Insite, a safe consumption facility in Vancouver. Image: Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0). How should we address the opioid crisis? Perhaps we should ask those with the most experience of it – drug users. Having spoken to hundreds of drug users over the last 12 years as an ethnographic researcher, one thing made clear to me no matter where I go is that the best way to address problematic drug use is not through law and order but through care and community.
Perhaps the best example of a community-orientated approach to drug addiction can be found in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood, where organisations of active and former drug users and their allies responded to a drug epidemic in the 1990s with a focus on community-building and local revitalisation. When I visited in 2013, I witnessed first-hand how the scheme was transforming the lives of people living there. Small businesses and social enterprises, such as the community bank Pigeon Park Savings, had been created to offer employment and services to active drug users. There was a significant increase in social and affordable housing, several health – including mental health – facilities, and abundant community events open to public – including musical concerts. All of these various projects are supported by mixture of public funding, won by campaigners, and private donations and non-profit grants.
In two years the fatal overdose rate decreased by over a third.
