pure fentanyl. It is fire. Like, it is so dangerous. It's like the most horrid, wretched, pure terror you can imagine. It feels like something's slowly pulling your life force out of you. And then you get tunnel vision. It starts getting smaller and smaller, and around this tunnel, it's just darkness, right? And it gets smaller and smaller and smaller, closes, and you're dead. That's it. You think you're dead? No, you're dead. You're a flat line, no heartbeat, dead. [Music] Vancouver, a city renowned for its natural beauty, a quote from the tourist board. But beneath the mountain vistas, the city has a tragic underbelly. Despite being known as one of the world's top three cities in which to live, a tiny neighborhood known as downtown eastside is experiencing a huge drug problem. Thousands of lives have been lost, and in nearly nine out of ten autopsies, a deadly new illicit drug has been present. The painkiller fentanyl is now the number one killer drug in the US. You can die just

by touching it fentanyl. A fatal dose of fentanyl, the potent opioid that's supposed to tranquilize elephants. A synthetic painkiller a hundred times more powerful than morphine. Just two milligrams of the pure drug, which is about four grains of salt, is enough to kill the average adult. Prince died from a lethal amount of the painkiller. Ten-year-old boy in Florida has become one of the overall more than 63,000 people died of monster drug kills far more people than gun violence. If you don't know what fentanyl is, it is basically the new heroin, but much, much [Music] stronger. Hey, what's up, bro? Not a whole lot. I'm on a documentary right now, brother. I'm on a documentary here talking about opioid use and [__] yeah, I'll come talk to you in a minute. Hey, wait down here. I gotta talk to you, bro. Just give me a minute. Yeah, there's no another fellow, bro, on the hood, you know. Um, friend of yours? Yeah, a good friend of

mine no, that doesn't matter. Ask no questions, I'll tell no lies. Here in downtown East Side, addiction is nothing new. Heroin has flowed through Vancouver's ports to this deprived part of town since the 1970s, but market forces have seen that heroin supply replaced. Fentanyl is stronger, cheaper, and much less bulky to import. Where are we going, Kevin? Where would you like to go? Do you want to see what it's really like? Sure, let's go. Let's go. This is East Hastings Street. Now, this is where the ghetto starts, basically. What you're looking at is the mecca of drug addiction. We have been an active narcotics hub for ever since I can remember. Maybe that's why I came here. I know, yeah, that is probably why I came here. Illicit fentanyl hasn't flooded the street drug supply outside North America yet. Do you think this could become a global problem? And if it does, what should people expect? Death. Lots of [ __ ] death. People are gonna die, and it's not gonna

be pretty. It is wildfire. People will try it, love it, and they'll never quit. [Music] These streets were crowded. You're talking about 1500, 2000 people died just in this block. Mama put my guns to the ground. Our government knows what's killing them now. I've seen our government address an epidemic before. Soros, they spent multiple, multiple millions of dollars to keep us safe from czars. Any idea how many people died from tsars? I know 14 people died from stars. We lost 14 people last [__] week, right? This is a huge problem. The United States lost 72,000 people at overdose death last year. Canada lost 8,000. All right, these are large numbers of people dying of a preventable death, and it will not be any different in Australia, the United Kingdom, anywhere in the Western world. It's just, it's inevitable. It is. I mean, this stuff will kill you. If I wanted to buy fentanyl right now, how easy would that be?

well, it would pretty much be simple for you to get fentanyl and be impossible for you to get heroin because that's what it's all fentanyl now. Even if there is heroin, it's got feminine all in it. How far drinking meal from a drug deal though feet [Music] a lot a lot yeah. What's your name buddy sylvester and what are you doing hanging out on the street corner is it western uh south south fentanyl you know trying to get by. I live on the streets so I got to make a living somehow. I don't want to rob stores or nothing. I've got about 10 years in the pen this way here. I stay out and how's business are you selling a lot booming man like you can never have enough. So how many people are buying fentanyl from you each day 100 150 every day every day is the dealing here quite organized is there like a bit of a kind of chain of command here yeah different gangs run different alleys. I'm

on a 12-hour shift. How do you get that job? Because I don't think they're emphasizing that in the newspaper, right? No, no, through connections, mostly coming out of jail. What's fentanyl done to the community around here? Destroyed it. I lost like 40 people that I know, wells close to me, in the last three years. People never did drugs in their life, picked it up once, dead from fencing, from fentanyl. Is it possible any of them got that offensive from you, Baltimore? That bother you to an extent, but they're going to get this from somebody, right? I mean, I guess apart from anything else, it's not great business practice to be killing your customers, right? No, I don't think anybody wanted anybody to die, but the thing is heroin, it used to come in, it's heroin, this fentanyl, we're making it ourselves. You go online on the dark web, you order an ounce of fentanyl from China, cost you 350 bucks, pay an extra 50 bucks, the next day is delivered right to your door.

you take that four hundred dollars with a fentanyl, yeah, and you make a thousand grams of down, yeah, and you're getting anywhere between 100, 120 per gram. So do the math like Jesus diamonds, isn't it? Yeah, like gold. You're taking 400, and you're making 100 grand. But while it's lucrative, illicit street fentanyl is often being cooked by amateur gangsters in their basements. They're making the recipe up as they go along, and the final product is synthetic and wildly inconsistent. Customers here told us that what they buy on the street can be any color of the rainbow. That's what like right now everybody wants the dark green. They come up and ask you, you got the dark green, you don't got it, they shop around. Why is they working? Because that's the highest fentanyl, but that's also the [ __ ] that's killing people, right? Yup, you're playing Russian roulette, and people are comfortable to take that risk. As soon as they know that that stops dropping people, they're running to you.

who got that green stuff because they think they can. They're the ones that can take half of it or a quarter of it, or the people are dying from it. Then it must be good. Is that the logic? That's the logic. Last night, this girl just came over to detox, and I knew she just got back. She's all healthy and everything. She sees me, Oh, Sylvester, come running up, give me a point. I see you just got out, didn't you? I just got out two hours ago. I said, What do you want a point for? Oh, I'm just going to use a little bit of it and have some for tomorrow. I said, Don't use it at all because you know your tolerances. No, no, I won't. Ten minutes later, the ambulance in the alley, they were working on her. I don't know if she lived or died. I don't know. Ambulance come, Please come. I leave. So how much do you sell it for, and what do people get from it? Ten dollars for a flap. Can I see?

that's a 10 flap of fentanyl, and that's dark green, dark green. That's a [ __ ]. That's dropping people. Do you know what purity that is? 15 female, 3 heroin. The rest is baby laxative, sugars. Is it possible that I die if I took that? Yep. All depends how high your immune system, you know, your tolerance. I mean, I've never taken pencil before. If you took that, you'd die. 100. 100. And if I bought the same quantity of heroin with you, would I die? No, definitely not. Definitely not. Would you sell it to me? Do you want to buy it? If I want to buy it, like if I give you 10 bucks for that now, you'll sell me that? Yup. It's your life, bro. You got to make your own choices, right? And I got to eat. So just like that, man, the candied way in which Sylvester discusses his day job is conflicting. It's easy to judge him, but the reality is that fentanyl has become normalized in downtown east side.

and for the homeless community who live here in desperate hardship, it's one of the very few tradable commodities. [Music] Vancouver is a very rich city, surrounded by, you know, very rich real estate, and unlike most Canadian cities, Vancouver's decided to ghettoize poverty. As the city gentrifies, people get squished and squished. It used to be 15 square blocks; now it's down to six or seven square blocks of people, and most of them are in search of some sort of drug from day to day. So just a block over that way, I just purchased this. Could that be fentanyl? I think it could be. I mean, it comes in all different shapes and sizes. Where do you think that ambulance is going to that we can hear behind us? Probably an overdose. Yeah, it's uh, yeah. This, I mean, it's surprising. It's the first one we've heard because there's multiple overdose calls in this little community per day, and sometimes it's just been horrific. Like, it's just been just wall-to-wall

ambulances and fire trucks and people lying on the street, and it can look like a war zone. People are being slaughtered down here at numbers that are just offensive, and nobody gives us Iraq and Afghanistan combined the system. No, you're in it right now. Like, you think Afghanistan's about this is unregulated. This right here was my last ten dollars and my only ten dollars that I sold a crowbar and an angle grinder for. I got a coffee and some dough. Yeah, usually you don't eat, and you live, breathe, and work for this. How can you know really what's inside that? So, I guess it's fentanyl. He's also got the powder version there. Oh, like you never know what you're gonna get. It's a surprise all the time. So, these are both fentanyl, but it almost looks like a different drug. And it does. You never know. Like, it always looks different. It's just one big [ __ ] around, really is. Sorry for the language, but it's um, you know, food, clothes, shower.

drugs. It's constantly [Music]. Take a walk on the wild side, shall we? Why'd you call it the wild side, Spike? There seems to be an idea here that it might be dangerous down here, or it might be, uh, yeah, mainstream society is a little bit intimidated by it or afraid of it. I'm, and yeah, so I said it in jest because it's not the wild side at all. It's just a neighborhood of people that are going through a lot of pain and dealing with a lot of trauma. And what kind of pain do people typically go through? Well, high poverty area. There's all kinds of people. People survive all kinds of trauma, from early childhood abuse to relationship pain to, you know, just, yeah, just people have gone through a lot down here. Do you think addiction is a disease? And there's an illness, definitely. You know what starts out as an original choice to use substances to self-medicate from the pain turns into a lifetime of suffering, and I

became dependent on using heroin and fentanyl because reality was painful. Opioids like heroin and fentanyl belonged to the same pharmaceutical family as morphine, and like morphine, they were intended for pain relief. Everyone in this self-medicating community has a backstory, and pain, both physical and mental, is all around. Is this person okay? Well, we'll check right now. I'm sure they're probably breathing, but hey, how are you? I'm fine. Cool. We're filming the wall, but we won't. Okay, cool. Sorry to enter. Sorry to. It's already coming into your space, ma'am. I had an ugly childhood, and so I dabbled. Um, yeah, I was running away from things, from an awful lot of pain when I was a kid, and I used narcotics. I cleaned up in 1997. I cleaned up to raise my child. I was a his mother. Killed her. He killed himself, and I raised my. I was a single dad. I raised my child, my son, and because I owed him a

life and I have an amazing son. He, uh, he turned out exceptionally well. I did. I'm really proud of the job that I did. And then I had an accident, and it kind of brought me back. Um, I got hit from behind on my bike. I broke my legs, my pelvis, my hip, my ribs, ripped my rotator cuff, crushed both hands, broke my back in four places, my skull in four places, my face, my nose, my teeth, with a shearing brain hemorrhage. Uh, yeah, it wasn't a good day in my world. I'd have met you down here 10 years ago. What would the difference have been? No, yeah, you'd probably, you wouldn't, you wouldn't have met me. If you would have met me, I'd be apologizing right now. So, uh, completely different. What would you be apologizing for? Oh, probably for something that I've done to you or, or taken from you. But yeah, I inject drugs 30 to 40 times a day. I mean, so yeah, I mean just, uh, the shell of the, you know, a

person that was just how much does that costing oh probably a good uh 600 bucks a day fence noise now sweeping through north america at a horrifying rate since it hit the streets drug overdose has become the leading cause of death for those under 50. you can't find anyone in these alleyways who hasn't lost a loved one it's scary how commonplace it's become have you lost any friends michelle who's this fentanyl [ __ ] oh my god my brother i love him i'm so sorry to hear that thank you how did your brother die michelle yeah so sorry that's the fentanyl truck there perhaps fentanyl's cruelest trick is the stockholm syndrome it pushes to its victims the more it devastates this little community the more people seek solace in his arms but here in the hardest hit neighborhood the very people in the midst of its grip are the ones leading the fight back right now we're going to go to the washington needle depot it's pure lead

and we hand out harm reduction supplies for the community. Peer-led means that the people, the staff that work there, use drugs themselves and are part of that community. Yep, absolutely. Yeah, it's really important that people from the community are the ones leading it. Hey guys, hello, hi cameras. So double shift, no one showed up for this afternoon, so we're gonna go hit up the east end. Perfect, and we'll, yeah, we got one OD this afternoon, went this morning, 55 needles found, and some two Narcan kits. Give it up, that's your first day, everything. First day's not bad, that's amazing. All right, thank you so much, we'll hit it hard. You're welcome, well done. Yeah, see ya. And it was this guy's first day. Yes, and he saved an overdose already. Yeah, is that pretty common? Would you have an overdose every day like that? Well, I mean, we, it depends on where the routes are, but downtown east side is pretty common. [Music] Inside this building, clean injecting equipment is handed to locals through a

hole in the wall. The idea is to stop the spread of blood-borne viruses like hepatitis and HIV. It's open 24 hours a day and hands out a million syringes a year. So, Corey, how many needles would you give out in a normal shift? Oh wow, um, I've gone through one of these boxes, have 500 rigs in it, and one day I went through four boxes of rigs in one shift. Yeah, that was a busy day. Why is it so important that people around here can get access to those clean needles? Well, they'll use whatever they need to use. They'll use a dirty rig that they find, though. That's how people get hepatitis, and they integrate those shared rigs. They will use toilet water and puddle water whenever they need to to get water, right? And I guess that water is going straight into their bloodstream, and that does not sound great. Well, can you imagine the diseases in these alleys where people urinate in feces, and you know this is known as piss.

alley. It smells like piss right from the back of the building. The staff run a mobile response unit working in shifts to reverse street overdoses. So, for my shift, I have my vest on, I have an 8.8 narcan ready to go, I have my bike, my helmet, and I always have extra narcan on me. So, in case I come across multiple overdoses, I'll put that right here right now. Workers like Jen patrol these alleyways administering life-saving medical interventions. Their secret weapon is naloxone, the fentanyl antidote commonly known by its brand name narcan. Fentanyl is an opiate, and what it does is it shuts down your respiratory system. So, pretend like this, this here, this is the fentanyl coming in your system, right? So, when you shoot some up a narcan, it's like a wall goes up, and so the fentanyl hits the wall, it can't keep on going. The more narcan you put to the system, the bigger that wall gets. So, what you're saying is, is it's

actually quite easy to reverse an overdose. Yes, it is. So then, if it's that easy to reverse an overdose, why do we have so many people dying of overdose? Because people are using by themselves. People are really ashamed about their drug use. They're labeled as a criminal or a junkie or a crackhead, so they use by themselves in dark places, you know, like where people can't see or can't find them until it's too late. Do you find someone overdosing? How long have you got? You got three minutes. And that depends. I mean, usually it starts off that your lips are blue, and then you, you, you only got so much time to react. If you find that their face is purple, it means you're saying a dust door. And if you find their face is black, you have like a slim chance of breaking bad. So when you do find someone that's OD'd and you're able to turn that around, save their life, how does that feel? Extremely stressful and traumatic. Um, you know, you remind yourself this is why

you do this job so for myself personally in the last two years. I responded to 31 drug overdoses. One Friday, we had 103 overdoses, and then a week later, we had 12 people die in the city of Vancouver on one day. And one day [Music] Corey, how does it feel to work in a place like this where you're saving lives every day? Sure, you can um it means it means a lot um because I lost my son's father loving my life to a heroin overdose. It's good. I like it. It feels good to uh save a life instead of being just part of the problem. So, it's kind of being part of the solution, you know, when it comes to addiction. Don't be a surprise, right? It's a monster, and um you don't know. They people don't even know who they are anymore. How's it affected you personally? We won't go there. It's affected me tremendously, right? Changed your life. What do you do? I think the tube and four

pieces of tin foil, please. Yes, of course. The city of Vancouver has invested millions trying to combat the crisis, and while health responses like this have made some inroads, fentanyl has at times been an impossible challenge for lawmakers. It's become so bad the average life expectancy is officially reducing, and a public health emergency has been declared. It's caused a deep mistrust from those in the community here towards those in power. Try to keep the character, the camera on this side of the street, not too much on that side, and then tell somebody he tells us to [__] off. We'll walk up British Columbia has four times the landmass of the UK, and yet seven percent of all its 9-1-1 calls came from these two blocks. There's another one over there, spike. There's three police cars up there. They are horrendous. They, you know, if people are out here, they're at the lowest they could possibly be, and the police want to [__] grind them a

little further into the ground like does it make sense not to me if I'm bleeding to death. I didn't want their help, the public's bleed out. I don't want their help, they're not my friends. And you know what, I'm sure I've played a part in every single interaction. I'm not, yeah, I have a colorful vocabulary and I've been known to have a bit of an attitude. However, they're professionals, right? I'm not a professional, I'm not. I'm not a professional. There's always cops somewhere, there's three cars right there. And to be totally honest, I think a lot of it is just like PR to show that they're out there, you know, 'cause they don't give a [ __ ] about us. The cops are literally watching them shoot up and they do not arrest them. They've got a bunch of drugs on them, they do not. Because they want to contain it, yeah, and keep it away from the city, keep it away from where people are.

spending money, and if the cops had rolled up when you were selling me that fentanyl, do you think they'd have arrested us? No, they tell you to [__] off, say grab me, put me against the wall, search me, take my [__], and tell me to [__] off. They say, Go explain that to your boss. In spite of the ill feeling towards them, the police say their approach is based on pragmatism, and it's certainly true that there's open public drug use in full view of them. You guys live on the streets out here? Yeah, we've been in downtown east side for over a year. Is that hard sleeping rough out when it gets to winter here? Last night was very, very, very rough. Yeah, no, we got there was rain, and uh, the blankets were wet. We had to move, um, we had weird, uh, we had weird people like watching us, and we're just watching it. Yeah, yeah, no, there was weird people like that came up and just

like we're standing at the end of, uh, like the foot of, like our bed, and he was just staring at us. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of creepy. It is crazy. It is. It's very creepy. This stuff happens here every single day. I don't know what that means. How did you guys meet? You met at the library, and he, I ran after her. He chose me. Yeah. Why did you run after her? Love at first sight? Yeah, we were, we were, we were, we were in, we were in the library, and we were catching eyes, and then I left, and then, and then she left, and I saw her walking down the street, and he wrapped, I said, I cannot let her leave, so I ran after her, and I freaked. Hey, he's like, hey, whoa. But you have to admit, though, five minutes later, we were making out right around the corner, right? Is this person okay over here? Well, no, this, this is, this is, this is normal. This is, this is, this is totally normal. It's what we call, it's what we call the

uh the nod or the uh the Hastings shuffle. We've been there. We've smoked heroin. I overdosed recently, and I had somebody nark on me twice. Okay, saved your life. Yeah, I almost died. Lips were blue. My lips were blue. I was dead. Just you. You shouldn't do this. Stop doing drugs altogether. That's why liquor and weed is all the person who gave it to us said it was heroin, and it wasn't. What do you think it was? Fentanyl. It was definitely. We didn't even have that much. No, we should like a dragon. Yeah, like we were saying, and I was just dragging as in one. You just inhaled one. Taking it off of smoking it off of a foil. We each did like one like hoot. Yeah, and I basically almost died from one inhalation. Yeah, I was freaked out because they said like he was OD'ing. What would you have done if I died? That would have crushed me. How does it make you feel looking back?

On that day, Stephen thinking you nearly did never do it again, never again. I love you. Homelessness in Vancouver is at its highest since records began, and as hardship rises, so does addiction. Across the water on a disused construction site, 300 homeless people are forming a temporary community. The conditions here are brutal, but they feel they have nowhere else to go. People are very vulnerable out here. Families with jobs and kids cannot find housing. They're sleeping in tents. It's a total human rights violation is what it is. You know, I've seen refugee camps in other countries. This is exactly what it looks like. We are Canadian refugees. This is a Canadian refugee camp. [Music] Mind if we have a look at your tent and see where you're staying? Okay, it's way down here. I'm embarrassed because it's usually cleaner about than this. This is my buddy and here. This is Bruce. He's been with me ever since since I've been here. Yeah, and I got eagle feathers out there. They're saving me and keeping me safe.

yeah, like I said, it's a bit of a mess here, but I golf, so, oh, you play coke. I'm not any Tiger Woods or anything, okay, but I think it smashed the side of your tongue. Oh, that's all good. I got grandchildren. I haven't seen them for a while, so I have toys out here just to remind me of them, my grandsons, and um, and you've actually got Narcan here all around the flower pots. Oh yeah, yeah, I've got them hanging all over, right [Music] because it happens all the time. It's an epidemic. Naloxone, that's the overdose kit. I've had to Narcan somebody ten times, and one was a husband and wife. Actually, we're taking care of her, and he started overdosing, and they were laying kind of head-to-head, and they were reaching for each other as they were overdosing like they knew. For many here, drugs are the only source of comfort. Overdoses are a regular occurrence, but from the roadside at the perimeter of the camp, a small group of activists.

are helping to reduce the death toll. In here, we have most of our supplies, so we've got our generator, chairs, a table, we've got Narcan, we've got information pamphlets, we've got bottled water that we like to hand out to people, everything you need to keep people alive today. Yeah, yeah, in a few hours, campers will come to this pop-up tent to smoke and inject drugs, including fentanyl, under the watchful eyes of the volunteers, safe in the knowledge that if they do OD, someone will intervene. That one's this corner's broken, I think. Yeah, that's all right, you know, technical difficulties sometimes. Rather than giving clean equipment for users to take away, the volunteers here invite them into the tent to use their drugs under supervision. But what is the legal status of the tent? It's illegal. When the police do come by, and they might come by today, we kind of just remind them we're in the midst of an overdose crisis. It's been declared a health emergency by the province of BC.

and uh you know we're not here with the intention of breaking the law right. We're here with the intention of you know providing people with a safe supervised space to use drugs and uh respond to overdoses should they happen. It's an odd situation although fentanyl is illegal and the tent is unsanctioned the medical supplies are directly provided by the health department in times of crisis. Sometimes laws become secondary in the case of overdose. If fentanyl is the assassin many believe societal attitudes to the homeless are a key accomplice. Isolation is a big problem shame and stigma drive many battling addiction to use alone. There's a lot of hate you know people think about junkies thieves crackheads sure there's that a lot of thieving and stuff going on but there's real people here you know we get people driving by throwing bricks throwing bottles very hurtful. A lot of people take it too hard I try not to but still do you know it does hurt for sure. I worked many many years I pay my way.

and um, I collect bottles every day. I average 10 to 15 a day. If you make 15 today, let's say, how would you spend it? Uh, 10 of it would probably go to drugs. Fentanyl? Yeah, sad but true. Yeah, and why do you do it? What does fentanyl feel like when you take it? Just a big hug. It's, yeah, just a warm place, and nothing can hurt ya. [Music] Homelessness and addiction have caused real damage here, but community life is vibrant and humanity abundant. And in an area of so much intoxication, a sobering thought emerges: how many of these people would not be here if it weren't for naloxone? [Music] As night falls, the injecting tent opens for business, and the first of the campers arrive. The governments here in Canada support the use of spaces where people can use drugs under supervision, and many that begin life as legal pop-ups like this one go on to be sanctioned across the world. There are more than 100 such centers.

over 30 of those are in Canada, and there's never been an overdose death in any of them. Rise and shine! This is breakfast with the lovely Holly Sea and the very charming Jamie Bell with Until Nine from officially the world's best city to live. That's right, folks, number one, and that's a fish shop. Hashtag amazing. So, my gorgeous Vancouverites, it's another gorgeous crispy morning, and it's Friday, and this morning's show is going to be yay. The phone lines are open, and today we're asking what can be done about this pesky opioid crisis. Plus, it's time for you guys to go head to head on another round of fish or sausage. But first, from the news desk, he's the nav with, Well, you take your dough, whatever you got right, and put it in your little cook pot, and put a little bit of water in it, and take your syringe, and it's like filter. Yeah, some people use a filter, some don't. All right, nothing's gonna fit in through the syringe that isn't already

gonna get in there anyways, so you're going for a vein. Yeah, how does it feel? Uh, uh, great. That's why I do it. You know, drugs are really what you make of it, man. Like, there's functioning addicts out there, and there's non-functioning addicts, you know. There's people that, uh, like, do drugs until it runs them into the ground, and then they die, and that's it, you know. There's another statistic. Where are you heading to now, Ronnie? Heading down to the mall. I'm, uh, oh, I'm gonna go, uh, shoplift so I can get some money and, uh, support my habit, because that's what you gotta do these days, man. I [ __ ] feel like [ __ ] already because there's a 4.25 shot I just did, and, uh, is it already worn off? It's only a couple of minutes ago. Yeah, yeah, you know. If I don't go to [ __ ] jail, like, trying to do it, then maybe I'll get paid and get some more dope, but it's

not fun, man. I hate it. I think I can't stand it, dude. I've spent like 10 years of my life behind bars, like for what? A [__] drug addiction? Something that [__] kills me? Like, I know what I'm doing, and I know that it's bad for me, but like, you know, we've all got our problems, and I'm just trying to cope, man. What's fentanyl done to your life? My life has been absolutely dragged through the mud. I've lost friends, I've lost family members, and I have nothing. I live on the [__] street. I freeze almost every night, and I steal to eat and support myself. I hate my life. I [__] hate it. I wake up in the morning wishing I didn't. That's opioid drug use energy stroke used forgot feel terrible. I wouldn't wish this on first. I wouldn't wish living like this for the person I hate most in the world. It's not living, man. It's dying like you're

running yourself into the ground every day and willingly doing it. Why? Because you're too scared to be dope sick or get off the drugs. No, it's because it's, uh, when you've done something for so long, that's all you know, man. All I know is jail and crime and [ __ ] drugs. That's all I know. I'm lost. Sucks not a five-year-old son, man. Doesn't know who the [ __ ] his dad is. Some people say that people that use drugs have a choice. You're not choosing this, are you? You don't have to. I'm not choosing this, man. I made, well, I had one choice, and I made the wrong [ __ ] one, and this is what I deal with now. Do you have hope for the future? Sometimes I don't know how far my future's gonna go, man. I could be dead 20 minutes from now. Who knows? Thanks [Music]. The chaos that you see are on the streets is only partially due to the drugs.

people are taking. It's more to do with what they have to do to get money to keep the economy going, and whether it's sex work or stealing from cars. We could fix that. Wow, the current crisis is because people are using poison drugs, and I'm at the point now where we really need to think seriously about giving people a safer supply of opiates. [Music] I'm right in the heart of one of downtown Eastside's worst affected streets. One small medical center is looking to do exactly that. So, we're going to go to Crosstown Clinic. Um, what happens at Crosstown? So, um, we provide injectable hydromorphone and injectable diacetylmorphine to clients with severe opiate use disorder. And what is diacetyl? It's um, pharmaceutical made heroin, really. Let's go inside. Come on in. That's right, it's a medical center that gives heroin to people in addiction. That door needs to close. There we go. So, come on in. So, the clients are here.

for the nurses do a pre-assessment for them. Sorry, ladies. They enter into this room, they come up to this window here, and they'll give their name, their birth date, and the nurse will provide them or hand them their syringe, right? Can you just pass me a syringe? Thank you. So, you can see here that we get this is the dose, so it'll tell us the client name and then the drug that they're on. What are you getting there, Dave? Uh, heroin. I see the morphine. And how often do you get that? Three times a day. And this is my lunchtime fix. It's another drug transaction in downtown Eastside, but rather than toxic dope sold in a back alley and injected behind a dumpster, it's a regulated pharmaceutical given in a medical setting and supervised by people who care. I'm introducing heroin into my body now. It is now in our chihuahua. It makes me itchy all over, like a serious itchy. I gotta turn red, and you know I get really itchy, but

my uh um my desire for heroin is met because wow that was good. Prescribing people heroin as a treatment for addiction, it's a challenging concept, but the evidence is persuasive. Switzerland opened a similar center in 1994, and since they've seen huge reductions in overdose deaths, HIV rates, and drug-related crime. The theory goes that when you take people out of a life of street drugs, they have the chance to introduce routine and make incremental life changes. When people start with us, they're using illicit drugs every day, and by six months in care with us, that goes down to a handful of days a month. That people reconnect with families, they go back to school, they start working, they start working part-time, they start volunteering, they get housing. But more importantly, my most recidivist patient had been in and out of jail over 200 times before he came to treatment here, and since he's been in treatment here, he's not been back to jail. That's a huge success. How many banks have you robbed? Oh, I'm in banks. I rob.

lots over 60 banks. I served a prison term of 22 years, two months, and two days. It costs $27,000 a year to supply heroin for one patient here, and it's funded by the government. It's not cheap, but independent research suggests the service saves the taxpayer double that by reducing ambulance call-outs. And in the midst of a fentanyl crisis, there's a further saving, one that's harder to quantify: the cost of human life. We haven't lost any of our clients to a fentanyl overdose because coming here prevents all of that. Are you still robbing banks? No, no. I am very grateful to say that I'm a retired bank robber. I no longer need to do that. Our time in Vancouver was up, and the little neighborhood of downtown east side disappeared in the rearview mirror. [Music] The opioid crisis here in North America is out of control, claiming a life every seven minutes, and seeing it up close and personal has been heartbreaking. Heading for home means escaping it, but for how long? [Music]

I heard myself. We always look at the action, you know. We're so focused on the substance that we've actually forgotten the value of human life, and that's just tragic. But yeah, at the same time, these people are beautiful. I got hopes though, and so it's powerful. I don't remember the rest. Sorry guys, if you could go back to the day where you first put that needle in your arm, would you do it again? [Music] Absolutely. [Music] The day that I put the first needle in my arm. Wow. But it took every day of yesterday to bring the man that you see here today, and the man that you see. I'm a good man, and I'm happy with who I am. I still love this woman. [Music] Huh. People don't realize they're just a paycheck away. [Music] If I make 300 bucks tonight, 50 bucks of it I put away. I put away, I put away, I put away. I've been doing that now for four years. Another year of this.

I'll head over here with 150 grand. [Music] Not look back. You got to stand strong. How to keep your chin up. And you got to keep going because if you don't, you end up a statistic. I'm marking a book, man, like you're just another one of those [__] people that died. [Music]

Opioid Tragedy: Inside the Fentanyl Crisis | Ten Dollar Death Trip | ENDEVR Documentary

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