though safer-supply advocates claim that the strategy’s critics are merely fringe voices, dr. ferris said that half of the health-care professionals she knows have been “passionately lamenting this since the start of the pandemic.” yet despite her concerns, dr. ferris continues to support safer supply, with caveats, for two main reasons.
the first is that safer supply has benefited patients who are in the early stages of recovery-oriented treatments, such as methadone. however, she notes that, because many patients have the expectation that they will receive hydromorphone in perpetuity, they sometimes turn abusive when they’re told that they must discontinue the drug to reach the next stage of recovery.
the second benefit of safer supply is that it helps patients with chronic pain who, due to onerous prescribing restrictions implemented after the oxycontin crisis, cannot access the opioids they need for pain-free living.
“a lot of those folks are, in fact, older people who have chronic pain conditions and have been de-prescribed due to fear from our professional college, or they’ve lost their family physician and can’t find anybody to prescribe, because, of course, the optics of going around to clinics and asking for dilaudid (hydromorphone) are very poor,” said dr. ferris.