BC teen involved in class action lawsuit against province and feds explains how 'safe supply' drugs end up in the wrong hands

A British Columbian teen who is in rehab after developing an opioid addiction thanks in part to diverted "safe supply" drugs has explained how illicit substances prescribed to longtime users often end up in the wrong hands.Amelie North, 17, said it was all too easy for her and her friends to head over to the Downtown Eastside and pick up hydromorphone, a prescription opioid supplied to users by the government, for a fraction of the price they'd have to pay in their community.North's mother, Denise Fenske, recently filed a class action lawsuit against the Ottawa and BC NDP alongside Greg Sword, whose daughter Kamilah died of a suspected overdose. The pair accused the governments of facilitating their children's addictions via the drugs they supplied.."You could literally walk down East Hastings in Vancouver and just find, like, a homeless person," North said in a 2023 interview with Break The Needle's Adam Zivo, "or there's also drug dealers that people can text on Snapchat or Instagram and then just get it from them."She said that on numerous occasions, she had been approached by homeless people while walking around Vancouver and asked if she wanted to buy any, or knew of anyone who would. North explained that hydromorphone under the brand name Dilaudid, known as "dilly" on the streets, was the drug of choice for many sellers, and that they were often much cheaper on the Downtown Eastside than elsewhere, leading her and her friends to travel there just to buy."I know in Port Coquitlam and Coquitlam you get them $5 each, but if you went to downtown Vancouver you could get 40 dillies for $60," she said. "It's a lot cheaper."She noted that everyone around her was doing the drug, lamenting the fact that, "just seeing people on them or them just talking about it, it's hard because they're really addictive and once you start, it's really hard to stop.".North also suggested that drug dealers were capitalizing on the price and availability of dillies to get kids hooked so that they could then move them on to more dangerous drugs..She warned that when she first started doing drugs, it seemed harmless, but after a few weeks it became a "serious problem.""I didn't even realize it, but I didn't want to be sober; I didn't want to do anything sober," she said. "I think they're really easy to get addicted to, and no one knows that until you are addicted to them."North made it clear she never would have tried dillies if she'd known the impact they would have on her life.The lawsuit claimed that North and Sword "relied on the negligent misrepresentations to begin consuming the Safe Supply Drugs, believing they were safe and they relied upon the negligent misrepresentations throughout the duration of their addictions."It argued that the governments of Canada and BC "failed and continue to fail to monitor the Safe/Safer Supply Program and how the terminology 'safe,' 'safe supply,' 'safer supply' or 'prescribed safer supply' is used to motivate the innocent Class Members."In a press release following the filing of the lawsuit, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre cited Kamilah's friends as saying that they "could go up to a drug addict and ask for dillies and they'd have bottles of them, because they would go into pharmacies, get them filled up and sell them to the kids."Poilievre slammed the BC NDP for "hiding" a memo that explained how "diversion of lethal opioids would be an inevitable consequence of the Liberal-NDP's taxpayer-funded hard drug program," noting that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had once actually condoned such diversion.

BC teen involved in class action lawsuit against province and feds explains how 'safe supply' drugs end up in the wrong hands

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