Check It Out: Revealing what's “hidden in plain sight”

By Joan Janzen

A young mom said she and her daughter play a game when they're in the car. Her daughter plays a song and her mom guesses the artist and title within seconds of listening. However "my daughter is unaware the song information is on the dashboard," she confessed.

The information on the dashboard was "hidden in plain sight" for the young girl, who wouldn't be aware of it until her mother pointed it out to her. Recently, a British Columbia woman brought something hidden in plain sight to light.

Gwen O'Mahony's recent video went viral. The MLA candidate for the Conservative Party released a video of her using a harms reduction vending machine outside a B.C. Hospital. Most Canadians were unaware of the existence of the machines until the video was released.

Gwen told journalist Drea Humphrey she had expected the video to get a few thousand views. "But I put the video out, and it just exploded! It got close to a million views," she said.

The video showed Gwen using an easy-to-operate vending machine. She followed the simple instructions and, within a minute, received a free cocaine smoking kit. After scanning a Q.R. code, she accessed the additional instruction video on how to snort cocaine as safely as possible.

"The most shocking part is the location of the machine and how accessible it is," Gwen noted. "It's right outside the hospital where people go to take a smoke break. It's a touch screen, slick, high-end, sophisticated piece of machinery."

However, it filled her with a sense of sadness when she realized there was an instructional video as well. "It was an eerie feeling," she commented. She asked herself what it was doing there and why taxpayers were paying for it.

Gwen wasn't motivated by political gain; she did it because she had lost her sister. "I lost my sister a month and a half ago to the opioid epidemic. I didn't want my sister to be handed drugs endlessly and to have someone pat her on the hand and tell her that's OK - you've got a disease. This is where we're at. This is the way the party is handling addiction; they are keeping people in a cycle of addiction. It's called enabling," she said.

Gwen continued to say, "We know this isn't working, because in spite of all this harm reduction it's getting worse."

Someone who watched Gwen's video commented, "I went to use the hospital washroom and found three used kits on the washroom counter. What have we become?"

Another listener wrote, "My nephew had to go to rehab, and his family had to pay for it. All this free drug stuff given out, but you have to pay for rehab."

"So what's the solution?" Drea asked. Gwen replied, "Treatment is the best hope for somebody. I believe people can get treatment and can break free from addiction. I would like money to go into treatment; we need to be driven by data and common sense."

There isn't a community that hasn't been impacted by this crisis, and people are tired of funds being wasted on vending machines while treatment centres have to conduct fundraisers in order to operate.

As the video went viral, the general public said, "What a waste of taxpayer dollars!" As a result, the government is forced to review these vending machines, which were approved by the B.C. premier in the fall of 2023.

Here are a few questions the public asked after watching the video. How much taxpayer dollars is this costing us? I wonder where they get all the harm reduction paraphernalia from … China? Why are we paying for perpetual homelessness when it now costs thousands of dollars for treatment? Why aren't nurses and staff and their unions, as well as doctors, protesting against this? Who is making money off of these dispensers?

The fact that Gwen said her sister "died with cocktail drugs in her system, both street drugs and prescription drugs" is worth noting. Doctors like Suneel Dhand have been speaking out about this for some time.

"The entire philosophy is to prescribe, prescribe, prescribe, and it isn't working. People are seeing their family members get sicker every single year while more and more drugs are being prescribed," Dr. Dhand said on a recent podcast. Even comedian Bill Maher devoted a segment to the topic, and when comedians get you to laugh about something, you know it's a serious problem.

Like Gwen O'Mahony, the public is more likely to reveal things hidden in plain sight if it impacts them personally. Meanwhile a select group of politicians make a decision to set up harm reduction vending machines at hospitals, without consulting the public.

A wise proverb states, "In a multitude of counsellors, there is safety." That's where true, authentic harm reduction lies.