About safe supply is how it saves lives while drying up demand for dangerous street drugs: “Government Heroin” documentary exposes rampant safer supply fraud

In the film, Callum explains how, three years ago, a friend informed him that drug users in the city were receiving “insane” amounts of free safer supply drugs – predominantly hydromorphone, an opioid as potent as heroin. While these drugs are meant to wean addicts off riskier street substances, the friend explained that recipients mostly sell their safer supply at bargain prices so they can procure stronger substances, such as illicit fentanyl.

At first, Callum thought this was a joke. He had been struggling with a moderate addiction to pharmaceutical opioids – mostly oxycodone and Percocet – but, as these pills were expensive and hard to find, his drug use remained stable. The idea that the government was showering individuals with hundreds of powerful opioid pills a month, for free and with essentially no supervision, seemed “almost like a dream for a drug addict.”

But then he connected with some safer supply clients and realized that everything that he had heard was true.