Canada

My understanding (which may be faulty) is that opioids, specifically, rarely cause overdose deaths if the supply is safe. Granted, "rarely" is not "never", and having the other programs does help addicts put their lives back together and kick the drugs for good, but a safe supply would keep a lot of people alive while we try to fund and ramp up those other programs.

A safe supply has a significant lower risk of overdose though. There is absolutely no consistency with potency even with the same dealer/suppliers. You either get a product that has been cut with inert additives to inflate the product supply or you have product that has been spiked with more potent analogs to achieve the same effect. None of this is done with any level of safety to ensure a completely homogeneous mixture meaning within the same batch the potency can vary. Without any consistency in potency users do not know how much they are actually administrating even if that dose appears like one they have previously safely done.

This is a harm reduction technique and is in no way intended to replace other programs but simple reduce the amount of injury and death that is occurring as it's hard to reintegrate an addict into Society if they are dead.

Then you have to deal with the NIMBY crowd not wanting those services anywhere close to their precious houses and little angels.

1. safe supply prevents death in the next 7 days, which is an immediate problem

2. programmes to handle the next phases of recovery would be neat, but the father-knows-best bunch keep killing those programmes because they "encourage abuse" or "those people don't deserve handouts" or whatnot.