Monday, September 25, 2023
The Drug User Liberation Front (DULF) has once again distributed a free regulated and tested supply of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine as part of its Dope on Arrival Program.
In yet another effort to show that evidence-based harm reduction works, DULF continues to run its Dope Arrival (DoA) Program in addition to its evaluative Compassion Club. Via this program, DULF distributes free tested drugs to Drug User Groups in Vancouver each time the coroner announces updated numbers of overdose fatalities. To date, DULF’s DoA program’s distributed drugs have caused no known overdoses.
September 19th marks the 20th such giveaway via DULF’s DoA Program; 3.5 grams of each cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine, were distributed for free to commemorate the 174 people who passed away in August 2023. Substances were distributed by the Coalition of Peers Dismantling the Drug War (CPDDW) and DULF to the CPDDW’s membership with the goal of showing the potential for a life-saving community-led response to the declared public health emergency in BC. DULF’s substances have been tested via PS-MS, NMR, and HPLC testing, and do not contain fentanyl, benzodiazepines, or other harmful cuts, buffs, and adulterants.
In the face of ongoing death in Vancouver’s DTES, DULF continues to hold out hope that overdose prevention services can be bolstered via novel drug supply regulation. Yet, as medicalized “safe supply” programs are increasingly attacked, and prescriptions are pulled, people once again turn to fentanyl and the illicit market. In our community, in this, the 7th year of a public health crisis, where 6 in 1000 people die of an overdose per year, we ask all levels of government to innovate drug policy. When it comes to preventing overdoses, the answers are scientific and simple: create drug user groups and safe use spaces in high needs communities, and then regulate the drug supply. All other action is lip service to a mountain of dead.
“There's no point in just mouthing the words, the token tantrums just aren't enough, nor is speed and weed and the positive creed. Exclusive clubs where various stakeholders congratulate each other for doing fuck all will achieve nothing but the strengthening of the status quo. Harm reduction has spawned another radical elite. Cheap Maté Hart imitations thinking they'll change the world with predictable gestures. Nouveau wankers! There's a thousand empty conferences waiting for their empty presentations, a thousand empty faces waiting for their empty stances. How many times must we hear rehashed versions of Drug Use for Grown-Ups by jerks whose only fuck off to the system has been one off the wrist?”
-Eris Nyx, Co-Founder, DULF
The time for action is now, when cries of anguish know no barriers, but how long do we have to shout for? There are so many things that can be done, but rooted on this spot in the desire to find a solution, there's little to see and feel but the sighing and dying of our community. It has happened before that the powerless have risen against the oppressor only to be beaten back, but there have been cases where they have succeeded. Ours is a just cause. It is up to each one of us, alone, to do our best, we must learn to overcome our fears! It is up to us all as responsible citizens of this world to work towards the downfall of prohibition. We must be prepared to oppose it on every level, to fight back in the knowledge that if we don't, we will have failed in our responsibility to life itself. Now is the time to take up your eyes and see, to take up your ears and hear, to take up your mind and think, to take up your life and act!