Is Safe Supply a Viable Option to the Overdose Crisis? | Guy Felicella | TEDxBearCreekPark

Canada’s contaminated street drugs are forcing people to gamble with their lives. Every day, eleven Canadians lose that gamble: they overdose and die.  Guy Felicella played that deadly game of Russian Roulette for twenty years while struggling with a heroin addiction in the Vancouver Downtown Eastside. He argues that, with a radical shift in thinking, we can change the narrative of Canada’s overdose epidemic and it can also change the approach of other jurisdictions around the world. “Parents must educate children about drugs earlier,” he says, “and policymakers must urgently scale up programs that offer drug users a safer supply.” Guy Felicella advocates for harm reduction on behalf of British Columbia’s Overdose Emergency Response Centre, Vancouver Coastal Health’s Regional Addiction Team and the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx