Ottawa, ON – Laila Goodridge, Conservative Shadow Minister for Addictions, released the following statement regarding National Addictions Awareness Week (NAAW):
“This week, from November 24 to 30, as we observe National Addictions Awareness Week (NAAW), many lives and families have been tragically destroyed amid the NDP-Liberal Government’s radical experiments of hard drug legalization and taxpayer-funded free drugs.
“Since Trudeau was first elected, over 47,000 Canadians have died from drug overdoses. Just last year, 8,049 Canadians were killed by opioids – a 184% increase since Trudeau became Prime Minister.
“Tragically, there are too many examples of Trudeau’s dangerous drugs being diverted to children and adolescents as these taxpayer funded opioids are resold to our youth for as little as two dollars a pill.
“One of these was Brianna MacDonald, who died of an overdose in a homeless encampment in Abbotsford, British Columbia. She died only a month after her thirteenth birthday. Greg Sword lost his fourteen-year-old daughter Kamilah to a drug overdose in 2022. Another is Masha Krupp’s daughter Larissa who died in 2020 just twelve days into her methadone treatment in Ottawa due to a reaction with lethal opioids in her system. Ms. Krupp’s son is also battling addiction. He is prescribed 28 heroin strength hydromorphone pills daily at a taxpayer-funded drug program just blocks from the Prime Minister’s front step.
“These are just a few tragic stories of the many families who have been torn apart by the addiction crisis and Trudeau’s wacko policies.
“The Chief of the London Police Service said that “diverted safe supply is being resold into our community” and is “fueling the drug trade.” Their data show a massive increase in seizures from 5,000 hydromorphone tablets in 2012 to 30,000 in 2023. And just half way through 2024, they calculated 94% of the 12,000 hydromorphone tablets they had seized were diverted from government-funded programs. The Vancouver Police Department has also said that around 50 percent of all of their hydromorphone seizures were diverted from Trudeau’s taxpayer-funded hard drugs program.
“One grieving parent who witnessed taxpayer-funded hydromorphone being diverted to adolescents, including her own children, rightly said the Liberal government is ‘acting like a drug lord.’ Trudeau’s dangerous experiment is a massive failure with heartbreaking disastrous results.
“Conservatives believe that recovery is possible. Only a Conservative Government will stop handing out taxpayer-funded hard drugs and instead fund treatment & recovery to bring our loved one’s home drug free.”
