At Crosstown Clinic, doctors are turning addiction treatment on its head: they’re prescribing heroin-users the very drug they’re addicted to. This is the story of one clinic’s quest to remove the harms of addiction, without removing the addiction itself.

———-PROGRAMMING NOTE———-

This is one of the best episodes in our archive. It was broadcast March 9th, 2017, and was honoured with a 2017 Jack Webster Foundation award for excellence in feature reporting in radio. The Jack Webster Awards are BC’s most prestigious journalism awards.

Our next original documentary will be out next week.

The Heroin Clinic was made in partnership with the Vancouver newspaper The Georgia Straight and the podcast Life of the Law. Check out the companion piece we produced with Travis here.

———-MORE———-

If you want to hear more stories about the drug war, check out our other podcast Crackdown. Recently, Crackdown produced an episode commemorating longtime Vancouver drug user activist, Dave Murrary. Dave is pretty much the only reason this heroin clinic ever took off, and his story is chronicled in more detail on Crackdown.

———-FOLLOW CITED———-

To keep up with Cited, follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Tweet at us, or email your feedback to [email protected]–we might just read it on the show. 

———-CREDITS———-

This radio documentary was produced by Gordon Katic, Sam Fenn, Alex Kim, and Travis Lupick. With editing from Nancy Mulane.

We’d like to thank Life of the Law for their editorial support, Dan Reist for academic mentorship, Josh GD for editorial input, as well as Lauryn Rohde and Jenn Luu for research and marketing help.

Dakota Koop is our graphic designer. Our production manager is David Tobiasz, and executive producers are Gordon Katic and Sam Fenn.

Cited is produced out of the Centre of Ethics at the University of Toronto, which is on the traditional land of Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat Peoples. Cited is also produced out of the Michael Smith Laboratories at the University of British Columbia — that’s on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.