People First Radio, June 12, 2025People First Radio, June 12, 2025
People First Radio
People First Radio focuses on toxic drug use, homelessness and policy responses, combining Jodie Patterson’s commentary with lived-experience perspectives and harm reduction stories from Victoria and St John. The conversation links fentanyl, involuntary care, poverty, housing, and naloxone training while stressing that change takes time, connection, and a refusal to write anyone off.
0:00•12 Jun 2025
Pandora Avenue, Fentanyl, and Hope: People First Radio on Toxic Drugs and Care
Episode Overview
- Pandora Avenue’s visible crisis is linked to years of inadequate social supports, intensified by the housing crisis and pandemic.
- Fentanyl’s potency, short duration, and unstable supply make drug use far more dangerous and chaotic, but the drug itself is a symptom of deeper suffering.
- Calls for expanded involuntary care clash with limited bed capacity, civil rights concerns, and a lack of evidence that such care reduces substance use.
- Panellists with lived experience highlight poverty reduction, housing stability, connection, and flexible definitions of recovery as key to meaningful change.
- Harm reduction services like naloxone training, safer-use supplies, and stigma-free healthcare are presented as practical, life-saving tools within communities.
“You should never give up on people and think that there's some hopeless people who can't be helped.”
How do different strategies aid in addiction recovery? This edition of People First Radio brings together sharp analysis and lived experience to look at toxic drug use, homelessness, and what real care might actually mean.
Long-time journalist and SOLID Outreach board member Jodie Patterson gives context to Victoria’s Pandora Avenue, describing it as a "hot spot" created by years of underfunded services, a worsening housing crisis, and a fenced-off streetscape that looks, in her words, like a "weird, ugly war zone." She breaks down how fentanyl replaced heroin, why it creates such chaos for people who use it, and why calling fentanyl "the problem" misses the deeper suffering and trauma underneath.
She also questions current pushes for involuntary care, noting there are few beds, huge civil rights concerns, and, as she points out, "no evidence that involuntary care works for stopping people for substance use." Jodie helped organise a community dialogue where people with experience of substance use—Guy Felicella, Teja McClucky, Matthias Millett and Fred Cameron—share what they’d change if they had power.
Their answers centre on eradicating poverty, building real housing security, prioritising human connection over judgement, and redefining recovery as reduced harm rather than strict abstinence. Later, panellist Trevor Botkin talks about turning personal recovery into political action, arguing for non-market housing, low-barrier treatment, long-term care, and better aftercare so people aren’t dumped back into the environments that harmed them.
The show then shifts to St John, New Brunswick, where Avenue B’s Laura McNeill and Caleb James explain why naloxone training, safer-use supplies, and non-judgemental healthcare can literally be the difference between life and death.
Through all of this, one message keeps resurfacing: "You should never give up on people and think that there's some hopeless people who can't be helped." For anyone interested in addiction, recovery, or harm reduction, this is a chance to ask: what kind of community do you want to help build?
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