New documentary exposes suffering caused by Canada’s “safer supply” programs

Zivo: Safer Supply debate matters in Canadian Elections

It has been widely reported that “safer supply” opioids are getting into the hands of youth and causing new addictions and deaths – but these facts, terrible as they are, can feel abstract to many. That’s why I’ve released this new 28-minute documentary, Government Heroin 2: The Invisible Girls, to illustrate the terrible harms being inflicted upon families by this failed policy.

The film focuses on the story of Kamilah Sword, a 14-year-old girl from Metro Vancouver who died of drug-related causes in 2022. Before her death, Kamilah and her friends had been using hydromorphone, an opioid as potent as heroin, that originated from government-funded safer supply programs.

These programs claim to reduce overdoses and deaths by providing addicts with pharmaceutical-grade addictive drugs – typically hydromorphone – as a safer alternative to more dangerous street substances. In reality, though, most addicts simply divert (sell or trade) their safer supply to the black market to acquire stronger drugs, such as illicit fentanyl. This then floods surrounding communities with hydromorphone, crashing its street price by up to 95 percent and fueling new addictions.

Kamilah and her friends were victims of this corrupt system.

In 2021, hydromorphone pills suddenly became popular at their school. The pills, which were colloquially called “dillies,” were abundant and cheap, and many teenagers did not believe they were dangerous to experiment with, as they had originally been prescribed by the government and were marketed as “safe.”

The girls did not understand that they were essentially playing with heroin – not until it was too late. By then, they were hopelessly addicted, and as their opioid tolerances grew, so did their appetite for dillies.

Two of Kamilah’s friends – Amelie North and Madison (a pseudonym) – escalated to using fentanyl and eventually went to rehab. But Kamilah herself was not so lucky. She was found dead, curled up in the fetal position in her bed, with foam at the corner of her lips, one warm August morning.

It was only after her death that her father, Greg Sword, learned how safer supply had destroyed the lives of his daughter and her friends. Amelie and Madison explained to him, for example, how they would sometimes travel downtown and purchase dillies directly from safer supply patients, who gave the cheapest prices.

The Trudeau Liberals and BC NDP have spent years aggressively advocating for safer supply and have repeatedly denied that diversion is a serious issue that harms youth. So when Kamilah’s loved ones went public with their story in the summer of 2023, it caused a national scandal.

The situation was further complicated when the BC Coroners Service, after a considerable delay, released Kamilah’s coroner’s report in late December 2023. The report ruled out hydromorphone as a cause of death and claimed that Kamilah had died of a cardiac arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat) caused by cocaine and MDMA.

But when several physicians and forensic pathologists reviewed the report, they noticed some concerning irregularities.

As Kamilah’s body was not sent for autopsy (a scandal in itself), it would have been impossible to confidently diagnose an arrhythmia as a cause of death. And in complex polydrug cases such as Kamilah’s, the best practice would have been to list every major substance as contributing to mortality – including hydromorphone.

Additionally, the coroner claimed it was unknown where the hydromorphone in Kamilah’s body had originated – even though Kamilah’s friends and family had been clear, across several media reports, that the drugs were diverted safer supply. It was impossible that the BC Coroners Service would have been unaware of this, but, strangely enough, no attempt was made by the coroner to interview Kamilah’s loved ones about her death, despite such interviews being regular practice.

Greg Sword, along with Amelie and her mother, recently launched a class action lawsuit against a wide array of defendants – including the governments of British Columbia and Canada – for irresponsibly marketing and prescribing safer supply, and for their “wilful blindness” to the prevalence and dangers of diversion.

The tragedy of this story cannot be adequately captured with words. The tears of a mourning father need to be seen and heard to be grasped. The sobs of a mother who laments her daughter’s fentanyl addiction have no substitute.

This is why Government Heroin 2: The Invisible Girls exists: to give these families a chance to be properly understood, and to better inform the public, through visceral storytelling, of the outrageous failures of Canada’s institutions and addiction policies.

This film is the second in a series. The first installment – Government Heroin – focuses on a 25-year-old student in Ontario who purchased thousands of diverted safer supply films. That 19-minute film provides a slightly more technical overview of the safer supply diversion scandal, so while each film stands on its own, the two also pair together very well (with a brisk total runtime of only 47 minutes).

I implore you to watch this new documentary, and its predecessor, too, if possible. They are sad and challenging, and yet vitally necessary for anyone who is concerned about Canada’s eroding public order and, of course, the predations of organized crime.

Editor’s note: The Bureau is running this post in combination with Break the Needle