CAPUD's Matthew Bonn moderated a discussion session with Eris Nyx and Jeremy Kalicum, co-founders of the Drug User Liberation Front (DULF).
The conversation covered some of the following questions:
- How and in what ways are medicalized safer supply programs inherently oppressive?
- What are the limitations and problems associated with medicalized safer supply?
- How can we make drugs accessible to people who aren’t wired via compassion clubs?
- How can non-medicalized models scale up to reach hundreds of thousands of drug users?
- What are barriers to starting and sustaining compassion club models?
A moderated Q & A session followed the conversation.
Also Available
- Presentation
- French simultaneous translation transcript
- BCCSU report on Heroin Compassion Clubs (2019)
- On a similar theme: Moms Stop the Harm Safe Supply Roundtable - Beyond Medical Models writeup, 10 March 2022
About our Speakers and Moderator
Jeremy Kalicum is a community-based activist and co-organizer of the Drug User Liberation Front. As a current public health student and researcher Jeremy specializes in public policy as it relates to substance use.
Previously, Jeremy has worked as an FTIR drug checking technician in Vancouver’s DTES and as a Director of BC’s Provincial Drug User Network.
Currently, with the Drug User Liberation Front Jeremy is using direct action and civil disobedience to push for community-controlled access to a safe supply of drugs.
Eris Nyx is a queer multidisciplinary artist and community organizer living on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish people.
Currently working with the Drug User Liberation Front, the Downtown Eastside SRO-Collaborative, and the Black Lab Arts Society, Nyx advocates for police and prison abolition; new models of antipsychiatry to replace the current regime of psychiatric theory and practice; ending the war on drugs, and fighting against the intersectional harms wrought by colonization, capitalism, and other systems of oppression.
Matthew Bonn is a Program Coordinator with the Canadian Association of People Who Use Drugs (CAPUD), National Board Member of the Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy (CSSDP), Board Member of the International Network of Health and Hepatitis in Substance Users (INHSU), and a knowledge translator for the Dr. Peter Centre.
His freelance writing has appeared in publications including The Conversation, CATIE, Doctors Nova Scotia, Policy Options and The Coast. Matthew is also on Canada’s 64th Canadian Delegation on the Commission on Narcotic Drugs. He is a current drug user and a formerly incarcerated person.
The NSS-CoP co-hosted this event with the Canadian Association of People who Use Drugs (CAPUD).
