Sure.
I don't know if anyone is wilfully trying to misinterpret or misrepresent anything. I will note that I'm the principal investigator of a national evaluation of safer supply pilot programs in Canada, which is funded by Health Canada and run by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. I can speak a little bit about that.
One of the issues that I find troubling is that there is a conflation of quite a number of different approaches into this idea or term of “safer supply”. Sometimes when people are talking about safer supply, they're talking about regulating the currently unregulated drug market, which I would be happy to talk about. Sometimes they're talking about prescribed clinical guidelines, which are in place in British Columbia. Sometimes they're talking about pilot programs, like the ones that our national evaluation is studying, which are integrated into existing harm reduction and social care programs. All of these programs are very different.
In these programs generally, safer supply is a component of a broader comprehensive approach to meeting the needs of clients, members or patients. All of these programs refer to these people differently. I would echo Dr. Humphreys that the evidence is still emerging. These are programs that have been in place for only two to three years.
I really want to make the point here that the prescribed safer supply guidelines in B.C. are quite different. These are just the opportunity for clinicians to provide a particular type of medications for a particular condition among their patients, which is different from these wraparound, integrated pilot programs.