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Pure fentanyl? It is fire.
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Like it is so dangerous.
It's like the most ho-horrid, wretched pure terror you can imagine.
And it feels like something's slowly, like,
just pulling your life force out of you
and then you get tunnel vision, starts getting smaller and smaller.
And around this tunnel, it's just darkness, right?
And then it gets smaller and smaller and smaller and closes.
And then it goes... You're dead, that's it.
- You think you're dead? - No, you're dead.
You're a flatline, no heartbeat, dead.
Vancouver, a city renowned for its natural beauty,
a quote from the tourist board.
But beneath the mountain vistas, the city has a tragic underbelly.
Despite being known as one of the world's top three cities in which to live,
a tiny neighborhood known as Downtown Eastside
is experiencing a huge drug problem.
Thousands of lives have been lost,
and in nearly nine out of ten autopsies,
a deadly new illicit drug has been present.
The painkiller fentanyl is now the number one killer drug in the US.
You can die just by touching it.
Fentanyl! Fentanyl! Fentanyl!
A fatal dose of fentanyl.
- Fentanyl! - Fentanyl!
The potent opioid that's supposed to tranquillize elephants.
A synthetic painkiller, a hundred times more powerful than morphine.
Just two milligrams of the pure drug, which is about four grains of salt
is enough to kill the average adult.
Prince died from a lethal amount of the painkiller fentanyl.
A ten-year-old boy in Florida has become one of the youngest...
Overall, more than 63,000 people died of...
The monster drug kills far more people than gun violence.
And if you don't know what fentanyl is,
it is basically the new heroin, but much, much stronger.
Oi, what's up, bro?
Not a whole lot. I'm on a documentary right now, brother.
I'm on a documentary here talking about opioid use and shit.
- Oh? - Yeah.
- I'll come talk to you in a minute. Hey. - Oh?
Wait down here I gotta talk to you, bro.
Just give me a minute.
Yeah, just another fellow bro in the hood, you know.
- Uh... - Friend of yours?
- Yeah, a good friend of mine. - Dealer?
You know, uh... That doesn't matter.
Ask no-ask no questions, I'll tell no lies.
Here in Downtown Eastside, addiction is nothing new.
Heroin has flowed through Vancouver's ports
to this deprived part of town since the 1970s.
But market forces have seen that heroin supply replaced.
Fentanyl is stronger, cheaper and much less bulky to import.
Where are we going, Kevin?
- Where would you like to go?
- Do you wanna see what it's really like? Sure.
Let's go. Let's go.
This is East Hastings Street now.
This is where the ghetto starts, basically.
What you're looking at is the Mecca of drug addiction.
We have been an active narcotics hub for
ever since I can remember.
Maybe that's why I came here.
Yeah, yeah, that is probably why I came here.
Illicit fentanyl hasn't flooded the street drug supply
outside North America yet.
Do you think this could become a global problem,
and if it does, what should people expect?
Death. Lots of fucking death.
People are gonna die and-and it's not gonna be pretty.
It is wildfire, people will try it, love it
and they'll never quit.
These-these streets were crowded.
You're talking about 1500, 2,000 people died just in this-this block.
♪ Mama put my guns to the ground ♪
Our government knows what's killing them.
Now I've seen our government address an epidemic before, SARS.
They spent multiple, multiple millions of dollars to keep us safe from SARS.
Any idea how many people died from SARS?
I know. Fourteen people died from SARS.
We lost 14 people last fucking week, right?
This is a huge problem.
The United States lost 72,000 people to overdose death last year.
Canada lost 8,000.
All right? These are-these are large numbers of people
dying of a preventable death,
and it will not be any different in Australia, the United Kingdom,
uh, anywhere in the Western world.
It's just, uh... It's inevitable, it is.
I mean, this stuff will kill you.
♪ Knock, knock... ♪
If I wanted to buy fentanyl right now, how easy would that be?
Well, it would pretty much be simple for you to get fentanyl,
it'd be impossible for you to get heroin.
Because that's for... It's all fentanyl now.
And even if there is heroin, it's got fentanyl in it.
How far do you reckon they are from a drug dealer?
Feet.
- Yeah? - Yeah.
One drug dealer, or a lot?
A lot. A lot, you know.
- What's your name, buddy? Sylvester.
And what are you doing hanging out on the street corner here, Sylvester?
Uh, selling fentanyl, you know. Trying to get by.
I live on the streets, so I got to make a living somehow.
I don't want to rob stores or nothing. I've got about ten years in the pen.
This way here I stay out.
And how's business, you selling a lot?
Booming, man, like, you-you can never have enough.
So how many people are buying fentanyl from you each day?
Hundred... 150.
- Every day? - Every day.
Is the dealing here quite organized,
is there, like, a bit of a kind of chain of command to it?
Yeah. Different gangs run different alleys.
I'm on a 12-hour shift.
How do you get that job,
'cause I don't think they're advertising that in the newspaper, right?
No, no. Through-through connections, mostly coming out of jail.
What's fentanyl done to the community around here?
Destroyed it.
I lost like 40 people that I know well, close to me, in the last three years.
People never did drugs in their life, picked it up once, dead.
- From fentanyl? - From fentanyl.
Is it possible any of them got that fentanyl from you?
It's possible.
That bother you?
To an extent, but they're gonna get it from somebody, right?
I mean, I guess apart from anything else
it's not great business practice to be killing your customers, right?
No. I don't think anybody wanted anybody to die,
but the thing is...
Heroin, it used to come and it's heroin.
This fentanyl, we're making it ourselves.
You go online on the-on the dark web,
you order an ounce of fentanyl from China.
Costs you 350 bucks.
You pay an extra 50 bucks, the next day it's delivered right to your door.
- You take that $400 worth of fentanyl... - Yeah.
...and you make a thousand grams of down.
- Yeah. - And you're getting anything
between a hundred and a 120 per gram.
- So do the math. - Jesus.
It's like mining diamonds, isn't it?
- Yeah. - Like gold.
You're taking $400 and you're making a hundred grand.
But while it's lucrative,
illicit street fentanyl is often being cooked
by amateur gangsters in their basements.
They're making the recipe up as they go along,
and the final product is synthetic and wildly inconsistent.
Customers here told us that what they buy on the street
can be any color of the rainbow.
That's-- Like, right now everybody wants the dark green.
They come up and ask you, "You got the dark green?"
If you don't got it, they shop around.
Why do they want that?
Because that's the highest fentanyl.
But that's also the shit that's killing people, right?
Yeah. You're playing Russian roulette.
And people are comfortable to take that risk?
Soon as they know that that stuff's dropping,
people, they're running to you, "Who got that green stuff?"
Because they think they can... They're the ones
that could take half of it or a quarter of it. Or...
And if people are dying from it, then it must be good shit.
- Is that the logic? - That's the logic.
Last night, this girl just came out of detox,
and I knew she just got back.
She's all healthy and everything.
She sees me, "Oh, Sylvester!" Comes running up to me, "Give me a point!"
I said, "You just got out, didn't you?" "I just got out two hours ago"
I said, "What do you want a point for?"
"Oh, I'm just gonna use a little bit of it and have some for tomorrow."
I said, "Don't use it all because you know-you know your tolerance..."
"No, no I won't."
Ten minutes later, the ambulance was in the alley,
they were working on her.
I don't know if she lived or died.
I don't know.
Ambulance come, police come, I leave.
So how much do you sell it for, and what people get for that?
Ten dollars for a flap.
Can I see?
That's a ten-dollar flap of fentanyl.
And that's green dark green.
Dark green. That's the shit that's dropping people.
Do you know what purity that is?
Fifteen percent fentanyl, three percent heroin.
The rest is baby laxatives, sugars...
Is it possible that I'd die if I took that?
Yep.
All depends how high your immune system, you know, your tolerance.
I mean, I've never taken fentanyl before.
If you took that you'd die.
- A hundred percent? - Hundred percent.
And if I bought the same quantity of heroin off you, would I die?
No.
- Definitely not? - Definitely not.
- Would you sell it to me? - If you want to buy it.
If I want to buy it? Like, if I give you ten bucks for that now,
- you'll sell me that? - Yup.
It's your life, bro, you gotta make your own choices, right?
And I gotta eat. So...
Just like that, man.
The candid way in which Sylvester discusses his day job
is conflicting.
It's easy to judge him, but the reality is
that fentanyl has become normalized in Downtown Eastside.
And for the homeless community, who live here in desperate hardship,
it's one of the very few tradable commodities.
Vancouver's a very rich city,
surrounded by, you know, very rich real estate,
and unlike most Canadian cities,
Vancouver's decided to ghettoize poverty.
As the city gentrifies, people get squished and squished,
and it used to be 15 square blocks,
now it's down to six or seven square blocks of people.
And, uh, most of them are in search of some sort of drug from day to day.
So just a block over that way I just purchased this.
- Could that be fentanyl? - I think it could be.
I mean, it comes in all different shapes
and sizes.
Where do you think that ambulance is going to that we can hear behind us?
Probably an overdose, yeah.
It's, uh... Yeah. This--
I mean, it's su-it's surprising it's the first one we've heard,
because there's multiple overdose calls in this little community per day.
And some... Sometimes it's just been horrific.
Like, it's just been... Just wall-to-wall ambulances
and fire trucks, and people lying on the street.
It can look like a war zone.
People are being slaughtered down here...
- This is the war zone. - Yeah. You're in it.
No, you're-you're in it right now. Like you think Afghanistan's bad.
This right here is my last ten dollars and my only ten dollars,
that I sold a crowbar and an angle grinder for.
I got a coffee and some dope.
Yup. Usually, you don't eat
and you live, breathe and work for this.
How can you know really what's inside that?
So, I guess it's fentanyl.
He's also got the powder version there.
It alwa-- Like, you never know what you're going to get.
It's a surprise all the time.
So, these are both fentanyl, but it almost looks like a different drug.
It does, you never know, like, it always looks different.
It's just, uh, one big fuck around, it really is.
Sorry for the language, but it's, um, you know,
food, clothes, shower, drugs.
It's constant.
Let's take a walk on the wild side, shall we?
Why did you call it the wild side, Spike?
There-There seems to be an idea here that it might be dangerous down here.
It might be. Yeah.
Mainstream society is a little bit intimidated by it or-or afraid of it.
I'm... Yeah, so, I said it in jest
because it's not the wild side at all.
It's just a... It's a neighborhood of people
that, uh, are experiencing a lot of pain and-and dealing with a lot of trauma.
What kind of pain do people typically go through?
Well it... High poverty area, there's-there's all kinds of people
survive all kinds of trauma from early childhood abuse
to-to-to, you know, relationship pain to, you know, just, yeah, just...
People have gone through a lot down here.
Do you think addiction is a disease and is an illness?
Definitely. You know, what starts out as an original choice
to use substances to self-medicate from the pain
turns into a lifetime of suffering, and...
I became dependent on using, um, heroin and fentanyl,
because reality was... was painful.
Opioids like heroin and fentanyl
belong to the same pharmaceutical family as morphine,
and like morphine, they were intended for pain relief.
Everyone in this self-medication community has a back story
and pain, both physical and mental, is all around.
- Is this person okay? - We'll-We'll check right now.
I'm sure they're probably breathing, but...
- Hey how are you? - I'm fine.
Cool, uh, we're filming the wall, but we won't-we won't...
- Okay? - Okay.
Cool.
Sorry to in-- Sorry to... Sorry to come into your space, ma'am.
I-I had an ugly childhood, so I-I dabbled.
Um, yeah, I-I was running away from things,
from an awful lot of pain when I was a kid and I-I used narcotics.
Uh, I cleaned up. In 1997, I cleaned up to raise my child. I was, uh...
His mother killed-killed herself and I raised my...
And I was a single dad. I raised my ch-- my son.
And-and, uh... 'cause I-I owed him a life.
And I have an amazing son, he, uh, turned out exceptionally well,
I... I'm really proud of the job that I did.
Uh, and then I had an accident and it kind of brought me back.
Uh, I got hit from behind on my bike.
I broke my legs, my pelvis, my hip, my ribs, ripped my rotator cuff,
crushed both hands, broke my back in four places,
my skull in four places, my face, my nose, my teeth
and with a shearing brain hemorrhage.
Uh, yeah, it wasn't a good day in my world.
If I had met you down here ten years ago,
what would the difference have been?
Oh! Yeah, you-you probably... You wouldn't-You wouldn't have met me.
If you would have met me, I would be apologizing right now.
- So, uh, completely different person. - What would you be apologizing for?
Uh, probably for something I had done to you, or... or taken from you.
But, yeah. I would inject drugs 30 to 40 times a day.
- I mean, so... Yeah, I mean... - Wow.
Just a shell of, you know, a person. That was just--
How much was that costing?
Oh, probably a good, uh, 600 bucks a day.
Fentanyl is now sweeping through North America at a horrifying rate.
Since it hit the streets, drug overdose has become the leading cause of death
for those under 50.
You can't find anyone in these alleyways who hasn't lost a loved one.
It's scary how common place it has become.
Have you lost any friends, Michelle,
- with this fentanyl shit? - Yeah?
Oh, my God, my brother, I lost my brother
- I'm so sorry to hear that. - Me too.
How did your brother die, Michelle?
- From fentanyl, yeah. - I'm so sorry.
That's the fentanyl truck there. No, I'm kidding.
Perhaps fentanyl's cruelest trick is the Stockholm Syndrome
it pushes to its victims.
The more it devastates this little community,
the more people seek solace in its arms.
But here in the hardest hit neighborhood,
the very people in the midst of its grip are the ones leading the fight back.
Right now, we're going to go to the Washington Needle Depot.
It's peer-led and we hand out, uh, harm reduction supplies for the community.
Peer-led means that the people and staff that work there, uh,
use drugs themselves and are a part of that community?
Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
It's really important that people from the community
are the ones leading it.
- Hey, guys. - Hello.
Hi, cameras.
So double shift, no one showed up this afternoon,
- so we're going to go hit up the East End. - Perfect.
And we'll... Yeah, we got, uh, one OD this afternoon,
- one this morning. - Oh, man.
Uh, 55 needles found and some... two Narcan kits handed out.
- And it's your first day. - First day, not bad.
- That's amazing. Thank you so much. - All right.
- We'll hit it hard. You're welcome. - Well done.
See you.
And it was this guy's first day?
- Yes. - And he's saved an overdose already.
- Yeah. - Is that pretty common?
Would you have an overdose every day like that?
Well, I mean, we... It depends of where the routes are,
but Downtown Eastside, it's pretty common.
Inside this building, clean injecting equipment
is handed out to locals through a hole in the wall.
The idea is to stop the spread of bloodborne viruses
like hepatitis and HIV.
It's open 24 hours a day and hands out a million syringes a year.
So, Cory, how many needles would you give out in a normal shift?
Oh, wow, um, I've gone through...
One of these boxes has 500, um, rigs in it.
And one day, I went through four boxes of rigs in one shift.
- Two thousand needles? - Yeah.
That was a busy day.
Why is it so important that people round here can get access
to those clean needles?
Well, they'll-they'll use...
They'll use whatever they need to use.
They'll use a dirty rig that they find.
That's how people get Hep C and-and AIDs, right?
They'll share rigs.
They will use toilet water, puddle water,
um, whenever they need to... to use get water, right?
And I guess that water is going straight into their blood stream
and that does not sound great.
Well, can you imagine the diseases in these alleys
where people urinate and faeces.
And, you know, this is known as piss alley.
Smells like piss, right?
I need one of these, uh...
From the back of the building,
the staff run a mobile response unit working in shifts
to reverse street overdoses.
So, for my shift I have my vest on.
I have a... an eight... Point eight Narcan ready to go.
I have my bike, my helmet, and I always have extra Narcan on me.
So in case I come across multiple overdoses.
I'll put that right here right now.
Workers like Jen patrol these alleyways,
administering life-saving medical interventions.
Their secret weapon is naloxone, the fentanyl antidote.
Commonly known by its brand name, Narcan.
Fentanyl is an opiate.
And what is does is that it shuts down your respiratory system.
So, pretend that this-this here,
this is fentanyl coming in your system, right.
So when you shoot someone up with Narcan, it's like a wall goes up,
and so the fentanyl hits the wall and can't keep on going.
The more Narcan you put into the system, the bigger that wall gets.
So, what you're saying is, is that it's actually quite easy
- to reverse an overdose? - Yes, it is.
So then if it's that easy to reverse an overdose,
why do we have so many people dying of overdose?
Because people are using by themselves.
People are really ashamed about their drug use.
They're labelled as a criminal or a junkie or a crack head.
So, they use by themselves in-in dark places.
You know, like, where people can't see or can't find them until it's too late.
If you find someone overdosed, how long have you got?
You've got three minutes, and that depends.
I mean, usually, it starts off that their lips are blue,
and then you-you only got so much time to react.
If you find them and their face is purple, it means you're standing on death's door.
And if you find them and their face is black,
you have like a slim chance of bringing them back.
So, when you do find someone that's OD'ed
and you're able to turn that around and save their life, how does that feel?
Extremely stressful and traumatic!
Um, you know, you remind yourself this is why you do this job.
So, for myself personally in the last two years,
I responded to 31 drug overdoses.
One Friday, we had 103 overdoses.
And then week later, we had 12 people die in the city of Vancouver.
- In one day? - Yeah. In one day.
Cory, how does it feel to work in a place like this
where you're saving lives every day?
Sure, you can.
Um, it means-it means a lot, um,
because I lost, um, my son's father, the love of my life, to a heroin overdose.
It's good, I-I like it.
It feels good to, uh, save a life,
instead of just being part of the problem, right?
So, it's kind of like being part of the solution.
You know, when it comes to addiction, don't be surprised, right? It's a monster.
And, um, you don't know... They...
People don't even know who they are any more.
How's it affected you personally?
Oh. We won't go there. Its affected me tremendously, right?
- Changed your life? - Yup.
- What do you need? - Hi, can I get a tube
and four pieces of tin foil, please?
Yeah, of course.
There is more in the corner.
The City of Vancouver has invested millions
trying to combat the crisis.
And while health responses like this have made some inroads,
fentanyl at times has been an impossible challenge for law makers.
It's become so bad
that the average life expectancy is officially reducing,
and a public health emergency has been declared.
It's caused a deep mistrust from those in the community here
towards those in power.
Try to keep the camera-the camera on this side of the street
- and not-not too much on that side... - Okay.
...until someone tells us to fuck off, we'll walk up.
British Columbia has four times the landmass of the UK,
and yet seven percent of all its 911 calls came from these two blocks.
There's another one over there, Spike, there's three police cars up there.
They are horrendous, you know, people are out here,
they are at the lowest they can possible be,
and the police want to fucking grind them a little further into the ground.
Like, does it make sense? Not to me.
If I'm bleeding to death, I don't want their help.
- You'd rather just bleed out? - I don't want their help.
They're not my friends.
And-and you know what, I'm sure I've played a part
in every single interaction.
I-I have a colorful vocabulary.
And I've... I've been known to have a bit of an attitude,
however, they're professionals, I-I'm not a professional.
I'm not, uh... I'm-I'm not a professional, they are.
There's always cops somewhere. There's three cars right there.
And to be totally honest, I think a lot of it is just like PR
to show they're out there, you know.
'Cause they... They don't give a shit about us.
The cops are literally watching them shoot up,
and they do not arrest them.
They've got a bunch of drugs on them, and they do nothing
- because they want to contain it... - Yeah.
...and keep it away from the city,
keep it away from-from where people are spending money.
And if the cops had rolled up when you were selling me that fentanyl,
do you think they would have arrested us?
No, they'd tell you to fuck off.
They'd grab me, put me against the wall, search me,
take my shit and then tell me to fuck off.
They'd say, "Go explain that to your boss."
In spite of the ill feeling towards them,
the police say their approach is based on pragmatism.
And it's certainly true that there's open public drug use in full view of them.
You guys live on the streets out here?
Yeah, we've been Downtown Eastside for over a year.
Is that hard sleeping rough when it gets to winter here?
It's, uh... Last night was
- very, very, very rough. Last night was very cold. Yeah.
No, we got...
There was rain and the... the blankets were wet.
We had to move.
- Um, or... - We had weird, uh...
We had weird people, like, watching us and...
- And we just had-- - Watching you?
- Yeah. - Yeah. No.
There were weird people, like, that came up and just like,
who were standing at the end of, uh, like, the foot, like, of our "bed",
- and was just staring at us. - Yeah.
- It's kind of creepy.
- It is creepy. - It is. It's very creepy.
This stuff happens here every single day.
Yo, we rappin'...
Iceberg, Cold World...
You'll love it, bro. Yo, you guys can check this rapper out.
Iceberg, Cold World.
Free, free VDs for you for life.
We're in the background, and we love it, yo.
Yo, free VDs, we got...
I don't know what that means.
How did you guys meet?
We met at the library.
- And he... - I ran after her.
- He chased me. - Yeah.
Why did you run after her? Love at first sight?
Yeah. We-were-We were in the library and we were catching eyes.
And then I left,
and then-and then she left, and I saw her walking down the street.
- And he ran. - And I said, "I cannot let her leave."
So, I ran after her.
- And I freak... And I freaked her-- - He came up and was like, "Hey!"
And I was like, "Whoa!"
But you have to admit though, five minutes later, we were making out
- right around the corner there. - Yeah.
- Right there? - No, no, no.
- In that spot? Oh. - No. Not here.
But, we're-we're... We did-We did make out
- like five minutes later. - Yeah, yeah.
Is this person okay over here?
- Well, no, this is-this is... - This is normal.
- This is-This is-- - This is totally normal.
It's what we call-it's what we call...
- "The nod." - ...the, uh, "The nod"
or-or the, uh, the "Hasting's shuffle."
We-We've been there. We-We've-We've smoked heroin.
- I overdosed. - Recently...
And I had-I had somebody Narcan me twice.
- Okay? - Saved your life?
- Yeah. - I almost died.
- His lips were blue. - My lips were blue, I was dead.
- You-you shouldn't do it anyway. - Stop doing drugs all together.
That's why liquor and weed is all we need.
The person who gave it to us
- said it was heroin and it wasn't. - Yeah.
What do you think it was?
- Fentanyl. - Fe-- Definitely.
- We didn't even have that much. - No.
- We each had like a dragon. - Yeah.
- Like we are stop doing it. - And I-And I... I was--
A dragon, as in one--
- You just inhaled once? - You just, uh, smoking it off of a foil.
Smoking it off of a foil.
We each did, like, one, like,
- hoot basically. - Yeah.
And I-And I basically almost died.
- And then we-- - From one inhalation?
- One. - Yeah.
I was freaked out, because they said like he was OD-ing.
What would you have done if I'd died?
It would have crushed me.
I don't even want to think about it.
How does it make you feel looking back on that day, Steven,
thinking you nearly did?
I'll never do it again.
Never again.
It was stupid.
It's not worth it.
- I love you. - I love you.
Homelessness in Vancouver is at its highest since records began
and as hardship rises, so does addiction.
Across the water on a disused construction site,
300 homeless people are forming a temporary community.
The conditions here are brutal,
but they feel they have nowhere else to go.
People are very vulnerable out here.
Families with jobs and kids cannot find housing.
They're sleeping in tents.
It's a total human rights violation, is what it is.
You know, I've seen refugee camps in other countries,
this is exactly what it looks like.
We are Canadian refugees.
This is a Canadian refugee camp.
Do you mind if we have a look at your tent and see where you're staying?
Okay, it's way down here.
This is my tent.
I'm embarrassed because it's usually cleaner than this.
Hmm. This is my buddy.
This is Bruce.
He's been with me since I've been here.
And I've got eagle feathers up there, they're saving me,
they're keeping me safe.
- I golf, so... - Oh, you play golf?
I'm not any Tiger Woods or anything.
- Okay. - But...
Good job.
Whoo! Oh... Fore!
I think it went in my tent.
I think it smashed the side of your tent.
Oh. That's all good.
I got grandchildren.
I haven't seen them for a while,
so I have toys out here just to remind me of them, my grandsons.
And, um...
And you've actually got Narcan here, all around the flower pots.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've got them hanging all over, right? Hmm.
Because it happens all the time, it's-it's an epidemic.
Uh, naloxone, uh, that's the overdose kit.
I've had to Narcan somebody ten times, and one was a husband and wife, actually.
We're taking care of her, and he started overdosing.
And they were laying kind of head-to-head,
- and they were reaching for each other... - Yeah.
...as they were overdosing, like they knew.
For many here, drugs are the only source of comfort.
Overdoses are a regular occurrence.
But from the roadside at the perimeter of the camp,
a small group of activists are helping to reduce the death toll.
In here, we have most of our supplies.
So, we've got a generator, chairs, a table.
Um, we've got Narcan, um, we've got information pamphlets.
We've got bottled water that we like to hand out to people. Yeah.
Everything you need to keep people alive today.
- Yeah. - Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
In a few hours, campers will come to this pop-up tent
to smoke and inject drugs,
including fentanyl under the watchful eyes of the volunteers.
Safe in the knowledge that if they do OD, then someone will intervene.
That one. This corner is broken I think.
Yeah. That's all right.
You know, technical difficulties sometimes.
Rather than giving clean equipment for users to take away,
the volunteers here invite them into the tent
to use their drugs under supervision.
But what is the legal status of the tent?
It's illegal, uh, when the police do come by,
and they might come by today,
we kind of just remind them we are in the midst of an overdose crisis.
It's been declared a health emergency by the province of BC.
And, uh, you know, we are not here with the intention of breaking the law.
Right? We're here with the intention of, you know, providing people
with a safe supervised space in which to use drugs,
and, uh, respond to overdoses should they happen.
It's an odd situation.
Although fentanyl is illegal and the tent is unsanctioned,
the medical supplies are directly provided by the health department.
In times of crisis, sometimes laws become secondary.
In the case of overdose, if fentanyl is the assassin,
many believe societal attitudes to the homeless are a key accomplice.
Isolation is a big problem.
Shame and stigma drive many battling addiction
to use alone.
There's a lot of hate, you know,
people think that junkies are thieves, crackheads.
Um... sure, there's that.
A lot of thieving and stuff going on, but there's real people here, you know.
We get people driving by throwing bricks, throwing bottles. Very hurtful.
A lot of people take it to heart. I try not to, but, hmm, still do.
You know, it does hurt, for sure.
I worked many, many years. I pay my way.
And, um, I collect bottles every day.
I average ten to 15 dollars every day.
If you make $15 today, let's say,
how would you spend it?
Uh, ten of it would probably go to drugs.
- Fentanyl? - Yeah. Mm-hmm. Sad, but true.
- Yeah. - And why do you do it?
What does fentanyl feel like when you take it?
Just a big hug...
It's... Yeah, just a warm place and nothing can hurt you.
Homelessness and addiction has caused real damage here,
but community life is vibrant and humanity abundant.
And in an area of so much intoxication, a sobering thought emerges.
How many of these people would not be here if it weren't for Naloxone?
As night falls, the injecting tent opens for business,
and the first of the campers arrive.
The governments here in Canada support the use of spaces
where people can use drugs under supervision,
and many that begin life as illegal pop-ups like this one
go on to be sanctioned.
Across the world, there are more than 100 such centers.
Over 30 of those are in Canada,
and there's never been an overdose death in any of them.
Ah! Wakey, wakey,
- rise and shine.
This is Breakfast with the lovely Holly C.
And the very charming Jamie Bell.
With you 'til 9:00 from officially the world's best city to live.
- OMG!
That's right, folks, number one and that's official!
Hashtag, amazing.
So, my gorgeous Vancouverites,
it's another gorgeous crispy morning and its Friday!
And on this morning's show it's going to be Fri...
Yay!
The phone lines are open,
and today we're asking what can be done about this pesky opioid crisis.
Plus, it's time for you guys to go head-to-head on another round
of Fish or Sausage.
But first from the news desk,
he's the man with his fingers on the pulse!
But... you take your dope, wherever you got, right?
And put it in your little cook pot, put a little bit of water in it.
Take your syringe.
That's like...
Filter?
Some people use a filter, some don't.
All right. Nothing is going to fit through the syringe
that isn't already in there anyways, so...
- Are you going for a vein? - Yup.
- How does it feel? Uh, great. Ha! That's why I do it.
Drugs are, uh, really what you make of it, man.
Like there's functioning addicts out there and there's non-functioning addicts.
You know, there's people that, uh, like, do drugs
until it runs them into the ground and then they die.
And that's it, you know, they're just another statistic.
Where are you heading to now, Ronnie?
I'm heading down to the mall.
I'm, uh...
Well... gonna go, uh, shoplift
so I can get some money, and, uh, support my habit.
Because that's what you've got to do these days, right?
I fucking feel like shit already
because that was a four dollar and 25 cent shot I just did.
- And, uh... - Is it already worn off?
- It was only a couple of minutes ago. - Yup.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
You know, if I don't go to fucking jail like trying to do it,
then maybe I'll get paid and get some more dope,
but it's not fun, man, I hate it, like I can't stand it, dude.
- I've spent over ten years of my life... - What do you hate about it?
...behind bars, like, for what?
A fucking drug addiction? Something that fucking kills me?
Like, I know what I'm doing.
And I know that it's bad for me,
but, like, you know, we've all got our problems,
and I'm just trying to cope, man.
What's fentanyl done to your life?
My life has been absolutely dragged through the mud.
I've lost friends,
I've lost family members, and I have nothing.
I live on the fucking street.
I freeze almost every night, and I steal to eat and to support myself.
I hate my life. I fucking hate it.
I wake up in the morning wishing I didn't.
That's opioid, drug use, intravenous drug use for you.
I feel terrible. I wouldn't wish this on worst...
I wouldn't wish living like this for the person I hate most in the world.
It's not living, man, it's dying.
Like, you're running yourself into the ground every day
and willingly doing it.
And why? Because you're too scared to be dope sick or get off the drugs.
No, it's because it's, uh...
When you've done something for so long that's all you know, man.
All I know is jail and crime and fucking drugs.
That's all I know.
I'm lost.
It sucks.
I have a five-year old son, man.
Doesn't know who the fuck his dad is.
Some people say that people who use drugs have a choice.
You're-You're not choosing this, are you?
I'm not choosing this, man.
I made... I had one choice, and I made the wrong fucking one,
and this is what I deal with now.
Do you have hope for the future?
Sometimes.
I don't know how far my future is going to go, man.
I could be dead 20 minutes from now, who knows?
Fuck, man.
Thanks.
The chaos that you see around the streets
is only partially due to the drugs people are taking.
It's more to do with what they have to do to get money to keep the economy going.
And whether its sex work or stealing from cars. We could fix that.
How?
The current crisis is because people are using poisoned drugs,
and I'm at the point now where we really need to think seriously
about giving people a safer supply of opiates.
And right in the heart
of one of Downtown Eastside's worst affected streets,
one small medical Centre is looking to do exactly that.
So, we're going to go to Crosstown clinic.
And what happens at Crosstown clinic?
So, um, we provide injectable hydromorphone
and injectable diacetylmorphine, uh, to clients
with severe opioid use disorder.
And what is diacetylmorphine?
It is, um, pharmaceutical made heroine, really.
- Okay, let's go inside. - Come on in.
That's right, it's a medical Centre
that gives heroine to people in addiction.
Door needs to close.
There we go.
So come on in.
So, the clients are here, so the nurses do a pre-assessment for them.
Sorry, ladies.
They enter in through this room,
they come up to this window here,
and they'll give their name, their birth date,
and the nurse will provide them, or hand them their syringe.
Rick, can you just pass me a syringe?
Thank you.
So you can see here that we got... This is the dose.
So it will tell us the client name and then the drug that they're on.
What are you getting there, Dave?
Uh, heroine, diacetylmorphine.
- And how often do you get that? Three times a day.
And this is my lunch time fix.
It's another drug transaction in Downtown Eastside,
but rather than toxic dope sold in a back alley
and injected behind a dumpster,
it's a regulated pharmaceutical given in a medical setting
and supervised by people who care.
I'm, uh, introducing heroin into my body now.
It is now in there and it's itchy-wah-wah.
Makes me itchy all over.
Like, serious itchy. I turn red and...
Uh, get really itchy, but my, uh...
Um, my desire for heroin is met.
It's... Wow, that was good.
Prescribing people heroin as treatment for addiction,
it's a challenging concept, but the evidence is persuasive.
Switzerland opened a similar Centre in 1994,
and since they've seen a huge reduction in overdose deaths,
HIV rates and drug-related crime.
The theory goes that if you take people out of a life of street-drugs,
they have a chance to introduce routine and make incremental life changes.
When people start with us, they're using illicit drugs every day,
and by six months in care with us
that goes down to a handful of days a month.
People reconnect with families. Uh, they go back to school.
Uh, they start working. They start working part-time.
- They start volunteering. They get housing.
But more importantly,
my most recidivist patient had been in and out of jail over 200 times
before he came to treatment here.
And since he's been in treatment here, he's not been back to jail.
That's a huge success.
How many banks have you robbed?
Uh, how many banks have I robbed? Lots. Over 60 banks.
I served a prison term of 22 years, two months and two days.
It costs $27,000 a year to supply heroine for one patient here.
And it's funded by the government.
It's not cheap, but independent research
suggests the service saves the tax payer double that by reducing crime,
policing, health care and ambulance callouts.
And in the midst of a fentanyl crisis, there's a further saving,
one that's harder to quantify.
The cost of human life.
We haven't lost any of our clients to a fentanyl overdose
because coming here prevents all of that.
- Are you still robbing banks? - No.
No, I'm very grateful to say that, uh,
I'm a retired, uh, bank robber.
I no longer need to do that.
Our time in Vancouver was up,
and the little neighborhood of Downtown Eastside disappeared
in the rear-view mirror.
The opioid crisis here in North America is out of control
claiming a life every seven minutes,
and seeing it up close and personal has been heart-breaking.
Heading for home means escaping it, but for how long?
♪ I hurt myself today ♪
♪ To see if I still feel ♪
We always look at the action.
You know, we're so focused on the substance
that we've actually forgotten the value of human life,
and that's just tragic.
But at the same time, these people are beautiful.
I got hopes though, so it's powerful.
♪ I don't remember the rest ♪
Sorry, guys.
If you could back to the day
when you first put that needle in your arm,
would you do it again?
No.
Absolutely not, man.
The day that I put the first needle in my arm, wow.
It took every day of yesterday to bring the man that you see here today.
And-And the man that you see,
I'm-I'm a good man, and I'm-I'm happy with who I am.
I still love this woman.
People don't realize they're just a paycheck away.
If I make 300 bucks tonight, 50 bucks of it, I put away,
I put away, I put away, I put away.
I've been doing that now for four years.
Another year of this...
I'll head out of here with a 150 grand...
and not look back.
You gotta stand strong and keep your chin up and keep going,
'cause if you don't, you end up as a statistic.
A mark in a book, man.
You're just another one of those fucking people who died.