NEW
When Raheleh Tarani was in her forties, her younger brother was killed by the Iranian government during a protest.
On May 9, 2024, while being assaulted and arrested by Calgary police, she had flashbacks — this time, wondering if her sons attending that protest were alright.
In the time since, her story has been swallowed by a monstrous creature of revisionism comparable to an unsettling creature from Star Wars.
Story: https://drugdatadecoded.ca/the-sarlacc/
Donate to the legal fund: /project/180871-u-of-c-may-9th-encampment-legal-expenses
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Nine demonstrators who suffered injuries, psychological trauma and criminalization for exercising constitutional rights in a May 2024 civic demonstration at the University of Calgary are suing the City of Calgary, its police and the university for damages.
In service of a foreign genocide using products of Canada’s weapons and research sectors, the police bludgeoned demonstrators with batons, shields, and fists, light- and sound-emitting pepper grenades and pepper bullets, before several violent arrests.
No systems have acted to create accountability for those responsible. There, the plaintiffs are seeking damages and vindication that their Charter rights were violated.
Considerable expenses are likely to be incurred and community members are asked to help support this accountability mechanism through the legal fund: /project/180871-u-of-c-may-9th-encampment-legal-expenses?ref=drugdatadecoded.ca
SCOOP
Following the April 23 story about surveillance of Turning Point Society in Red Deer, the Ministry of Public Safety has now revealed that 300 pages of records may exist concerning surveillance of nonprofits across Alberta under the SCAN Act.
Full story: https://drugdatadecoded.ca/alberta-government-may-be-surveilling-nonprofits-province-wide-using-scan-act-copy/
EVENT - please share with Lethbridge pals.
On May 12 at the Galt Museum, we'll join SAGE Clan Patrol for this UofL-hosted event.
We'll examine how closing the Lethbridge consumption site will give rise to more social disorder that will be used to justify the UCP government's involuntary treatment measures.
Registration optional (but helpful!): /jfe/form/SV_cAMoL8gOcBPmS7I
SCOOP
A snitch law passed by provincial governments twenty years ago has been retooled by the Alberta government for use against nonprofit agencies it wants to defund.
In an unprecedented move, the government aimed the Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods (SCAN) Act on Turning Point Society last summer, just weeks before cutting its provincial funding. The organization had operated a harm reduction-oriented downtown Red Deer drop-in for 37 years, which closed shortly after.
The SCAN Act allows any citizen to trigger secret police surveillance of a neighbour by filing a complaint to the government related to drug use or other illegal activities. More than 10,000 such complaints have been submitted to the Alberta government since the law passed in 2008, but the closure of "drug houses" through SCAN has become a favourite news release by the Alberta government since the UCP took power in 2019.
With commentary from the executive director and board chair of Turning Point, plus a researcher studying the importance of drug houses as havens for people who use drugs.
Full story: https://drugdatadecoded.ca/alberta-government-used-snitch-laws-in-coordinated-hit-to-defund-turning-point-society-2/
SCOOP
The Alberta government wants forced abstinence to seem inevitable – "compassionate intervention vs no treatment at all," in its wording.
But other provinces are calling this out internally, describing the Alberta model as a violation of constitutional rights for people with disabilities.
Drug Data Decoded got ahold of records that uncover how a conservative-led province is discussing Alberta’s aggressive carceral strategy off-camera.
Find out which: https://drugdatadecoded.ca/alberta-pressuring-provinces-on-involuntary-treatment-but-some-are-pushing-back/
NEW
Alberta's Centre of Recovery Excellence formed a Research Council in 2025, including authors of that recent fraudulent study on supervised consumption.
But, when asked for records of the council's activities, CoRE has denied its very existence.
BREAKING
The Alberta government is preparing to announce closures of supervised consumption sites in Calgary and Lethbridge, nine days after it published a fraudulent study on site client outcomes.
The announcement is expected today, March 20.
Full story: https://drugdatadecoded.ca/breaking-alberta-government-to-announce-calgary-and-lethbridge-supervised-consumption-site-closures/
SCOOP
From 2021 to 2025, the Alberta government awarded Last Door Recovery Society conference sponsorships up to $745,000.
Their functions are redacted, but they appear linked to conflicts of interest among authors of a recent government study attempting to justify supervised consumption site closures.
Full story: https://drugdatadecoded.ca/alberta-government-recovery-conference-sponsorships-may-create-policy-slush-fund-2/
SCOOP
Alberta's Minister of Mental Health and Addiction is taking a victory lap for the closure of Red Deer's supervised consumption site. According to his government's 'research,' nobody died or was hospitalized because of the closure.
But as we reported recently, the Ministry's own data show otherwise – they simply omitted that part from publication. It also failed to mention some key conflicts of interest among the study authors.
Meanwhile, documents obtained through a freedom of information request detail the channels through which the Ministry is accessing personally identifying health information of people who use drugs.
As Drug Data Decoded has long warned, one of those channels is My Recovery Plan.
Full story: https://drugdatadecoded.ca/centre-of-recovery-excellence-is-exploiting-health-information-of-individuals-who-use-drugs-2/
SCOOP
Dr. Nathaniel Day testified in his affidavit supporting the Government of Ontario's case for closing supervised consumption sites in 2025 that the data favouring client outcomes at the sites is weak.
Then he misrepresented a landmark study in a top journal saying otherwise and failed to mention key supervised consumption outcome data from a manuscript he had asked to be added to just four days earlier.
That study used personal health numbers at Alberta consumption sites to show that OAT initiation was higher among site clients, and regular clients have about half as many hospitalizations for half as long as do less regular clients.
And those weren't the only data being distorted by senior officials around supervised consumption sites in Alberta.
FULL STORY: https://drugdatadecoded.ca/inaccurate-data-how-recovery-alberta-officials-facilitated-consumption-site-closures-part-2-2/
SCOOP
The Alberta government closed two supervised consumption sites in 2025 through tactics that included suppressing and distorting data and cutting frontline services to isolate and vacate attendance at the sites.
Senior Recovery Alberta officials — the people in charge of the sites — played an active role in this. Now, the Province has turned its gaze on the Calgary and Lethbridge sites.
Drug Data Decoded has obtained thousands of internal emails among Recovery Alberta and Ministry officials detailing the playbook.
Part 1 of this series examines the data that were suppressed and withheld at critical moments leading up to the closures of the Red Deer and Royal Alexandra Hospital supervised consumption services – and what appears to be unfolding in Calgary and Lethbridge.
FULL STORY: https://drugdatadecoded.ca/we-can-help-how-recovery-alberta-facilitated-consumption-site-closures-by-ministry-part-1/
