010 - Garth Mullins and the Crackdown

The opioid crisis has killed 13,000 people in Canada in the last 3 years. In 2018, someone died of an overdose every two hours, every day, for 365 days. That’s just shy of 4,600 deaths. 

And the reality is that we’re lagging our feet, at the system level through our healthcare, education and governance institutions, and as a society in the continued stigma and the rather arbitrary criminalization of drug users in this country.

Which brings us to today’s guest, who’s been at ground zero of the drug war in this country, living and working in the downtown eastside of Vancouver...Canada’s hotspot for the heroin overdose epidemic of the mid 1990’s, and the fentanyl crisis of today.

He’s an award winning documentarian, longtime community organizer, writer, activisit and musician. He’s the host and executive producer of Crackdown, a new monthly podcast about drugs, drug policy and the drug war led by drug user activists and supported by research. Each episode of Crackdown tells the story of a community fighting for their lives. It’s also about solutions, justice for those who’ve been lost, and is ultimately about saving lives.