One of the country's most prominent proponents of government-funded opioids said the quiet part out loud when she thought no one was listening

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For over a year, the progenitor of Canada’s “safer supply” movement, Dr. Andrea Sereda, has publicly insisted that children do not access diverted safer supply drugs. Yet in a video presentation made to a group of harm-reduction activists earlier this month, which Sereda apparently believed was private, her narrative seemed quite different.

“I’m not going to stand up here and say that some kids, some adolescents, are not accessing diverted safe supply and using diverted safe supply. Kids experiment with everything, and we need to be honest to ourselves that kids probably experiment with diverted safer supply as well,” Sereda said during the annual general meeting of Moms Stop The Harm (MSTH), an advocacy group that champions radical harm-reduction policies.

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Her comment comes amid a raucous national debate about whether safer supply programs, which distribute free addictive drugs as an alternative to riskier street substances, are actually exacerbating, rather than mitigating, the national overdose crisis.

These experimental programs predominantly distribute hydromorphone, an opioid as potent as heroin, as an alternative to illicit fentanyl. While advocates claim this practice “saves lives,” a series of investigative stories by the National Post has shown that safer supply clients often divert (sell or trade) their free hydromorphone to........

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