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B.C. parents powerless to help their addicted teens

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Addictions

B.C. parents powerless to help their addicted teens

Todayville

Published

10 months ago

11 minute read

Greg Sword and his now-deceased daughter, Kamilah Sword.

News release from Break The Needle

By Alexandra Keeler

B.C. parents say the province’s safer supply program and legal treatment framework leave them powerless to help their addicted teens

On Aug. 19, 2022, Kamilah Sword took a single hydromorphone pill, believing it to be safe. She overdosed and was found dead by her grandmother the next day. She was 14.

Kamilah believed the drug was safe — despite having bought it illicitly — because she was told it came from a government-run “safer supply” program, according to Kamillah’s best friend Grace Miller and her father.

“I’ll never get to see her get married, never have grandkids, never get to see her graduate,” said Kamilah’s father, Gregory Sword, lowering his chin to keep his voice steady.

“It’s a black hole in the heart that never heals.”

Sword faced significant challenges trying to get his daughter help during the year he was aware she was struggling with addiction. He blames British Columbia’s safer supply program and the province’s legal youth treatment framework for exacerbating his daughter’s challenges and ultimately contributing to her death.

“It’s a B.C. law — you cannot force a minor into rehab without their permission,” said Sword. “You cannot parent your kid between the ages of 12 and 18 without their consent.”

Sword is now pursuing legal action against the B.C. and federal governments and several health agencies, seeking accountability for what he views as systemic failures.

B.C.’s “Safe” supply program

B.C.’s prescribed safer supply program, which was first launched in 2020, is designed to reduce substance users’ reliance on dangerous street drugs. Users are prescribed hydromorphone — an opioid as potent as heroin — as an alternative to using potentially lethal street drugs.

However, participants in the program often sell their hydromorphone, in some cases to teenagers, to get money to buy stronger drugs like fentanyl.

According to Grace Miller, she and Kamilah would obtain hydromorphone — which is commonly referred to as Dilaudid or “dillies” — from a teenage friend who bought them in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The neighbourhood, which is the epicentre of Vancouver’s drug crisis, is a 30-minute SkyTrain ride from the teenagers’ home in Port Coquitlam.

Sword says he initially thought “dillies” referred to Dairy Queen’s Dilly Bars. “My daughter would ask me for $5, [and say], ‘Yeah, we’re going to Dairy Queen for a Dilly Bar.’ I had no idea.”

He says he only learned about hydromorphone after the coroner informed him that Kamilah had three substances in her system: cocaine, MDMA and hydromorphone.

“I had to start talking to people to figure out what [hydromorphone] was and where it was coming from.”

Sword is critical of B.C.’s safer supply program for being presented as safe and for lacking monitoring safeguards. “[Kamilah] knew where [the drugs] were coming from so she felt safe because her dealer would keep on telling her, ‘This is safe supply,’” Sword said.

In February, B.C. changed how it refers to the program from “prescribed safer supply” to “prescribed alternatives.”

Grace says another problem with the program is the quantities of drugs being distributed.

“It would be a big difference if the prescriptions that they were giving out were dosed properly,” she said, noting addicts would typically sell bottles containing 14 pills, with pricing starting at $1 a pill.

‘Safer supply’

Sword estimates his daughter struggled with addiction for about 18 to 24 months before her final, fatal overdose.

After Kamilah overdosed for the first time on Aug. 21, 2021, he tried to get her into treatment. A drug counsellor told him that, because she was over 12, she would need to verbally consent. Kamilah refused treatment.

B.C.’s Infants Act allows individuals aged 12 or older to consent to their own medical treatment if they understand the treatment and its implications. The province’s Mental Health Act requires minors aged 12 to 16 to consent to addiction or mental health treatment.

While parents can request involuntary admission for children under 16, a physician or nurse practitioner must first confirm the presence of a mental disorder that requires treatment. No law specifically addresses substance-use disorders in minors.

When Kamilah was admitted to the hospital on one occasion, she underwent a standard psychiatric evaluation and was quickly discharged — despite Sword’s protests.

Ontario also has a mental health law governing involuntary care. Similar to B.C., they permit involuntary care only where a minor has been diagnosed with a mental disorder.

By contrast, Alberta’s Protection of Children Abusing Drugs Act enables a parent or guardian to obtain a court order to place a child under 18 who is struggling with addiction into a secure facility for up to 15 days for detoxification, stabilization and assessment. Alberta is unique among the provinces and territories in permitting involuntary care of minors for substance-use issues.

Grace, who also became addicted to opioids, says her recovery journey involved several failed attempts.

“I never thought I would have almost died so many times,” said Grace, who is now 16. “I never thought I would even touch drugs in my life.”

Grace’s mother Amanda (a pseudonym) faced similar struggles as Sword in trying to get help for her daughter. Amanda says she was repeatedly told nothing more could be done for Grace, because Grace would not consent to treatment.

“One time, [Grace] overdosed at home, and I had to Narcan her because she was dead in her bed,” Amanda said. “I told the paramedic, ‘Our system is broken.’ And she just said, ‘Yes, I know.’”

Yet Grace, who today has been sober for 10 months, would question whether she even had the capacity to consent to treatment when she was addicted to drugs.

Under B.C.’s Health Care (Consent) and Care Facility (Admission) Act, an adult is only considered to have consented to health care if their consent is voluntary, informed, legitimately obtained and the individual is capable of making a decision about their care.

“Mentally able to give consent?” said Grace. “No, I was never really mentally there.”

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System failure

Today, Sword is one of two plaintiffs leading a class-action lawsuit against several provincial and federal health authorities and organizations, including the B.C. Ministry of Health, Health Canada, Vancouver Coastal Health and Vancouver Island Health.

All four of these agencies declined to comment for this story, citing the ongoing court proceedings.

The lawsuit was filed Aug. 15 and is currently awaiting certification to proceed. It alleges the coroner initially identified safer supply drugs as a cause of Kamilah’s death, but later changed the report to omit this reference due to pressure from the province or for other unknown reasons.

It further alleges B.C. and Ottawa were aware that drugs prescribed under safer supply programs were being diverted as early as March 2021, but failed to monitor or control the drugs’ distribution. It points to a Health Canada report and data showing increased opioid-related problems from safer supply programs.

According to Amanda, Kamilah had wanted to overcome her addiction but B.C.’s system failed her.

“I had multiple conversations with Kamilah, and I know Kamilah wanted to get clean,” she says. “But she felt so stuck, like she couldn’t do it, and she felt guilty and ashamed.”

Grace, who battled addiction for four years, is relieved to be sober.

“I’ve never, ever been happier. I’ve never been healthier. It’s the best thing I’ve done for myself,” she said. “It’s just hard when you don’t have your best friend to do it with.”


This article was produced through the Breaking Needles Fellowship Program, which provided a grant to Canadian Affairs, a digital media outlet, to fund journalism exploring addiction and crime in Canada. Articles produced through the Fellowship are co-published by Break The Needle and Canadian Affairs.

Break The Needle. Our content is always free – but if you want to help us commission more high-quality journalism, consider getting a voluntary paid subscription.

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Related Topics:#BreakTheNeedleAlexandraKeelerBCOverdoseDeathsBCSaferSupplyProgramGregSwordKamilahSword
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Addictions

Why B.C.’s new witnessed dosing guidelines are built to fail

Published on July 14, 2025

By

Todayville
Photo by Acceptable at English Wikipedia, ‘Two 1 mg pills of Hydromorphone, prescribed to me after surgery.’ [Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons]

By Alexandra Keeler

B.C. released new witnessed dosing guidelines for safer supply opioids. Experts say they are vague, loose and toothless

This February, B.C pledged to reintroduce witnessed dosing to its controversial safer supply program.

Safer supply programs provide prescription opioids to people who use drugs. Witnessed dosing requires patients to consume those prescribed opioids under the supervision of a health-care professional, rather than taking their drugs offsite.

The province said it was reintroducing witnessed dosing to “prevent the diversion of prescribed opioids and hold bad actors accountable.”

But experts are saying the government’s interim guidelines, released April 29, are fundamentally flawed.

“These guidelines — just as any guidelines for safer supply — do not align with addiction medicine best practices, period,” said Dr. Leonara Regenstreif, a primary care physician specializing in substance use disorders. Regenstreif is a founding member of Addiction Medicine Canada, an advocacy group that represents 23 addiction specialists.

Addiction physician Dr. Michael Lester, who is also a founding member of the group, goes further.

“Tweaking a treatment protocol that should not have been implemented in the first place without prior adequate study is not much of an advancement,” he said.

Witnessed dosing

Initially, B.C.’s safer supply program was generally administered through witnessed dosing. But in 2020, to facilitate access amidst pandemic restrictions, the province moved to “take-home dosing,” allowing patients to take their prescription opioids offsite.

After pandemic restrictions were lifted, the province did not initially return to witnessed dosing. Rather, it did so only recently, after a bombshell government report alleged more than 60 B.C. pharmacies were boosting sales by encouraging patients to fill unnecessary opioid prescriptions. This incentivized patients to sell their medications on the black market.

B.C.’s interim guidelines, developed by the BC Centre on Substance Use at the government’s request, now require all new safer supply patients to begin with witnessed dosing.

But for existing patients, the guidelines say prescribers have discretion to determine whether to require witnessed dosing. The guidelines define an existing patient as someone who was dispensed prescription opioids within the past 30 days.

The guidelines say exemptions to witnessed dosing are permitted under “extraordinary circumstances,” where witnessed dosing could destabilize the patient or where a prescriber uses “best clinical judgment” and determines diversion risk is “very low.”

 for free to get BTN’s latest news and analysis – or donate to our investigative journalism fund.

Holes

Clinicians say the guidelines are deliberately vague.

Regenstreif described them as “wordy, deliberately confusing.” They enable prescribers to carry on as before, she says.

Lester agrees. Prescribers would be in compliance with these guidelines even if “none of their patients are transferred to witnessed dosing,” he said.

In his view, the guidelines will fail to meet their goal of curbing diversion.

And without witnessed dosing, diversion is nearly impossible to detect. “A patient can take one dose a day and sell seven — and this would be impossible to detect through urine testing,” Lester said.

He also says the guidelines do not remove the incentive for patients to sell their drugs to others. He cites estimates from Addiction Medicine Canada that clients can earn up to $20,000 annually by selling part of their prescribed supply.

“[Prescribed safer supply] can function as a form of basic income — except that the community is being flooded with addictive and dangerous opioids,” Lester said.

Regenstreif warns that patients who had been diverting may now receive unnecessarily high doses. “Now you’re going to give people a high dose of opioids who don’t take opioids,” she said.

She also says the guidelines leave out important details on adjusting doses for patients who do shift from take-home to witnessed dosing.

“If a doctor followed [the guidelines] to the word, and the patient followed it to the word, the patient would go into withdrawal,” she said.

The guidelines assume patients will swallow their pills under supervision, but many crush and inject them instead, Regenstreif says. Because swallowing is less potent, a higher dose may be needed.

“None of that is accounted for in this document,” she said.

Survival strategy

Some harm reduction advocates oppose a return to witnessed dosing, saying it will deter people from accessing a regulated drug supply.

Some also view diversion as a life-saving practice.

Diversion is “a harm reduction practice rooted in mutual aid,” says a 2022 document developed by the National Safer Supply Community of Practice, a group of clinicians and harm reduction advocates.

The group supports take-home dosing as part of a broader strategy to improve access to safer supply medications. In their document, they say barriers to accessing safer supply programs necessitate diversion among people who use drugs — and that the benefits of diversion outweigh the risks.

However, the risks — and harms — of diversion are mounting.

People can quickly develop a tolerance to “safer” opioids and then transition to more dangerous substances. Some B.C. teenagers have said the prescription opioid Dilaudid was a stepping stone to them using fentanyl. In some cases, diversion of these drugs has led to fatal overdoses.

More recently, a Nanaimo man was sentenced to prison for running a highly organized drug operation that trafficked diverted safer supply opioids. He exchanged fentanyl and other illicit drugs for prescription pills obtained from participants in B.C.’s safer supply program.

Recovery

Lester, of Addiction Medicine Canada, believes clinical discretion has gone too far. He says take-home dosing should be eliminated.

“Best practices in addiction medicine assume physicians prescribing is based on sound and thorough research, and ensuring that their prescribing does not cause harm to the broader community, as well as the patient,” he said.

“[Safer supply] for opioids fails in both these regards.”

He also says safer supply should only be offered as a short-term bridge to patients being started on proven treatments like buprenorphine or methadone, which help reduce drug cravings and manage withdrawal symptoms.

B.C.’s witnessed dosing guidelines say prescribers can discuss such treatment options with patients. However, the guidelines remain neutral on whether safer supply is intended as a transitional step toward longer-term treatment.

Regenstreif says this neutrality undermines care.

“[M]ost patients I’ve seen with opioid use disorder don’t want to have [this disorder],” she said. “They would rather be able to set goals and do other things.”

Oversight gaps

Currently, about 3,900 people in B.C. participate in the safer supply program — down from 5,200 in March 2023.

The B.C. government has not provided data on how many have been transitioned to witnessed dosing. Investigative journalist Rob Shaw recently reported that these data do not exist.

“The government … confirmed recently they don’t have any mechanism to track which ‘safe supply’ participants are witnessed and which [are] not,” said Elenore Sturko, a Conservative MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale, who has been a vocal critic of safer supply.

“Without a public report and accountability there can be no confidence.”

The BC Centre on Substance Use, which developed the interim guidelines, says it does not oversee policy decisions or data tracking. It referred Canadian Affairs’ questions to B.C.’s Ministry of Health, which has yet to clarify whether it will track and publish transition data. The ministry did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.

B.C. has also not indicated when or whether it will release final guidelines.

Regenstreif says the flawed guidelines mean many people may be misinformed, discouraged or unsupported when trying to reduce their drug use and recover.

“We’re not listening to people with lived experience of recovery,” she said.


This article was produced through the Breaking Needles Fellowship Program, which provided a grant to Canadian Affairs, a digital media outlet, to fund journalism exploring addiction and crime in Canada. Articles produced through the Fellowship are co-published by Break The Needle and Canadian Affairs.


Subscribe to Break The Needle

Launched a year ago
Break The Needle provides news and analysis on addiction and crime in Canada.

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Addictions

More young men want to restrict pornography: survey

Published on July 11, 2025

By

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Andreas Wailzer

Nearly 64% of American men now believe online pornography should be more difficult to access, with even higher numbers of women saying the same thing.

A new survey has shown that an increasing number of young men want more restrictions on online pornography.

According to a survey by the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life, nearly 7 in 10 (69 percent) of Americans support the idea of making online pornography less accessible. In 2013, 65 percent expressed support for policies restricting internet pornography.

The most substantial increase in the support for restrictive measures on pornography could be observed in young men (age 18-24). In 2013, about half of young men favored restrictions, while 40 percent actively opposed such policies. In 2025, 64 percent of men believe accessing online pornography should be made more difficult.

The largest support for restriction on internet pornography overall could be measured among older men (65+), where 73 percent favored restrictions. An even larger percentage of women in each age group supported making online pornography less accessible. Seventy-two percent of young women (age 18-24) favored restriction, while 87 percent of women 55 years or older expressed support for less accessibility of internet pornography.

Viewing pornography is highly addictive and can lead to serious health problems. Studies have shown that children often have their first encounter with pornography at around 12 years old, with boys having a lower average age of about 10-11, and some encountering online pornography as young as 8. Studies have also shown that viewing pornography regularly rewires humans brains and that children, adolescents, and younger men are especially at risk for becoming addicted to online pornography.

According to Gary Wilson’s landmark book on the matter, “Your Brain on Porn,” pornography addiction frequently leads to problems like destruction of genuine intimate relationships, difficulty forming and maintaining real bonds in relationship, depression, social anxiety, as well as reduction of gray matter, leading to desensitization and diminished pleasure from everyday activities among many others.

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