shown that a person lacks capacity to make their own health-care decisions at the time of assessment. In contrast, the new Compassionate Intervention Act allows for the detainment of individuals whose faculties may be intact but who have a history of, in the officer’s opinion, dubious judgment. (May 13, 2025)
Is Ottawa’s Chinatown safer without a supervised consumption site? Neighbours say no.
In the two months since that supervised consumption site closed down in Ottawa’s Chinatown, many neighbours say they now feel less safe as drug use has moved out of the facility and into the open. Somerset West Community Health Centre’s harm reduction services were not limited to a supervised consumption site. The centre also offered a needle exchange, and physicians prescribed opioid medications to drug users as part of an approach known as safer supply. (May 12, 2025)
Overdose deaths are falling. Will fentanyl crackdowns change that?
Overdose deaths in 2024 decreased 12 per cent in BC and across the country compared to the previous 12 months, according to January data from the province and March data from Health Canada. The downward trend is even more pronounced in the U.S., where drops in fatalities of up to 45 per cent have been seen in states like North Carolina, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which aggregates state numbers. However, any progress could be undermined if either country sees a dramatic shift in drug supply or harm reduction measures, warns Nabarun Dasgupta, a senior scientist at the University of North Carolina’s Opioid Data Lab, which has been closely monitoring the shift in the U.S. (May 7, 2025)
Community groups accuse VPD officers of loitering outside supervised drug consumption sites
A collection of groups that work in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside say there’s been an increase in police officer presence outside Insite and other supervised drug consumption sites in the neighbourhood, resulting in people being deterred from accessing harm-reduction services. The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) has a policing strategy underway meant to crack down on organized and violent crime in the neighbourhood — which includes more officers. But a spokesperson said it’s a “false narrative” that officers are loitering outside the harm-reduction sites. (May 7, 2025)
Sudbury researcher says we need to change how we talk about addiction
Dr. Kristen Morin said “The fundamental message is we need to change how we view substance use,” at Science North for MedTalk 2025. “It is not a moral failing that people should be punished for,” she said. Even just reading the words “use” not “abuse” is a paradigm shift, she said. MedTalks are about cutting-edge research done by leading healthcare professionals looking for community-driven solutions. (May 6, 2025)
Education and Research
Can a pea-sized part of the brain help treat addiction?
Major scientific discoveries can arise from simple decisions: say, by simply looking where virtually no one else has. Such was the case for Ines Ibañez-Tallon, a research associate professor in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at The Rockefeller University, who over the past decade has revealed how one small, understudied region of the brain plays an outsized role in addiction and substance use disorder. Known as the habenula, this narrow strip of gray and white matter—so tiny it’s considered a microstructure—is an ancient piece of the brain, first appearing in vertebrates about 360 million years ago.
Experimental Painkiller Could Outsmart Opioids – Without the High
An experimental drug developed at Duke University School of Medicine could offer powerful pain relief without the dangerous side effects of opioids. Called SBI-810, the drug is part of a new generation of compounds designed to target a receptor on the nerves and spinal cord. While opioids flood multiple cellular pathways indiscriminately, SBI-810 takes a more focused approach, activating only a specific pain-relief pathway that avoids the euphoric “high” linked to addiction. In tests in mice, SBI-810 worked well on its own and, when used in combination, made opioids more effective at lower doses, according to the study published May 19 in Cell. Even more encouraging: it prevented common side effects like constipation and buildup of tolerance, which often forces patients to need stronger and more frequent doses of opioids over time.
Conceptualizing ‘cannabis harm reduction’: lessons learned from cannabis compassion clubs and medical dispensaries in British Columbia (Canada)
From the Harm Reduction Journal: Drawing on a qualitative case study of cannabis compassion clubs and medical dispensaries in British Columbia (Canada), the main goal of this paper is to generate insights that have the potential to advance and broaden the conceptualization of ‘cannabis harm reduction’.
Test Strips Do Tell You If Xylazine Is Present, But Prone to False Positives
Xylazine has emerged as a major adulterant in the unregulated drug supply in recent years. Initially common in certain cities such as Philadelphia, it is now found in communities across the United States. The veterinary sedative can prolong the effects of fentanyl, but has been linked to various harms, including deep skin ulcers and injection wounds that won’t heal. Many people who use drugs want to avoid xylazine. So several companies have seized the opportunity to develop xylazine test strips (XTS) which, mirroring fentanyl test strips, are designed to quickly and easily determine whether xylazine is present in a substance.
How to Prevent and Reduce Substance Use Harms for Youth: What Youth Say Works
This new report from the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) provides valuable insights to help strengthen prevention strategies for people working in substance use health, education, family and community services, and youth-serving organizations. Its development included consultation with youth advisory councils and committees to better understand how to help prevent and reduce youth substance use harms in Canada.
Implementing community drug checking in smaller urban communities: a qualitative study exploring contextual factors to consider
As community drug checking services are established as a response to the toxic unregulated drug market, factors that support equitable access to services beyond inner-city and urban areas are critical. Factors identified as potential barriers offer targets for service adaptation and tailored implementation to enable greater access.
Visit the BC Centre for Disease Control’s Unregulated Drug Poisoning Emergency Dashboard for provincial data from different sources.
Visit the BC Centre on Substance Use for information on evidence-based approaches to substance use care and harm reduction.
Visit the National Safer Supply Community of Practice (NSS-CoP), whose goal is to scale up safer supply programs across Canada.
Visit the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research site for research on aclohol and substance use.
Questions? Feedback? Get in touch. Janet Madsen, Capacity Building and Digital Communications Coordinator, [email protected]