How the RCMP Helped Cause Nanaimo's Overdose Epidemic

Heroin's not exactly an easy substance to acquire.

Well, I mean - that depends on how much you're buying. It's pretty difficult to obtain massive quantities (well, before the advent of the dark web, but I'll get into that some other time) regardless of whether you're the R.C.M.P. or an importer. Both cops and kingpins are looking to find the most heroin with the least risk- kingpins to distribute it, and avoid the R.C.M.P. who want them jailed and their drugs left to wither in 'evidence lockers.'

RCMP plus a Red Scorpion gang member. Who called Shotgun?

Not everybody or their grandpa are willing to jump up and take over as an importer once somebody high up the ladder gets busted. This means the underworld will be missing a crucial figure for at least a few days and, naturally, heroin supplies will dwindle or be improperly distributed. The importer's lackeys are going to have to pick up their slack; their closest kin will have to fill their shoes - maybe permanently. The drug game is a hierarchy (hence the term kingpins, perhaps? Gosh, I'm clever) and without someone holding the throne, the narco-kingdom falls into chaos. Chaos means more pressure put onto the folks left in charge, and more stress.

So as supply and demand dictates, the scales will become unbalanced. The lackeys, now having to compensate for the lack of an importer (or their importer, now having to make up for one of their idiot lackeys getting busted with a half-kilo of heroin,) are pissed off. Drug users are pissed off because either prices will rise, or quality will decrease as the supply chain cuts their product to ensure the supply is met. The demand isn't going anywhere, but the supply's been dented. Users and dealers alike will become desperate and seek alternatives. If a kingpin's underdogs take over their thrones, things will change - and this was highly evident after huge fucking bust in 2012 in which three quarters of a kilogram of heroin was seized by the R.C.M.P.

Enter the era of fentanyl.

Mmm. Sweet, dank, fentanyl.

That's right - fentanyl was hardly ever detected illicitly in Nanaimo before 2013, but after this massive heroin bust, fentanyl started leaking into the streets. Fentanyl's appealing for a lot of reasons - it's a hell of a lot cheaper, a hell of a lot stronger and, by technicality, a hell of a lot less illegal. Once people grew desperate enough for something to satisfy their need for strong heroin, they came upon fentanyl - and it caught on fast. Fentanyl accounted for 5% of reported overdoses in 2012 before the bust, bumped up to 25% by 2014. Paul Hasselback, a central Vancouver Island health officer, said that "we in Nanaimo are carrying an oddly disproportionate number of those [fentanyl related] deaths." That's for sure - 18 people on record died in 2013 from fentanyl in Nanaimo (keep in mind these stats are vastly undervalued - I know almost 18 people firsthand who died in 2013.) 27 died in Vancouver. Nanaimo has 84,000 people. Vancouver has over 600,000.

Now think - if the same bust that occured here in Nanaimo in 2012 occured in Vancouver, it wouldn't shake the foundation of the drug trade at all. There are bigger busts that have happened in Vancouver of course, but if the significance of Nanaimo's drug seizures are as disproportionate as the amount of overdoses per capita, then even busting a single figurehead in town could result in a huge increase of fentanyl. That certainly seems to have been the case - when I returned home from Halifax, fentanyl was a regular thing. It wasn't just an 'unknown substance in heroin that kills people" (a lot of people thought they were dying of allergic reactions when fentanyl first came about.) Far from it - fentanyl was common knowledge, and some dealers even offer a choice between fentanyl and heroin. h.Most people choose fentanyl - if it's strong enough.

There were a couple high-end dealers busted in December. That story didn't make the papers, but it did make a huge fucking difference in Nanaimo's drug culture. Immediately after their arrests, fentanyl overdoses began popping up like they had in 2013. Again, only a small percentage of deaths make the statistics, but it's become so common to hear among users that "Jim dropped last night," or "Mark overdosed," or "we had to revive Chris" that nobody even bats an eye anymore when we hear about another dead user. I've become desensitized to the loss of close friends because of the ridiculous amount who have died over the last few years. People are, literally, dropping like flies.

The bright side to this carnage, while not vibrant, is still there - the increase in overdoses has led Nanaimo and other cities in B.C. to offer overdose prevention courses and offer naloxone - a potent substance that reverses the effects of opiates - in an effort to curb overdoses. After a long federal battle, the  BC government has allowed naloxone to be available over the counter. That's a fucking awesome step towards beating stigma and helping users stay safe, and will certainly prevent overdoses, but one really has to wonder if it was necessary for so many people to die before this medicine became available without a prescription.

So, there we have it - we now have the supplies available to prevent overdoses that were unnecessary in the first place. If the local narcotic suppliers hadn't been forced to substitute heroin for another substance that carried less risk to import, most of these fentanyl overdoses simply wouldn't have happened. People would have kept shipping their heroin in, selling it to their junkies, and the trade - however illegal and taboo - would have flowed smoothly. Police intervention has created a massive ripple effect and its effects are still being felt to this day. Sure, the RCMP got almost a kilo of heroin off the streets a few years back - but is the ensuing death of hundreds of citizens a worthy price?

Thanks, guys!