 This week, at our 25th event, we'll welcome more than a thousand people from over 70 countries who'll come together to continue to build the global harm reduction movement. The lesson of the last 18 months is an important one for all of us who live and work in countries where right-wing governments use the war on drugs as a tool to consolidate power. From executions of drug offenders in Indonesia over the last couple of years, to the horrific crimes currently being perpetrated by the Duterte regime in the Philippines, to the ongoing HIV and overdose epidemics in Russia driven by deliberate government policy and neglect, government attacks against progressive and international Central European University in Hungary, to that egomaniacal game show host who currently sits in the White House peddling racism and xenophobia, reigniting the war on drugs, and glibly stripping healthcare away from millions of people. Thank you so much for your banners that you're presenting. I see them, I hear you. You know what, would you like me to talk? At a minimum in Canada, there were 2,300 Canadians that died last year of an opioid overdose. Canada's previous federal government took out the pillar of harm reduction from their drug strategy. I'm pleased to have put it back in. One of the first decisions I made was to change the status of naloxone so that it is available in Canada without prescription and in multiple formats. We have granted 4 approvals for 4 supervised consumption sites and we have tabled legislation to support and simplify the process for similar sites. We overturned a ban that the previous government had put associated with the evidence based use of heroin assisted treatment so that it is now currently available through a special access program, but I tell you that I think about this from the moment I wake up until the time I fall asleep and I have poured everything I can into this and I am determined to work with you as your ally to make sure that we bring an end to this overdose crisis. Our friends are dead, it's nothing to smile about, but we've got the ecology and data, we're GoRail's prevention workers, to do the work so we can save our friends. Thousands of people are dead, so many of us. This government, the current government says that they're a partner in harm reduction and they're doing everything that they can and they often compare themselves to the last government, but actually things have gotten worse. Right now drug users face an overdose crisis, thousands of people in Canada have died over the last year. We're just watching communities we work with just disappear, our own friends, I lost five friends this last year. You think it's bad when every week someone's dying and then you hit a blip and all of a sudden it's someone every day, people are losing co-workers, family members, it's just, it's terrible and it needed action a long time ago, not tomorrow, like yesterday. The safe injection site is like at last, it's there. And you have that here in Montreal, but where I'm from, like in two hours from here, I don't have anything of that. They could declare this a national emergency and they could put resources and funding into dealing with this crisis, but they don't because it's people who use drugs that are dying, but if it was like, you know, white middle class people in this country who didn't use drugs, they would be acting on this really fast and we've seen that before in public health responses here. We're not seen as human, we're not seen as being, we're the last thing people think about. I can give you an example of the Ebola epidemic and H1N1, government put billions of dollars behind a few people that died, but nothing against what's happening with people that are living, that are marginalized people, right? What has been voiced, speak out during the plenary, I completely understand. Human politicians are also human beings and they also have feelings and if we want to move forward with them, we should respect also their feelings. So we should also be aware that we might lose her and if we lose the support of the current government, this will not help. Can you explain us what is this place? This place is the med room where we do like minor medical afflictions, burns, cuts, graves, but we also have all the safe injection supplies and plus condoms for safer sex and in addition this year we have fentanyl test strips so that people can test for their presence of fentanyl in their drugs. We also have intranasal naloxone and the intramuscular as well so available for people to keep everybody safe. There's nothing like this in Nepal and it's very hard for a woman who uses drugs actually. I'm involved in Bristol Nepal and we have been delivering home reduction services for the last eight years and since 2012 everything is gone. In Minneapolis we dropped the overdose death rate by 23% one year and there's no other explanation for it other than us. The death rate in Vancouver is higher in the suburbs than it is in the downtown East Side, the epicenter of drug use that you visited because in the downtown East Side naloxone is everywhere. Everybody's trained up to use it, drug users, non drug users and the stigma is much much lower there so people are less inclined to use a loan and to hide. The reduction of stigma needs to be a really big issue, not just a side issue. This is part of the Museum of Drug Policy and it's a this is called the Lost Generation. These are tags that are used to identify and provide information on the bodies of people who've passed away and in this case it's obviously indicating fatality due to overdose. From the United States perspective we're seeing it at epidemic proportions. Now you're more likely in the US to die from a drug overdose than from a motor vehicle accident. So you know what we have is like in you know an unprecedented level of supply, an unprecedented acceptance and willingness to use and also absolutely zero discourse around how you engage in substance use to maximize pleasure and to minimize risk and harm. What do you recommend for for Americans from the perspective of Switzerland where you also had similar problems many many years ago? At least there is something that is so evident is a heroin prescription just to give access to this product for the people who need it. Many people may say that there are already you know prescription drugs which are legal but still killing a lot of people. It's not only about legal, illegal, it's about the market, how it is framed. What we should have is you need something, you know what you want, you get what you want and you know exactly what you get and then people can adjust their risk, adjust their behavior. Arm reduction in France as you know is very very medicalized, very target on substitution, very target on medical power and this is frozen the human rights debates. A lot of racist people who point the drugs as the problem of the stranger, as the problem of minority, as the problem of Arab and black people and war on drugs is always a tool to point those minorities but medical system doesn't care about it. This year the conference has a motto at the heart of the response. What do you think what is at the heart of the response? The real heart of the response is the drug policy reform side of things now to be honest because if you think about harm reduction you know okay so we give needles, clean needles out, we do outreach work, we give methadone. The reform of drug policy is the ultimate harm reduction. Harm reduction is basically about justice and it's about human rights and it's about safeguarding the rights of people who are doing with this substance what a lot of other people are doing with some other substance that happens to be legal and we're winning but there's still a long way to go.