I have outlined in broad terms why Aaron Gunn’s propagandistic pseudo-documentary fails to even begin to address the drug crisis in Vancouver. It ignores the actual causes of drug use, it cherry-picks data from already irrelevant sources, and it does not even attempt to rebut the massive amount of evidence supporting harm reduction, and, to a lesser extent, safe supply (mostly because it is a new, statistically small project with little data currently available). Instead, it demonizes drugs and through them the drug user, painting them as violent and unpredictable. He films tent cities, likely without consent, and never actually asks any of the residents how or why they’re in that situation. Drug users are a pornographic threat, dirty and alluring, and the only solution he offers is to utilize state violence to enforce abstinence by any means necessary.
Gunn suggests that he and those ideologically akin to him are the only ones who actually care about drug users. He claims the Woke Left want to keep drug users in the slums, stuck in addiction, stuck in poverty, and it is only by making drug users “better” that they can be saved. Much in the same way that infamous LGBT antagonist Anita Bryant claimed that she didn’t hate homosexuals, Gunn seeks salvation for the morally fallen. This is why there is so much emphasis in the real world of right-wing politics to force people who use drugs into treatment – they need to be saved! Of course, there aren’t enough beds out there for those who want to go into treatment voluntarily, but despite this miniscule logistical anomaly, we must force these sinners into repentance for their own good. You’ll hear talk of treatment beds as a panacea to the drug crisis without anyone actually pointing to solid evidence that bed-based/residential treatment actually works any better than anything else people are doing, with some evidence showing that the risk of overdose increases after treatment because the person’s opiate tolerance has evaporated. This is because treatment isn’t treatment in this context; it’s conversion therapy. “Beds” are only a measure of our capacity to eliminate sin. The goal is erasure, and erasure on a massive scale does not consider pesky irritants like research, studies, or the voices of the people being erased.
This is why analyzing this kind of propaganda is important. Gunn released this trash leading up to the Vancouver municipal election, and the right-leaning ABC Party under Ken Sim won a solid majority on a platform nearly identical in ideology to that of Vancouver Is Dying – we need law and order to combat drug use and random violence! Interestingly, in trying to find years old news coverage about Sim’s platform, I stumbled on a fun little update to all those stranger attacks so prominent in the film – apparently there was a massive decrease in stranger attacks when the pandemic was winding down in 2022, and the police just didn’t release those statistics during the election campaign of the right-wing candidate they had endorsed. Remember how Gunn neglects the pandemic when talking about crime? Perhaps the fear of crime was sensationalized by opportunists hoping to push emotionally-driven policy with no regard for what the truth actually is. ANYWAY, I DIGRESS!
So what does erasure look like in real world scenarios? Perhaps the event that received the most news coverage was the police sweep that cleared the encampment from Hastings Street which Gunn so callously captured in his more voyeuristic shots. This was completed without any thought as to where these human beings might go, and as expected, the problem didn’t go away – people just didn’t have their tents and meager belongings anymore. But there’s more: Vancouver’s ABC party shut down a street market that many homeless people utilized to acquire cheap secondhand goods, moving it to a less accessible indoor location with fewer stalls for vendors. These goods could be the result of theft and organized crime, dontcha know, which is scary! Getting rid of the observable and centralized market is obviously not going to reduce theft, but there is only one outcome that matters: erasure. The city of Vancouver also chose not to renew the lease for the Thomus Donaghy Overdose Prevention Site which has a centralized location close to an abundance of drug users. With overdose deaths through the roof, it sure would make sense to have a space where it could be done safely with some medical oversight! But alas, erasure demands the elimination of anything that might support the scary and bad thing. There’s more: Vancouver downsized CRAB Park – the only sanctioned tent city – for safety reasons. Tent cities are the never-ending symbol of erasure as they pop up and are cleared off with metronomic consistency, from Oppenheimer to Strathcona Park to one that popped up and was shut down near to where I live – all eventually cordoned off by the blue metal fence.
It’s not just Vancouver, and that’s my point. An encampment in Prince George was evicted as well, leading the federal housing advocate to call it a “human rights violation” based solely on the fact that it was evicting people from somewhere with nowhere else for them to go. Federally, the Conservatives have been railing against the science of harm reduction, going so far as to blame every last drug overdose death in BC on decriminalization – a pilot project meant to reduce police interactions with drug users (not actually reduce drug deaths) which was a thrilling success, with a 77% decrease in possession charges and a 96% decrease in drug possession seizures! The problem was that people started to see more drug use – the exact opposite of erasure – and that made them uncomfortable. This discomfort unfortunately is the perfect gateway drug to emotionally-driven tripe like that being peddled by Gunn! (Of note, Gunn claims that police don’t actually harass drug users, which is clearly not borne out by the statistic that 96% of police seizures were under the 2.5 grams for personal use before that amount was decriminalized – perhaps this was part of when he mentions that police will “stop and talk to people on the street.” Even if someone isn’t being locked up, that doesn’t eliminate the harassment!)
What if we could reduce the harms of hard drugs to such an extent that they were no more harmful than alcohol (which in social costs is technically higher than heroin, but haha who cares, right!?). Anyway, let’s say that the drug supply was sufficiently harmonized that it was no longer causing overdoses, that the tools to use it safely were widely available to eliminate the threat of diseases, that the crimes associated with its sale were eliminated, and so on. It is possible – remember we literally used to give legal opiates to children! This is what Gunn fears – he’s actually quite explicit in this when he cites the dangers of “normalization.” What if opiates became so banal that their use was equivalent to enjoying a beer at a hockey game? Or equivalent to cigarettes, where they were discouraged but still mostly tolerated? Perish the God damned thought!
To bring things back to Anita Bryant, it’s important to remember that talking about doing anything about the AIDS epidemic was fearfully seen to be “normalizing” homosexuality. If the homosexuals are dying, well, that’s only because they’re sinners. We’re the only ones trying to save them by praying the gay away, and anyone trying to increase their life expectancy is actually endorsing homosexuality – they’re basically sinners themselves. The parallels to Vancouver Is Dying are endless, and the previous allusion to conversion therapy is depressingly apt. If drug use becomes normal, then people might start being accepting toward drug users!!
In my professional life as a health care social worker, I came across multiple people who saw this film and were swayed by it – people who ought to have known better – but I get it! Emotions run deep, and playing to them is a likely way to win in politics, particularly on the right. Crime is scary! The stereotypical drug user, an unkempt man covered in filth and drool with a needle sticking out of his arm, is gross! These are valid emotions! But manipulating those emotions to erase a vulnerable population because you think their lifestyle is a sin has been done before with similarly deadly consequences. Between 1981 and 1988 in the United States, there were 46,134 deaths related to AIDS. In Canada, with a fraction of the American population, there have been 42,494 deaths between 2016 and 2023 related to opiates. I know that it’s not a contest, but my point is that the fear, the moralizing, and the disinformation being put out is just as disgusting now as it was then and that this shit matters. These deaths matter. Anyone who seeks to erase a population is contributing to those deaths because the outcome is essentially the same – the drug user exists no longer by one means or another, and the likes of Gunn don’t seem to mind which route they follow. They don’t see a disease, just a people they define as a disease.
To conclude this excruciatingly long series of posts, Aaron Gunn, your film is toxic and manipulative, degrades human beings, and encourages their deaths. Now you are hoping to become a federal Conservative, with looming control over these people’s lives. A pie to your face is the least you deserve.
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[…] Part IV […]