Harm reduction programs sound responsible until you check the evidence. You’re walking past the playground near your house and there’s broken glass on the ground. Could be a beer bottle. Could be a crack pipe. Your tax dollars paid for both possibilities: the distribution and the cleanup. Between 2021 and 2025, Toronto procured 2.3 million meth pipes and 3.5 million crack pipes. When pressed for the evidence base, the city provided four studies. One study interviewed four hospital receptionists about their impressions. That’s not science.

Of the three remaining studies, only one suggested free pipes might reduce sharing. The evidence? Thirty-one drug users in Victoria said in 2010 that free pipes might make them share less. Sixteen years ago. Thirty-one people. Millions of pipes. But here’s the contradiction nobody talks about: a 2011 Vancouver study with similar sample size found users saying the opposite, that sharing pipes is essential to the social experience of smoking crack. The city calls this evidence-based while ignoring the evidence that contradicts them.

Next time you see drug debris near a library or school, remember: you paid to distribute it, and you’ll pay again to clean it up. The program isn’t based on science. It’s based on what active addicts said they wanted sixteen years ago.

Topics: harm reduction programs, crack pipe distribution, evidence-based policy, taxpayer funding, drug paraphernalia cleanup

GUEST: Adam Zivo | adamzivo.com

RUNDOWN: Investigative journalist Adam Zivo exposes Toronto’s procurement of 5.8 million crack and meth pipes justified by a single 2010 study interviewing 31 drug users, revealing how harm reduction programs ignore contradictory evidence while flooding communities with publicly-funded paraphernalia.