On the morning of July 9, I woke up to a series of notifications pouring in from the app formerly known as Twitter. Dozens of accounts were all reacting to the same thing – a story from a British newspaper, The Telegraph, on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
The piece drops readers into the least generous, one-dimensional depiction of the Downtown Eastside imaginable, riddled with stigmatizing drug tropes from decades prior.
While there are few who would argue that worsening inequality in Canada’s most expensive city isn’t horrific in its own right, stories like The Telegraph’s do not even make an attempt to expose the deeper systemic issues, policy decisions and continued lack of regulation that is fuelling death from the toxic drug supply.
Not only was this story limited and damaging in what it did cover, it was also factually inaccurate. The first, and probably most easily refutable claim, can be found in its headline:
“How decriminalization made Vancouver the fentanyl capital of the world.”
I will not be the first to point out that the connection between “decriminalization” and Vancouver becoming the “fentanyl capital of the world” is patently untrue on several fronts.
First, Vancouver is not the “fentanyl capital” of the world. The story purposely skews the death rates in Vancouver by comparing it to those of entire countries, drastically changing the composition of the population being averaged and rendering these comparisons effectively meaningless.
As highlighted in a post on X by harm reduction and recovery expert Guy Felicella, a far more accurate comparison would be to other major North American cities or even counties with comparable populations. For example, Vancouver’s rate of drug deaths per 100,000 is currently 68.4 (it was 87 in 2023). Baltimore’s drug death per 100,000 rate was 190 last year, Knox county in Tennessee 101, San Francisco 91.6 and Denver 74.2.
None of these places have decriminalized illicit substances.
And yes, while technically Vancouver and the Downtown Eastside’s death rate is higher than “America’s,” as quoted by The Telegraph, this assertion is presumably based on a rate per 100,000 for the entire country, which, again, is a disingenuous representation of that data.
Second, fentanyl first appeared in the drug supply in Vancouver long before decriminalization was proposed as a policy. The toxic drug supply crisis was declared a public health emergency in B.C. in 2016 with reports of the rapid increase in fentanyl in the drug supply since 2014.
Fentanyl first appeared in the drug supply long before decriminalization was proposed as a policy.
Decriminalization as a policy approach also has not worsened the state of drug poisoning. B.C.’s exemption to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act took effect in January 2023. Though still devastatingly and inexcusably high, overdose deaths have decreased in B.C. over the past year.
For the time this exemption was in place, the change merely made it so that individuals in possession of small quantities of illicit substances (generally less than 2.5 grams), couldn’t be charged with possession. In May, this was amended to allow law enforcement to seize illegal drugs possessed in public, in any amount, and make an arrest, though possession of small quantities is still decriminalized in private residences.
Decriminalization is not fuelling overdoses; its rollout and subsequent rescindment barely gave it an opportunity to realize its primary intended purpose – to “reduce the stigma” associated with drug use and “support people to access important health and social services.”
Unfortunately, some experts have noted that decriminalization may instead have increased negative stereotypes. The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users executive director, Brittany Graham, told Global News in September: “We haven’t seen an increase in public use, we haven’t seen an increase in people being in more parks … and yet there’s multiple news stories about this perceived harm.” News stories much like The Telegraph’s.
Another misleading detail in the piece is an out-of-context quote from Vancouver deputy police chief Fiona Wilson. As reporter Penny Daflos flagged in a post on X, a quote from Wilson acknowledges that in some cases the prescription-based safer supply is not being used by the intended recipients and is being resold on the black market. However, the RCMP and the B.C.’s solicitor general both have emphasized that there is no evidence of widespread diversion.
“We haven’t seen an increase in public use … and yet there’s multiple news stories about this perceived harm.”
Further, Wilson’s complete quote emphasizes that she is not chiefly concerned with diversion saying, “(People) aren’t dying from diverted prescription medication, they’re dying from fentanyl, coke, meth … Diversion’s an important issue, it’s something we’re watching very closely but we know from coroner’s data that that’s not what’s killing people in British Columbia.” She also emphasized that diversion “pales in comparison” to organized crime and fentanyl production.
What’s more is that the piece neglects to mention that B.C. police helped push for decriminalization, albeit with an emphasis that sufficient supports be put in place.
Context for overdose stats in the story also are deeply misleading. Although B.C. had the highest rate of drug related deaths in the country last year, it’s not meaningfully higher than in other parts of Canada that have yet to adopt more progressive policy approaches. Recovery-focused Alberta saw a 25 per cent increase in toxic drug deaths in 2023, with 117 per 100,000 in Lethbridge and 66.3 in Edmonton. Ontario has seen patterns consistent with increases in B.C. and Alberta over the past five years.
And while it’s important to ensure that data around the toxic drug supply crisis is accurate and appropriately represented, it’s perhaps even more important to remember that these numbers represent actual people. This is something that the journalists involved with this article seemed to forget.
Amidst the litany of conveniently cropped quotes, misrepresented facts and blatant inaccuracies, possibly the most damaging part is the exploitative and dehumanizing choices made in representing Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside residents.
The harm that can be done to communities and individuals when tired drug-war tropes get repeated over and over again is hard to overstate. These stylistic decisions have an influence on public perception, which then can turn into fodder for political decisions, irrespective of what the evidence says. Further, for many individuals who are the subjects of these stories, compromising images can lead to difficulties down the line in terms of employment or even with regards to custody disputes.
Everything we do in journalism is a choice. We can try to keep our work as factual and balanced as possible, represent different sides of a story and rely on evidence and experts to tell a series of events. But the words we use, the images we show, are still in service to a narrative that, at the end of the day, we construct about what is happening.
Everything we do in journalism is a choice.
The narrative that The Telegraph chose to construct was one whose ultimate aim was to paint as stark an image of human depravity as possible. Unnecessary descriptions of injections in “filthy” car parks, “bodies lying scattered” on streets and an opening scene of a woman receiving help injecting opioids into her neck are all designed to be shocking, evocative and frightening to the audience. The photographs show people in varying compromising positions, whether that’s preparing or actively using drugs, being revived from an overdose or being watched by heavily armed police officers.
All of this sets a clear tone that what is happening is criminal and harmful and ultimately places the source of that harm on the individual drug user and the progressive policies erroneously pointed to in the story’s headline.
It’s also unclear whether those depicted consented to having their photos taken or if they were in a reasonable position to consent. Although not a formal requirement of journalism, it’s good practice particularly when dealing with exceptionally vulnerable sources.
As a response published by Tyee editor Jackie Wong earlier this week beautifully illustrates, there are a lot of stories that can be told by and about residents of the Downtown Eastside. There are also ways to tell these stories that don’t strip individuals of their agency or make their suffering a spectacle that actively causes more harm.
If the journalists with The Telegraph who worked on this piece had wanted to get it right rather than dramatize, there are several local journalists and online guides that would have pointed them in the right direction.
Jen St. Denis at The Tyee has covered housing and civic issues focused on the Downtown Eastside for the last four years. Jesse Winter has photographed the neighbourhood extensively and written a thoughtful reflection on how to ethically capture photos of people living in poverty. Jackie Dives has similarly shown through her photojournalism how to capture this community with compassion and dignity. Penny Daflos, Andrea Woo, Michelle Gamage and Dustin Godfrey all regularly produce thoughtful investigations on drug- and housing-related issues in Vancouver without compromising the humanity of their subjects.
Crackdown produces an award-winning, evidence-based podcast on drug policy that actively centres the voices of the people most affected. Megaphone Magazine, a Downtown Eastside social enterprise and community-driven publication, and where I worked as a volunteer and freelance reporter in my earliest years in journalism, challenges the harmful stereotypes and conventional narratives about people who use drugs and experience homelessness.
My point is that there is no shortage of examples on how to do this type of reporting without causing more harm. Those I’ve mentioned, and many others, are able to accurately reflect the devastation caused by a toxic drug supply without reducing vulnerable people to pictures of a needle-in-an-arm or a faceless body collapsed on a sidewalk.
Parachuting reporters into communities to cover sensitive issues can be fraught even in the best of circumstances. But when the resulting coverage so profoundly dehumanizes its sources, it is difficult to read anything but malintent behind these reporting efforts.
It’s our responsibility as journalists to do our best to tell stories accurately and ethically, and contrary to what certain publications may have you believe, we don’t need to punch down to do our jobs.
Cover photo: A Vancouver safe supply rally in 2022. Photo by Maddi Dellplain.
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