For the past few years, David Keeler’s addiction has been treated like a medical issue.
“I’ve worked out [that] I can wake up in the morning without using, come to work until 5 o’clock at night and only use [drugs] once in the day when I get home,” said Keeler, an outreach worker at SOLID, a peer-based harm reduction organization in Victoria.
“That is due to the fact that I am a patient of the Safer Initiative, so I get doctor-prescribed fentanyl.”
He is one of a few dozen people in Victoria who has access, via a doctor’s referral, to a Health Canada-funded
