One of the most destructive misconceptions of our time was that addiction is a condition that can be maintained with proper management. We were told that fatal overdoses were caused by impure drug supplies rather than the drug itself. It was asserted that homelessness caused addiction rather than the other way around.
These counterintuitive fallacies were embraced by government authorities, and policies were created based upon them. The results of these policies were catastrophic, and we saw them most acutely in B.C.
