BC High School Students Given ‘Safer Snorting’ Harm-Reduction Drug Products

Kits left for students at a high school in Cowichan Valley, B.C., contain tools for snorting cocaine and other hard drugs. Courtesy of Aaron Gunn

High school students in Cowichan Valley, B.C., were recently given tools to use hard drugs, such as cocaine, following a presentation on drugs.

Students received kits containing information about “safer snorting” including a picture of a straw hovering above a line of white powder. Included in the kit were tubes for snorting and cards for making lines to snort.

B.C.-based documentary filmmaker Aaron Gunn brought attention to the issue in a tweet on May 20, and Cowichan Valley School District issued an apology on May 21, saying a third-party presenter had left the kits at the school and the district does not consider them “school or age appropriate.”

“When I was growing up, I remember we had powerful guest speakers that ... had their lives ruined by drugs, who gave very compelling speeches and presentations about why you don’t want to get into things like cocaine and heroin,” Gunn told The Epoch Times.

“Fast-forward 20 years to today and we’re handing out safer snorting kits apparently at high schools to students as young as 15, and I think it’s disgusting,” he said.

Kits left for students at a high school in Cowichan Valley, B.C., contain tools for snorting cocaine and other hard drugs. Courtesy of Aaron Gunn

Gunn’s newly released documentary, “Canada Is Dying,” looks at the proliferation of drug-use across the country, but especially in B.C. where it is now legal to possess small amounts of hard drugs.

Gunn attributes much of the province’s drug problem to “safer supply” and “harm reduction” initiatives. Rather than aiming to stop addiction altogether, such initiatives focus on giving addicts drugs and providing them with safer methods of using them. Their goal is to prevent overdose and the use of fentanyl-laced supplies, but Gunn says they just enable drug-use and flood the streets with more drugs.

The Cowichan Valley School District said in its statement that it supports a harm-reduction method of addressing the province’s drug addiction problem, but “we aim to ensure that the teachings related to it are appropriate for our students.”

The kits left by the third-party presenter were not appropriate, the district said, “and for that we apologize to our community.” The district will review its policies on third-party presenters, it said.

The Cowichan Valley incident may be an unusual case of such kits being distributed to high school students, Gunn said, but in B.C. universities he said “this is commonplace. This is on every university campus, seven days a week.”

He added, “They’re obviously trying to get into our high schools next, but at a certain point as a society, I think we have to draw the line.”