Carlyn Zwarenstein shatters our misconceptions about opioids and refuses the violence of prohibition

Carlyn Zwarenstein (https://carlynzwarenstein.com/) is a writer and journalist based in Toronto. Her second book On Opium was just published by Goose Lane Editions (https://gooselane.com/products/on-opium). I speak with her about her push within that work to question narratives around whose lives are “enabled” and “destroyed” by opioids, and about how, for her, drug use became a tool for writing, and one that forced her to “look outside” herself and engage with the “overlapping issues” that constitute the overdose crisis. She argues that, at a certain point, it becomes necessary to stop worrying about making a convincing case to have one’s cause recognized and just begin acting to insist on that cause. She talks about the role of direct action in producing supervised injection sites, and the Drug User Liberation Front’s rallying cry: “Death is not our destiny,” which she says is a “perfect and beautiful” slogan that acts as an antitoxin against the rhetorical power of this “downward spiral” trope within mainstream discourses on drug use. She points out that framing the issue through the downward spiral metaphor fails to generate the required urgency, reinforcing criminalization and an entrenched fatalism when it comes to the use of opioids. She says, fundamentally, dismantling “prohibition,” getting rid of the violence of the drug trade and the dangerous ways that people obtain drugs, and the dangers that are inherent in illicit drugs, is the only effective policy measure left. If we want to reduce harm and even “see overall drug use lowered,” we must, she stresses, dismantle the system of prohibition and move past policies that do not “prevent death” or “enable life.”