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The Current Transcript for January 30, 2019

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

When you lose somebody and members of the community you never really get them back. So I don't think it'll ever be over for the families and for the community. You know we just need to step up to support individuals along the way.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: If Bruce McArthur's multiple guilty pleas in court yesterday to the murder of eight men seem like the end of the story, it is one that is never ending for those who knew and loved his victims. There are haunting questions about what each man endured. There are persistent fears of victims beyond the eight whose names we know. And there are deep concerns that trust has been ruptured between Toronto's LBGTQ community and the police. In a moment, we're asking what lingers and what cannot be ignored and the ripple effects of a serial killer actions. Also today

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You know, we're not going to quick doing drugs. Like that is not even an option and all these straight people that think that's an option, well, to read your book again, because in my book it doesn't say anywhere where I am quitting doing drugs.

AMT: In the midst of an opioid overdose crisis, the assumptions surrounding who is using and what they can or want to do about it often have little to do with the realities of addiction. And it isn't easy nor is it comfortable. And for Garth Mullins That is where the conversation has to happen. He's launching a podcast today exploring addiction and the drug wars through the voices and stories of drug users themselves. Hear him in an hour. And in half an hour, Artificial Intelligence meets the family.

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MOTHER: Girls, how do we speak to Echo?

DAUGHTER 1: Apparently according to you, we have to say please and thank you.

DAUGHTER 2: We don't do that.

MOTHER: Why don't you do that?

DAUGHTER 1: There's no point.

DAUGHTER 2: It's a robot and they do not have feelings.

AMT: In hearing. Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Bruce McArthur's guilty plea shouldn't end scrutiny of investigation, journalist says

Guests: Jusitn Ling, Nicole Borthwick, Haran Vijayanathan

SOUNDCLIP

Bruce McArthur attended Superior Court of Justice here in Toronto at which time he pled guilty to eight counts of first degree murder. That was for the murders of Shandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, Majeed Kayhan, Soroush Mahmudi, Kirushna Kanagaratnam, Dean Lisowick, Selim Esen and Andrew Kinsman.

AMT: Eight men. Eight guilty pleas yesterday from serial killer Bruce McArthur. You heard Toronto Detective David Dickinson reading their names. There is a hope from police that yesterday's admission of guilt could bring some finality to the victims’ families and community. But the guilty pleas will mean no trial for Bruce McArthur, and some fear that will rob the LGBTQ community of the chance to put, not solely McArthur on trial, but the system itself on trial. Nine years after Skanda Navaratnam was reported missing, one year after Bruce McArthur's arrest, the 67 year old killer will be back in court next week to face sentencing. Journalist Justin Ling has been covering this story for years and he is preparing to host a new CBC podcast, Uncover the Village, that looks at all angles of this tragedy. Justin Ling has with me in our studio. Hi.

JUSTIN LING: Hey. Good Morning.

AMT: What was it like there yesterday when the pleads were acknowledged?

JUSTIN LING: You know I think it was tough for a lot of people, but I think there was a sense of relief. It's a word you kept hearing at the courthouse yesterday. Relief that it was going to be over so much earlier than we expected. We didn't think we’re going to be a trial until January 2020. That trial could have gone on for three to four months. The fact that he decided to enter those eight guilty pleas yesterday, that it is over at a half hour, I think there was an overwhelming sense from a lot of people that you know this would be the beginning of the end, at least for his story. Obviously as a whole bunch of answers, a whole bunch of questions still need to be answered. But I think you know there was definitely an exhale when people realized that at the very least they wouldn't have to hear from him for too much longer.

AMT: Karen Fraser, the woman who owns the home where McArthur hid most of his victims’ bodies spoke yesterday. Listen to what she had to say.

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Just thinking about the last moments of those men. It comes to me. Quite often. I did meet two of them. And, yes, I am haunted by that.

AMT: You talked to her. What did she tell you about the men who worked alongside Bruce McArthur who were eventually found on her property?

JUSTIN LING: She told me that two of these men, two of these victims, had basically come with Bruce McArthur to landscape her property, that they seemingly were temp day laborers for his way of escaping business. That one was funny and charming and quick witted. And I think she confessed to me that she liked him better than Bruce. The other man was I think had fallen hard times a little bit and he was I think he did the work. And she actually told me that she followed up with McArthur saying, was everything okay with him? Was he all right? She never got a reply and she kind of didn't even remember that little story until years later when she realized what had happened, and realized that her landscaper was the one to murder that man. So I think that that tough on her. I think that's part of the reason why she's still so invested in this story and why she wasn't quick to just sort of move on. I think she wanted to see this through and I think it's understandable.

AMT: Who are we going to hear from next week when that sentencing hearing begins?

JUSTIN LING: We going to hear from the families and we are going to hear from the investigators. You know I think two of the groups of people who have been waiting a long time to finally air what their experiences have been very different perspectives. The police I think are eager to finally lay down this evidence and make sure that Bruce McArthur goes away for the rest of his of his life and that really will be what's decided next week, whether or not he'll be eligible for parole possibly before he dies or whether he will never leave a jail cell again. The families think will hopefully be cathartic for them to finally sort of talk about the loved ones they asked and the men they asked and address it to the man who took them away. So I know some family members will want to do that, some won't. And I think this is always a tough question in any criminal trial whether you want to get up on it and read out what happened, whether you want to submit a statement in writing, or whether or not you want to avoid things altogether. And I think you'll see a range of those options kind of exercise next week.

AMT: Has the system reached out to those people who might not be in Toronto or even in the country for victim impact?

JUSTIN LING: As I understand it, yes. I mean even yesterday when McArthur entered his guilty pleas they had to view the telephone line. Brothers of Selim Esen, the seven men to be murdered who were able to [unintelligible]. I think they'll be given a chance to actually read those statements next week.

AMT: What about what we won't know because there is no trial?

JUSTIN LING: There's so many questions. I mean there won't be a chance to really dig into some of the evidence. And maybe that's for the best. Some of this evidence doesn't necessarily need a public hearing. What I think is needed is an understanding of how this investigation works, in a very thorough way. And without a full trial we won't get that unless there is a decision to hold a public inquiry. And I think this is the big question facing the city and the province now is whether or not there will be a public inquiry. We know after Pickton there was a very thorough inquiry that led to a series - I think more than a hundred very serious suggestion on how to handle missing persons cases, and how to stop a serial killer. Toronto Police unfortunately ignored many of those recommendations and you can draw a direct line between that failure and Bruce McArthur. So I think the debate will now begin about a public inquiry. Beyond that we don't know potentially if there's more victims. You know this is an open question and the police said yesterday just because Bruce McArthur's entered guilty pleas, doesn't mean the investigation is over. You heard detective Detective Dickinson say: "There's not a day goes by where I don't make some notes in my notebook about this case". There's 25 cold cases these are the cases we're looking at in the podcast. 25 cold cases going back to 1975.

AMT: And not all necessarily in Toronto, are they?

JUSTIN LING: Some of them are nearby, not all of them are necessarily gay men. There are a number of unsolved murders of gay men and that those are the ones are really honing in on. And there are ones that may involve Bruce McArthur, potentially could involve another serial killer who's never been identified or caught. Or just cases, I think, that need a second look. Cases that were ignored back then, much like McArthur's victims were ignored for so long. And I think it's imperative that we don’t move on just because there is a guilty plea here and police are doing it. We’re not doing it. And I think these are the questions that need to be kept in the spotlight so they don't get forgotten.

AMT: Okay and thanks for coming in.

JUSTIN LING: Absolutely.

AMT: Justin Ling, Toronto based journalist he's been reporting on his case for years. He is still investigating as you just heard. He's going to have a new CBC podcast on all angles of this. It's called Uncover the Village and it comes out in April and will let you know more as it comes out. Well since the arrest a year ago of Bruce McArthur, the family and friends of his victims have been searching for answers about why they were killed, why it took so long for police to realize they were dealing with a serial killer. So many questions. I'm joined by two people with ties to the victims. Nicole Borthwick was a friend of Andrew Kinsman, one of the men who was killed. Haran Vijayanathan is the executive director of the Alliance for South Asian AIDS prevention. He's been working with and supporting many of the families of the victims over the past year. They're both in our studio. Hi. Thank you both for coming in.

NICOLE BORTHWICK: Good morning. Thank you.

HARAN VIJAYANATHAN: Thank you.

AMT: Haran, I am going to start with you. We heard you at the top of the show today talking about the families. I know you met with members of the community last night. What's the mood? What are people telling you?

HARAN VIJAYANATHAN: I think just as Justin was saying earlier that there is a sense of relief then for most folks. And some people are angry that there isn't going to be a trial. And so we're not a homogenous community. Everyone is going to grieve differently. Everyone's going to experience things differently, and the information differently. But I think yesterday there was an opportunity that we wanted to create for people, just to come and share their thoughts and feelings. And we did that on January 16th. We did that yesterday, just so that people aren't feeling like they have to be alone to deal with in process some of the information.

AMT: It's a lot to process, to hear eight guilty pleas.

HARAN VIJAYANATHAN: Absolutely, and with the media talking about what was read out by the crown around the ligatures and being tied up and what they found. That's a lot of information coming at people all at once. So there just needs to be that ongoing support.

AMT: And you were at the courthouse yesterday.

HARAN VIJAYANATHAN: I was.

AMT: What was that like for you? What kind of emotion did you feel around you and what were you thinking as it happened?

HARAN VIJAYANATHAN: I think I get a big huge exhale of, wow, this is now done in terms of the guilty plea we don't have to call him the 'alleged serial killer' anymore and that we have a definite answer that he did it. I think in speaking with some of the families and one of the family members I did drive in myself and then talking with them. They are quite content that they don't have to have this long drawn out process or live for another year without knowing how he actually feels them and if he's going to plead or not, and not have to go through another three month process of a trial. So they're alleviated with that grief but again now it comes down to the victim impact statements. So people have to start to rewrite those stories and there's memories again. So that upsurge is going to happen and and they're just going to have to get that support to help them through.

NICOLE BORTHWICK: Hmm. Nicole Borthwick, as a friend of Andrew Kinsman, how do you feel - first of all - that you can now say without qualification that Bruce McArthur is guilty of that murder?

NICOLE BORTHWICK: I am relieved that he's been found guilty. I am kind of in a shock that it came down to this. My question is where was he six months? Where was he a year ago? And why didn't he come forward then?

AMT: And so the idea of not having a trial, what do you think of that? Because you know this precludes that.

NICOLE BORTHWICK: There's a lot of unanswered questions. There's a lot of questions that the community would have; particularly why? Where his head was at? Where his head space was at? What his thinking was? And his motive, what was his motive?

AMT: So you would have preferred to sit through a trial to learn more?

NICOLE BORTHWICK: I would have preferred not sit through a trial per se, but more like get answers.

AMT: Get it on the record kind of thing.

NICOLE BORTHWICK: Yes. Like where was his head's space? What was his motive? And why? You know why put me through so much grieve and so much anger that you would resort it's hard to do something so heinous?

AMT: You were friend of Andrew Kinsman. Tell us how you knew him.

NICOLE BORTHWICK: Yes. Andrew and I worked at a food bank for the Toronto people with his foundation. I work with Andrew for about a year in the food bank. Andrew was very kind hearted spirited man. He was large in stature but he was a heart of gold. He would give the shirt off back to anyone who needed it. He would sit with people that were grieving over a lost friend, or of struggle in finances, or just somebody touched [unintelligible]. He'd be there.

AMT: And you knew two of the other victims am I right?

NICOLE BORTHWICK: I do.

AMT: And so this is...

NICOLE BORTHWICK: This is tough. I knew Dean through a job that I had back in 2012. I'm delivering the 24 Hour paper. And I'd be one of the subway stops giving out papers. And he would shuffle back and forth you know occasionally, ask for a dime. He'd be like this nonviolent communicator who would be off on his own, and kind of making it through life. And he was a gentle soul. He was one who was very non-violent. He didn't have me problems in terms of any drug issues or anything. And he would be just one to talk to. You know, just come up and talk to you. The other person I knew from my church, Selim, was a member of MCC, which is Metropolitan Community Church, here in Toronto. And I would see him on occasional Sundays. We'd go up coffee. We'd go up for brunch. A group of people after the 11 o'clock service, we'd go up for lunch. And he'd often be around people that he knew, that he felt comfortable with.

AMT: I want to ask you guys to comment on this. After the guilty plea, Toronto Police Detective David Dickinson spoke to reporters and we heard a little bit of him. Let's listen to some of what he had to say.

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We, myself and the investigative team, are pleased that Mr. McArthur has to today, sparing the community and those who knew the victims a lengthy trial. I believe this is the best possible outcome for the families and the community.

AMT: Haran Vijayanathan what do the families need to know?

HARAN VIJAYANATHAN: As Nicole was speaking, it kind of resonates with white families have questions as well. But I think the police do a really good job and compassionate about speaking to the families of the victims, to explain instead of what happened and answer some of those questions as best as they can for sure, as well as the victim services and victim witness program within the courtrooms and with the crown as well. So I think the families get the answers that they need. They'll never know all of the details. I know everyone asks why and that's a normal natural question for all humans to understand what that motive was and where people's heads spaces are. But I don't think we'll ever get the true answer as to why. But you know through the whole process and listening to the sentencing on Monday we might get some of those answers. And again as time goes on a lot more those answers will come out to the public. I think it's just a matter of patiently waiting. And but again I do agree with Detective Dickinson in that I think this is the best possible outcome for families and communities, so that the length of time doesn't have to pass for people to get the answers, the immediate answer that they need.

AMT: It's worth remembering. This process has gone on and it was only in the fall when many families finally get the chance to bury their loved ones. You ended up receiving the remains of Dean Lisowick. You've been a real intermediary for some families.

HARAN VIJAYANATHAN: It was an honor to be a part of that process and offer that support for sure. And Dean, I mean I worked with the family and friends of Dean to put this on. I just took on because the paperwork can be a nightmare in terms of receiving remains and working with the system that way. So I said I'll take up the administrative piece but I'd still engage the family and friends to help plan the service and make sure that he's laid to rest with respect. And again with folks who can speak English or English is their second language, I was there to help support. And folks were coming in from out of town, helping negotiate or navigating the whole funeral director system and helping them plan their funerals. I think it was a real honor for me to do that on my personal time to support that. But again I think this is what we need to do as a community as well, just sort of step up and support people as they go through their grief while we wait for this process.

AMT: How do you think this has changed the community?

HARAN VIJAYANATHAN: You know I don’t know that it has a huge impact. I know it certainly raised to the top of people's awareness that violent, in very grotesque ways, does happen in our community and we do need to pay attention. But it is my hope that we continue to work together and have a lot of these conversations and try to build bridges between this system and community so that we can stop these things from happening sooner rather than later. And again, as Justin was saying, there were a lot of recommendations that came from the Pickton case that we should be able to start looking at, working with the police to implement here so that you know we catch people sooner than later.

AMT: And Nicole, we heard Justin say though that he is willing to see if there is a public inquiry called, specifically looking at the role of the police. How do you think the community's relationship with the police has changed in the past year?

NICOLE BORTHWICK: Frankly, think that a lot of the police response is PR. I think that, for PR purposes, Police are saying one thing but doing the exact opposite. This case, it doesn't take a year to figure out who the murderer is. It doesn't take a year to figure out how a case is closed, or a case is brought to trial. Even if there was something that was misguided, they won't admit to that. I have yet to hear an apology from the Toronto Police Services, how slow this process was. I understand that they need to to investigate thoroughly, but you know to have people, family, friends, loved ones in limbo for over a year isn't fair.

AMT: And, Haran, you have pointed out that this whole issue got more attention when Andrew Kinsman's disappearance happened. What was the lesson there?

HARAN VIJAYANATHAN: You know I think that when the first three men went missing, they were South Asia and Middle Eastern heritage. And so I think it really looks at the bias that exists in terms of how people investigate crimes. And to kind of piggyback on Nicole's point, in that if we paid a little bit more attention [unintelligible] project Houston was called at that time. And no evidence was found and it just went dormant and quiet after that. So there really wasn't a future investigation planned at that time. So it's really looking at racism, looking at homophobia, looking at classes in terms of how police investigate these missing persons. And that's why the independent review of missing persons is out right now, with Justice Epstein leading the charge on that. And that will give us a lot of those answers that people are looking for, in terms of what did take so long, what was dropped, what wasn't dropped, and how are missing persons reports in general being viewed by the police and some recommendations there are how to work through that. Then again whether there's a public inquiry called or not, that would give us my answers.

AMT: We have to leave it there. Thank you both for coming in and sharing your thoughts with us. It is important to hear you. Nicole Borthwick, friend of Andrew Kinsman one of the men killed by Bruce McArthur. Haran Vijayanathan is the executive director of the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention. He has been working with and supporting many of the families of the victims over the past year. They join me in our Toronto studio. Stay with us. The news is next and then our conversation on AI and the interaction with children continues. This is The Current.

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How should parents talk to their kids about AI devices?

Guest: Stefania Druga

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to the Current.

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AMT: Still to come.

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VOICE1: This is the main needle depot in all of North America. They have more syringes out here than all of North America.

VOICE2: We have water, ties, cookers. Probably everything you need except for the dope.

AMT: Some other voices you'll hear on a new podcast launching from Vancouver today about the war on drugs and told by drug users. I'll speak with the creator of Crackdown in half an hour. But first, how to treat your robot.

AMT: Following up on a discussion we brought you last week about our relationship with artificial intelligence in our homes. We were talking about whether it's okay to yell or swear at your AI digital assistant, you know, Alexa, Google home. We heard from Rachel Withers, a tech writer, who said her boyfriend's tendency to be rude to Alexa was a bit of a relationship red flag.

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Every time we entered his apartment he would bark a comment at Alexa, specifically the one that's fed into my brain forever is: "Alexa, lights-on". And as a lot of people pointed out to me since, like that's the way you're supposed to talk to these devices, you know. I just I don't think that's necessarily true. I think there's like this tone of speaking down to the device and it kind of showed something to me in his personality that was kind of ready to take on a commanding-demanding tone, once he was in a position of superiority over something.

AMT: Well the question we were exploring is whether the way we treat our technology says something about the way we treat each other. One of our guests draw an interesting parallel to the way we treat animals. He said People used to tolerate the abuse of dogs when they thought of them simply as tools for hunting and farming, rather than companion animals and members of the family. If you missed that conversation you can hear it on our website or on a podcast. Find it on the CBC Radio app. Now many of you who did hear it weighed in on Twitter.

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VOICE1: I've been yelling. I find it satisfying and calming, before entering the real world.

VOICE2: I swear at everyone. Alexa will not escape my wrath if I ask to play oldies music and she chooses something from the 80s. It doesn't mean I kick dogs though.

VOICE3: What worries me about how we talk down to a AI is that so many of them have women's voices and names. So really what is that teaching people, and kids, about the place of women?

VOICE4: I was once admonished by an A.I. I got frustrated trying to give directions to it used an expletive. And she asked: "Do you use that mouth to talk to your mother?" I only lost my cool, thought, once. Since then I am cordiale. Maybe AI can teach us something.

[Music]

AMT: What is with all those female voices and female names. We also heard from a listener named Terri Favro. She had her own story about the natural tendency we have to ascribe human characteristics to non-human technologies. That was certainly what her father was doing decades ago.

SOUNDCLIP

My dad fell in love with the first factory robot in 1960 it. The name robot was Unimate. It was basically a hydraulic arm on a programmable box. So it was kind of a combination of a mechanical device and very early computer programming. So my dad was an electrician and he was kind of the go to guy for you know solving problems at the plant that he worked at in St. Catharines which made car parts. So one day he came home from work and he was absolutely delighted to tell us that he'd been given a robot to do this one particularly dirty dangerous job and immediately started to anthropomorphize her - it was a she - right away. He always referred to her as Robbie, short for Roberta. And the way that he talked about her was interesting to me as a child because of course I was used to robots on shows like Lost in Space, and he talked about her as if she had a personality. And you know occasionally she would be naughty and act up and start throwing car parts across the plant floor at the human labor. So you know he'd come back and say: "You wouldn't believe what Robbie did today". It was interesting because this sort of fascination he had with Unimate/Robbie resulted in him trying to, with some success, building robots in our house. These days robots were separated in factories from the workers. But at that time they just said okay, robot, men, plonk. As a result of that the Unimate was just there doing this job that a man had done that up to this point, lifting these pieces of steering column of this machine over and over again. So it did sort of become like a co-worker. The other worker is around dad sometimes would make fun of that and then sort of tape little rude things to the back of the robot. So I don't think it was just him. I think it was all of them who were sort of working around this machine. It must have been very exciting to them at that time too, because this is the age of, again, the moonshots and all that. And Unimate looked much more like that type of technology than it did a machine at the time.

AMT: Toronto writer Terri Favro and the story of her dad's relationship with a robot. By the way her dad's story inspired Terri to write a book about how humans and robots relate. That's called Generation Robot and it came out last year. Now from robots to AI digital assistants we all tend to see at least some human like qualities in the machines with which we live. It is not solely the grownups who fall under that pattern. Kids are also getting used to talking to Alexa and Google home. Many parents are grappling with whether manners should be mandatory in those interactions. Winsome Brown is a Canadian actor living in New York with her husband and her daughters Maud and Philomena. She sat down to talk to them about living with Alexa.

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WINSOME BROWN: We are talking about our echo or Alexa, our surveillance device that we have in the kitchen.

[Alexa talking in the background]

WINSOME BROWN: Oh there she was. She was talking. She heard her name and she spoke. Maud, what do you used the Alexa for?

MAUD: I set alarms every day in the morning and I sometimes ask the weather and then the time when I don't want to stand up and check it on my watch, or my phone. And then I ask her to play music - it - to play music.

WINSOME BROWN: It's a question.

PHELOMENA: I don't say her also.

WINSOME BROWN: You don't say her.

PHELOMENA: It's not a real person. So how do you know if it's a boy or girl?

WINSOME BROWN: But we have some rules about how we speak to her. Girls, how do we speak to Echo?

MAUD: Apparently, according to you, we have say please and thank you.

PHELOMENA: We don't do that.

WINSOME BROWN: Why don't do that?

MAUD: There's no point.

PHELOMENA: It's a robot and it doesn’t have feelings.

WINSOME BROWN: But the thing that I try to teach you is that I think that our behaviour reflects not only on the person we're behaving towards, even if that entity is not a person but a computer, but it affects house and it reflects on our own self. So I think that treating Echo correctly is as important for us as it is for her.

AMT: My next guest has spent a lot of time thinking about how children and families interact with artificial intelligence devices. Stefania Druga is a research affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. She's develop something called Cognimates, a platform designed to teach kids more about artificial intelligence and how they can design it themselves. Stefania Druga is in Berlin, hi.

STEFANIA DRUGA: Hi.

AMT: What do you think of what you heard of Winsome Brown and her daughters talking about their relationship with echo or Alexa?

STEFANIA DRUGA: Yes, this this interaction and reflection is something that I came across as well during my studies, and the observations I've made of children and parents, seeing that the way they talk to the device actually transfers to the way they talk to their friends and families. So I very much agree with the mom in your segment who was saying that it reflects on ourselves, the way we speak, not only on the device or the person we're talking to.

AMT: Tell us more, because you have studied how children feel about AI entities. Tell me more about what you found.

STEFANIA DRUGA: Yes. So we ran a series of studies to see how children from three and a half years old to 14 year old perceived these smart devices and toys that are growing up with. And we saw that age makes a huge difference. So the younger student really were three and a half to six were not so sure if Alexa was smart, or if she's trustworthy. And all the children from six to 12, most of them would say they might because it has access to a lot of information. So this was the first study we published. And then we tried a little deeper into these questions. So we did a study where we also ask parents questions about the intelligence of robots and comparing a robot to a mouse. So like robotic intelligence with animal intelligence and with themselves when trying to solve a maze. And we saw how much you know parental, mental models, and even the way they talk influences the way kids talk, and the way kids perceive these devices. Most recently, as part of my thesis, I basically show that these perception changes when children actually programming Lexar they learn how to train their own AI model. So they learn how to teach a computer or a robot to recognize their gestures or recognize what they say or to play a game with them. So the more they understand actually where these answers coming from, where is this intelligence coming from, the more skeptical they would become and the more critical they would become of these devices.

AMT: Interesting. And you introduced the idea of Cognimates, designed to teach them a little more of what's actually going on as they interact. What they do with Cognimates?

STEFANIA DRUGA: Yes. So I actually I'm very excited because Cognimate isn’t only my brainchild. It is actually a product that was co-designed with the kids and the parents and undergrad student at MIT. So we all worked on it. Basically it's platform that is built on top of scratch. So it's block based programming language. It has many different libraries where kids can for example program Alexa where they can program their lights or they can make a game that reacts to the sentiment of what they're seeing, of their statements. But they can go even deeper. We build some libraries that are using IBM Watson for example. And they give lots of examples of pictures. Like if they want to meet the computer play rock-paper-scissors with them, they would take pictures of their hand and give examples to the computer: This is rock, this is paper, this is scissors. After a while the computer learn to recognize these gestures and can start to play the game with them. It's funny because overtime they are surprised to see: "Wow! I taught a computer. I thought only computers each us, but we can teach them too". So this agency really shifts from the device being the intelligent one, the computer and Alexa and the robots begin the smart ones, to the kids being the smart ones and having this collaboration with this AI toys and AI devices. Always on a base.

AMT: That's fascinating. So they understand that they have some control and that this is a machine.

STEFANIA DRUGA: Exactly. Exactly. And I think they also understand that basically when we say artificial intelligence there is nothing artificial about it. These algorithms, these data sets, they were all done by people. So when they understand that, they also become you know a bit more skeptical. Like what if this people made a mistake where, or what if you know - going that one example of rock-paper-scissors - what if I want to play with my friend, but he has a different skin tone and the computer doesn't recognize that, because I have had examples of that. But we want to play together. So we need to find a solution. So it brings down all this difficult questions of ethics of AI and bias to a level where it's actually understand them, and where they can see what we can change and what we can do and why it matters.

AMT: And you say they're more skeptical. Are they also less attached to it as a person or a being?

STEFANIA DRUGA: Absolutely. So we ask the same questions in the early evening of the study and at the end of the study. And I should say this was a longitudinal study and I think that's very important. It was six weeks. We ran workshops in public schools, in private schools, community centers with kids of different social economical backgrounds and different exposure to technology. And across the board, we saw that not only kids would become critical and fluent in knowing what questions to ask, or knowing how to program these different devices, but also it kind of you know demystify the social emotional aspect of these robots. In that beginning they would say: I am sure Alexa or Cosmorobot will remember me because I taught it my face``, but in afterwards they were like: "I am not sure will remember Leda because maybe someone would change set". So it really kind of like demystified this expressed motions or attachment that some of these devices express.

AMT: So what does that tell us about what we need to think about when we install these kinds of devices in our homes?

STEFANIA DRUGA: I think there's a fine line. Obviously we're working with kids and these types of activities and workshops and devices need to be fun, otherwise they get bored and they don’t want to you know play with them or program them or use them. So having a cute robot can be engaging, but I think there is a fine line where these devices shouldn't over-promise kids that they are extremely smart or they know how to answer all the questions. And we should, we should have a more honest conversation with the kids and say, this is a tool for you to play with, for you to learn with, for you to explore with, and here's like, here are the limitations of this device. So I think there is a lot of work to be done at many different levels. On one hand in terms of regulation. It should be made much more clear for parents and families what data these devices are collected, who has access to that data, for how long, what is legal in what is now legal. At the end of the day we're talking about kids, and I think it's very important to have a more clear regulation. In terms of design of these toys from a manufacturing perspective, very often you know it's hard for kids to know what's happening. Like some of these devices are very cute, but it's kind of like a Trojan horse. They have cameras. They can record what you're seeing. Sometimes they get hacked. We shouldn`t take them for granted, basically. I think there is a lot of work to be done in providing guidelines and advice to parents, because I do understand that parents are overwhelmed. Like there's so many new devices, new technologies and knowing how to help your kids at home, make meaningful use of this technology, can be hard.

AMT: So they should be trying to demystify what's really in there.

STEFANIA DRUGA: Absolutely.

AMT: So it sounds as if there are more important conversations we need to have beyond say please and thank you to the device.

STEFANIA DRUGA: Oh yes it is the starting point. I think what a lurk you know but this question is at the end of the day just allowing kids to program an Alexa and a social robot, is just a hook and a starting point for them to ask much more profound questions, about what differentiates us in the way we learn from the way these machines learn? What is unique about human intelligence? And what is unique about how they are solving problems, learning things? How will we collaborate with these devices in the future? What are the boundaries? How do we keep on defining those boundaries in inclusive conversations? And I really want and that's all a Gognimate and as the goal of my research. These are hard problems and at we should invite people from all backgrounds and all ages to be part of the conversation. So we should really democratize who has access to creating wit AI, to reading with AI. So it's not just you your typical programmer that makes all of these decisions.

AMT: You've been working in a number of different countries. How do parents attitudes vary about the situation?

STEFANIA DRUGA: Yes. I can tell you I'm just coming from a workshop right now here in Berlin in Germany. For example in Germany, parents are very very mindful of introducing these devices in their homes. They realize that changes everything. For example Alexei's now available in German but it's nowhere near as prevalent in the homes as it is in the U.S. And I think parents here have a different approach where they first want to make sure they understand how the device works and what the impact is on kids before they put it in their home. And I see that much more often in Germany than I did in U.S. Same in the Nordic countries like Sweden and Denmark. I think overall for the none English speaking countries people are still like nowadays exposed to this technologies because most of the voice assisstance and voice interfaces are mostly available in English at the moment.

AMT: Do you think the companies that make these AI devices are giving it a thought to how they'll be used by kids when they develop them?

STEFANIA DRUGA: Short answer, no. I do think there is enough societal pressure for big companies to start to put more effort into these questions. And for example companies like Mattel who were planning to launch Aristotle, which is an Alexa for kids. And they didn't do any research. They did talk to the parents of kids. And of course parents [unintelligible]. 15000 parents signed a petition and they had to pull the product off the market. At the same time, a couple of months later Amazon launched Alexa for kids which basically meant they put a colourful pouch against their same device and had it in the app market for kids skills. So I definitely think that they're not putting into effort. It's very hard to influence their decisions, not only on how they designed these devices, but also how they designed the tools were people like myself, or educators to be able to build applications on top of Alexa. So if I want to make a platform to allow kids to teach Alexa and program Alexa, I am very limited in what they can do because of how they design their back end and their infrastructure.

AMT: It sounds as if they should be mindful of the fact that the kids are going to learn to program and usurp them anyway.

STEFANIA DRUGA: Exactly.

AMT: Stefania Druga. Thanks for speaking with me today.

STEFANIA DRUGA: Thank you for having me.

AMT: Stefania Druga. She's a research affiliate at the MIT media lab. She's the founder of Hackidemia. And we reached her in Berlin. Now you heard her mention an AI device for kids called the Aristotle, that never did make it to market. The device was developed by Mattel. But after thousands of concerned parents signed a petition against it, the company abandoned the project. For a sense of just what they had in mind though, here is a report from Nick Summers. He is an editor at the technology website Engaged from 2017. He was previewing the Aristotle before the product release that never happened.

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We have had Amazon Echo, we've had Google home. Now we've got Aristotle, a new small speaker designed for kids. It's been developed by a company called Norby which is owned by Mattel. And so the crucial thing here is that it's promising to understand your child's language from the youngest age as it grows up throughout. It can read bedtime stories. It can help out of homework. It can play games. It can illuminates lights, so you've got a toddler for instance that wakes up in the middle of the night and starts crying, it can automatically turn on its favorite color for the lights. It can play some soothing sounds, maybe some white noise if that's what it prefers. And then grows with your child. So as it starts to want to know more about the world, the idea is this voice enabled assistance can be there for it every step of the way. So like a best friend, or baby sitter, or a tutor. It's going to be able to answer all of those pressing questions regardless of whether or not your house.

AMT: 2017. That was a report on the never released Aristotle AI assistant for kids. In our next half hour, a new podcast about war on drugs told from the perspectives of drug users. The creator of Crackdown Garth Mullins will join me next. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: Every Breath You Take by The Police[

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New podcast made by drug users aims to change how you think about addiction

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

We got an overdose. Careful. Watch His head. Doyle. Doyle. Hey buddy. Come on, you've got to stay with us bro.

AMT: We hear a lot of talk about Canada's opioid crisis. How often do we hear what it sounds like up close personal, like you just heard. That's audio from a new podcast launching from Vancouver today. It's called Crack Down and it takes on drug policy from a perspective most of us don't often hear. It is told by the drug users themselves. The show's editorial board puts it this way - and I'm quoting: "We know policy better than policymakers, law better than lawmakers, dosages better than pharmacists". That's the quote Garth Mullins is the show's host and creator. He is also a drug user and an activist. And he's with me from our Vancouver studio. Hi.

GARTH MULLINS: Hi Anna Maria.

AMT: What happened to Doyle, the person we just heard overdosing in that clip?

GARTH MULLINS: Well, luckily for him, he was at an overdose prevention site. So there were people right on hand and you heard them in the clip responding immediately. They know what to watch for, what's an overdose looks like and had an intervene with no oxygen to bring it back. So Doyle walked out of there just a few minutes later.

AMT: What's it like being surrounded by so many people, people you know, people you care about who are overdosing on drugs?

GARTH MULLINS: It's incredibly sad and incredibly frustrating all at the same time. So you know I tried to count up the amount of people that I'd lost to overdose and I got to about 50. And I did have to stop because you know it's very hard to remember each person that you've known, and some quite well, some you know since I was a kid almost, and realize that maybe half of the people that you came up with are gone now. This is my second overdose crisis. We had one here in Vancouver in the 90s. And it's never really stopped.

AMT: 50 people who overdosed.

GARTH MULLINS: That's right. Yes.

AMT: And sometimes it's not even clear what really happened, eh?

GARTH MULLINS: Yes in some cases, yes for sure, for sure you don't. And in some cases you or someone you know it's right there when it happens or close enough, but you know we didn't always have Naloxone available to us. So there have been times when people weren't able to respond.

AMT: I was just going to ask you. It's relatively new that it can be reversed, like you just described.

GARTH MULLINS: Well I said it was sad it was also frustrating. Part of the frustration is that Naloxone was first patented in 1961. And we've been trying to get a hold of it, for ourselves, for a generation. And more recently and last couple years now we have - like drug users people in the community - now have it, but we sure fought for it for a long time. And we even obtained - wouldn't say illegally - but outside of official sanction for a time. We had to try and make do with that.

AMT: Have you reversed an overdose yourself?

GARTH MULLINS: I have. But compared to I think of Laura shaver who she sits on our board and she's maybe, I asked her just yesterday, and she said or maybe 60 or 70. She's lost count.

AMT: And what have you learned from those experiences?

GARTH MULLINS: You learn your you're thankful for the skill. You wish more people had the skill. I sort of think Naloxone could be in every medicine cabinet in the country, every first aid kit. You also realise that this intervention is-- we do it in the last few heartbeats of someone's life potentially. You know and the real interventions need to be way upstream. Like when you break old another or ampule of Narcan or Naloxone there, drawled up, that snap is kind of demission of so many things have already failed.

AMT: And how would you take it up further, sooner?

GARTH MULLINS: Well the thing that's really killing people is contaminated drug supply. So people need a safe drug supply. You know we have pharmacies all over the country that have a safe non-lethal version of what's killing people right now. But it simply rules and policies that are prohibiting access to that.

AMT: Well we're going to talk more about that in a second. I want to get back to the experiences of reversing overdoses, of losing so many people. Why did you want to take those experiences and turn them into a podcast?

GARTH MULLINS: I guess because we sort of see the representations of drug users in the media. We're either sort of a scapegoated as destructive people who've made bad choices, or kind of pitied. We felt like those two modes don't really accurately reflect what we can bring. And the idea of drug user activism which may sound novel, but is actually somewhat old, doesn't really appear very often. And so when you think about the things that we've been talking about: safe injection sites, or overdose prevention sites, or Naloxone, or even clean needle distribution, all of those things were fought for and won by drug user activists. All of them were done outside of the law before they were officially sanctioned and funded. And that's really how history moves. That's how progress happens. Is that kind of civil disobedience and the kind of human rights struggle?

AMT: So what's missing from the coverage in the headlines now about the opioid crisis in Canada?

GARTH MULLINS: I think a really more fulsome view of who drug users are. So you know you'll see on every article there'll be a picture of a street maybe with an abandoned syringe in the gutter or something. And that gives the impression that drug users are inner-city Neighborhood gritty phenomenon when drug use is everywhere. You know in your church, in your community center, in your workplace, in your family. There's drug users all across the country in communities big and small. And so you may as well show a picture of someone mowing the lawn in a leafy suburb because that's just as accurate as the gritty inner-city kind of picture.

AMT: And we don't hear from those drug users.

GARTH MULLINS: Well that's right. I mean drug use is highly stigmatized. It's illegal. We are illegal. So of course - and I don't begrudge this - people keep quiet about it. Because you know you can get fired. You can get evicted. You can have all kinds of bad things happen to you. You know your family can cut you off. You can be alienated from contact with friends. There can be a lot of different kind of outcomes for somebody who comes up and says: 'Yeah I'm a drug user'. So the coverage tends to be in people who have no choice but to use it in places that are public. So that creates a stereotype of where drug use is in the country.

AMT: So if we heard from then listen to the range of people who are drug users, what would we hear that we don’t hear now?

GARTH MULLINS: I think you'll hear that the overdose crisis as a result of bad drug policy more than bad drugs. I think you'd hear of people who have a lot of experience with jail and policing and homelessness - you know with the 60s scoop and residential schools - but you'd also hear from people who have testified at the Supreme Court, testified to a parliamentary committees. We've met and lobbied prime ministers and international dignitaries. You'd hear of people who were really reclaiming some self-determination in their lives and the lives of the community. You'd hear from people also who were on the front lines and always have been saving lives and saving each other.

AMT: Now you're coming from a place of experience. So can we talk about you?

GARTH MULLINS: Oh yes for sure.

AMT: Okay so when did you start using drugs?

GARTH MULLINS: I guess when as a teenager that was heroin, injection heroin. I used it all the way through the last overdose crisis. So I am particularly lucky to still be here. And then for the last many years I've been on methadone.

AMT: And when it started, why did it start?

GARTH MULLINS: Well I guess several years ago I was diagnosed with PTSD. So it's got to do with trauma. You know it's hard to say, but I'm like so many people there is probably factors within me. There's probably environmental and systemic factors around me and it can be a lethal cocktail. For me anyway I was pretty alienated. I didn't like myself. I sort of felt a divide in myself, or at war with myself. And all that alienation was just like a roar in my ears, howling all the time. And then you drive on and you're like that background howl just disappears. And suddenly there's a switch to turn off a terrible feeling that you didn't even know it was possible to control. And of course that off, which is very temporary and it comes back pretty quick. But it's like I feel normal you know. I thought this must be what everybody else feels like all the time. This must be the world of well-adjusted citizens that I am surrounded by.

AMT: And so you want it again.

GARTH MULLINS: Yes for sure.

AMT: What lengths would you go do to get that feeling?

GARTH MULLINS: Ah well I mean pretty extreme lengths. When you're using through an overdose crisis, you're willing to take your life in your hands. And it's not a conscious decision, you know. It's just that when basically your past has trauma in it and your future is potentially dope sickness - withdrawal symptoms from not having opioids - you're kind of bounced on your eternal knife edge at the present. And those kind of threats like you know, maybe I could die, they become an abstraction.

AMT: And so you were in your late teens. How would you pay for it?

GARTH MULLINS: Yeah. I mean like I worked a lot of jobs. I did some more dodgy things at different times to pay for it. It's sort of the daily grind that really gets to you. And there was one time when I was sick, when I was in withdrawal, and I sold the boots off my feet at a pawn shop. And I didn't have time, in the urgency of my dope sickness, to go home and get sneakers or any alternative. So I was walking down the street, in November, in the rain, in socks. You know that wears on you. That has a cumulative effect, all of those kind of little interactions.

AMT: And when you got to that point - you know you said that you didn't like yourself and then when you when you started taking heroin you saw yourself differently, you felt okay - When you have to do that, when you have to sell the boots off your feet and walk away in your socks, what did you think of yourself? Did you scare yourself?

GARTH MULLINS: What a sad situation this is, you know. And so it can be a self-reinforcing cycle. You know you do something that kind of makes you dislike yourself more. And so it will increase your interest in turning off that dislike.

AMT: I'm going to play another clip from your podcasts trailer. This is a member of your show's editorial board. This as Simona Marsh.

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You know we are not going to quit doing the drugs. Like that's not even an option. If for all these straight people that think that's an option, well, go read your book again because in my book it doesn't say anywhere where I am quitting doing drugs. The thing is you can read all the books, until you lived it, you don't know it.

AMT: I think a lot of people were here that clip and think, if she doesn't want to stop how do we help her? How should we help her? Why should we help her?

GARTH MULLINS: We should ask Simona. I mean that's really the key, is you start with what the person thinks is success and what the person thinks is help. But I think Simona who speaks for a lot of people who are - and myself. You know. I did heroine on for a long time and you reach a certain point where you realise I probably won't quit tomorrow. Because you start off with this illusion, oh I'm going to kick tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll do it. Tomorrow will be the day. And after a few years of that not happening, you kind of have to be a little honest with yourself and realize maybe this won't happen tomorrow. So maybe the goal is actually to use less. Are use safer or to arrange your life in a more sustainable way. But the presumption that the goal is always abstinence, is always zero drugs and all they need is a few days are locked in a room to be sick and dry out. That's kind of a Nancy Reagan philosophy that has proved to be really harmful.

AMT: You use methadone now, am I right?

GARTH MULLINS: Uh hmm.

AMT: Will you ever be at a place where you can stop do you think?

GARTH MULLINS: I don’t know. Methadone has done right by me and I haven't used heroin for a long time. But method on it is an opioid. It's like a nicotine patch. It's trying to give you the same protection against the cravings, protection against that withdrawal symptom with a kind of a safer format.

AMT: Does it work for you?

GARTH MULLINS: Yes it does, it does work for me. So if I'm on Methadone for the rest of my life then fair enough.

AMT: And that's on prescription essentially right?

GARTH MULLINS: That's right. Yes.

AMT: Do you consider yourself an addict, or do you consider yourself recovered, or is that an inappropriate question?

GARTH MULLINS: I don't know. I mean I consider myself I guess a radio documentarian and an activist and a bunch of things. But, yes, I am a methadone patient or methadone user. I don’t know the sort of dichotomy of recovery it's a little funny, because you know we celebrate these people who are clean. And I have been at times, I think. But it implies that everybody else is dirty. And it sort of it breaks it down so that there's no room for a comment like Simona's. There's no room for a recognition that there is something less than abstinence, or something that's not a full complete cessation of using that's still less harmful and more helpful to people.

AMT: Well at the same time people who are clean, to use the language, celebrate themselves for that too, though, did they not?

GARTH MULLINS: Sure and so they should. It's I think it's starting with where the person is. You know that it's a complex situation. Maybe letting the individual define a little bit what is success can be helpful, because a lot of people have had no self-determination in their life. So giving a little bit in reducing the harms to it I think is really helpful.

AMT: Can everybody is methadone? Is it a choice? Was that a choice for you?

GARTH MULLINS: Well when I got on methadone it wasn't easy. There's a lot of barriers. You go to a clinic. They're mostly private. You often pay extra fees. They urine screen you all the time. You have to go to a pharmacy. Most methadone patients have to go every day to pick up the methadone. It's a very highly regimented system. So it creates barriers. It's not easy for everybody. You know people who are working and start early in the morning it can be hard for them. And I think that methadone itself doesn't work for everybody either. You know when I got a Methadone 15 years ago, the drugs were not as strong as they are now. They keep getting stronger. So you might need something stronger than methadone to reach to be capable substitute for the fat not contaminated drugs that people are doing now.

AMT: Harm reduction policies are slowly gaining traction with lawmakers over the past couple of decades. What's your sense of how the public acceptance of those policies have shifted?

GARTH MULLINS: Have they gained traction with lawmakers?

AMT: Some.

GARTH MULLINS: Huh. I mean certainly I hear from various levels of government that that, yes, harm reduction is part of the public policy and you know safe injection sites like inside are permitted now because of the Supreme Court. So if we literally - I mean law interpreters like the judges, then maybe. But I mean the federal government fought for 10 years to close insight. And the overdose prevention sites that have popped up across the country were started illegally first, eventually recognized. And then Doug Ford came to power in Ontario and capped them. And that's just one example of harm reduction, another, having needle distribution. That took Vancouver having the highest rates of HIV transmission in the industrialized world, and activism,, for people to realize out here, okay, maybe we need to allow some illegal distribution. So I see these things as incremental as fought for every time and not really yet one, not necessarily secured.

AMT: I've got another clip I want to play for you. This is again from your podcast. This is Dave Murray.

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We used to put pictures on the wall, like VANDU, of the people that we lost and try to keep up with it nowadays.

AMT: VANDU. What is VANDU?

GARTH MULLINS: Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users. This is basically a drug users union or kind of like an activist group that formed 20-22 years ago during the last overdose crisis. They are trying to fight for some of these reforms I was talking about.

AMT: What do you think it's going to take to prevent more of those deaths?

GARTH MULLINS: I fundamentally believe it will take decriminalization and a safe drug supply.

AMT: And safe supply; explain how it works.

GARTH MULLINS: All these contaminated drugs or a lot of them are opioids stimulants. These are all also things you can find in a pharmacy. And so it is possible to prescribe safe drugs to people. So Dave Murray, who we just heard from was part of a group of physicians that had the opportunity to be prescribed heroin, starting about eight years ago in a study, in a pilot project. And the results were incredibly successful. So for people who fail off of methadone, who didn't work well for them, maybe prescription heroin, you know clean pharmaceutical grade heroin - diacetylmorphine it's called - is the way. But unfortunately these studies never got rolled out to broader access. So it is still a small group of people like Dave from those studies that get that type of prescription heroin. It's not available to the people who are vulnerable to overdose and in this situation anywhere else. And it's the fact we haven't ruled that out. We haven't ruled out an idea left over from the last time we had this big problem. It kind of is amazing.

AMT: We spoke about a new safe supply pilot in Vancouver and our program a few weeks ago. How hopeful are you that that project will show success?

GARTH MULLINS: There's there's no question that it's an improvement. You know this is Dilaudid, injectable Dilaudid, and it's probably about two blocks from where the prescription heroin pilot is. It's 50 people. And I think it's an excellent start. I'm sure the studies are going to show that when people are able to access that they're able to reduce risks and harms in their life in other areas. Because every time you go to the clinic and you get some injectable Dilaudid that's pharmaceutical grade you don't have to go score off of the contaminated drug supply.

AMT: You know it's not hard to imagine the amounts political pushback to governments supplying opioids to heroin users on a wide scale. What makes you think it is a viable option?

GARTH MULLINS: Other countries have done it. Other places have done it before. It was a choice in I think 1908 to make opium illegal. And you know if you can make that choice you can make other choices. And I think also we elect politicians not to be cheerleaders but to be leaders. You elect them to try to be courageous and you know I guess that's kind of naive sounding, maybe it is, but that's what we should at least demand from them.

AMT: And yet we have a system where a lot of people can get drugs for-- like a whole bunch of drugs for a whole bunch of illnesses you have to pay for.

AMT: Well I mean this is where a carrot as an outlier as well. We need a national pharmacare program. There's no question about that. This is the unfinished work of Tommy Douglas. This is the unfinished work of public health care. But also opioids are cheap, really cheap, like those dilaudids we were talking about, used at their trial in Vancouver. They are something like 37 cents a pill. And if you don't treat something like this as a government, you'll pay for it in another area. So the cost of emergency room visits, the cost of policing, the cost of jails. All of these things that are incorrectly applied really to the overdose crisis. It costs way more. So it's incredibly efficient. If someone wants to be really crass and put dollar values on it, there's a massive savings to actually treating people properly.

AMT: Do you worry at all of those people who listen to you and think: "He's doing okay. It's not a big deal to take this drug when you are younger. He's on Methadone now. He's an activist. He's got a podcast".

GARTH MULLINS: Yes. I'm not sure that having a park cast is a big marker of success.

AMT: It depends on who you talked to. But you know what I'm saying.

GARTH MULLINS: I hope that it is.

AMT: You know what I'm saying, your functioning and your still here.

GARTH MULLINS: You know I'm not trying to be a role model for anybody. I think were also past the point of trying to scare people straight with spooky messages about drugs. I think people need honest communication.

AMT: But you do want to scare them a bit, right? It's not really in the end an answer, is it, to start in on heroin in your late teens?

GARTH MULLINS: You're going to hear people on this podcast that have uncomfortable messages. So you're going to hear people say things like 'heroin actually saved my life'. You know we talked to somebody who said you know they would have killed themselves but for the respite that they were able to get from opioids. So it's not always an easy answer. But I think the question that you're posing is what will scare people away from using drugs.

AMT: No. I am asking could you attract people to using drugs?

GARTH MULLINS: Yes. I think when you hear this part gas you’re not going to think this is a glorious path. The criminalization and marginalization of people is profound and deep. And I don't think anyone's going to say 'yes sign me up I want some extra helping of oppression and exploitation into my life'.

AMT: So you held a listening party for people in your community to hear the pied. How did that go?

GARTH MULLINS: Well it went great. We brought people together at the Vancouver Network of Drug Users, had about 35-40 people there. Played the pod [unintelligible]. You know I've never sat in a room full of people like just basically listening to the radio collectively before. And so I just I don’t know how that would go in any situation. And then here we are with a group of people who are like coming from all kinds of different walks of life, people who are great stimulant users, people who are abused users, methadone users, people who are drinkers. You bring all those people together in any situation and you know one might expect friction but we just had this kind of rapt attention. People really are interested in it. We had a great discussion afterwards.

AMT: What did they say? What kinds of things did you hear?

GARTH MULLINS: Somebody said to me: "Well do people really even listen to the radio?" And I said yes, good question.

AMT: Oh yes.

GARTH MULLINS: That's what I said. I hope that they do. I think they do. And you know somebody else said: "Well you got to make sure to keep it light sometimes, like keep it funny." And the guy's right who said that.

AMT: I'm guessing there's a whole bunch of humanity in there.

GARTH MULLINS: Definitely.

AMT: In those conversations, right, as people start talking about their views of it and how it affects them and what they are thinking.

GARTH MULLINS: You know when we as activists go to meet with government or some official, there's always this skepticism. There's always this disbelief. And I think drug users are very used to that, being sort of looked at a [unintelligible], not entirely believed. So we started trying to bring more research and science with us. And so we did in the podcast too. We have a science adviser and a partnership with the B.C. Centre on Substance Use. Part of the first episode that we played for folks was speaking to that guy and people really appreciate that.

AMT: Who'd you want to listen to that podcast? Who do you want to hear Crackdown?

GARTH MULLINS: Well you know we started with the community because we want to make sure we were representing people properly. But really we want anybody who's affected by the crisis to listen and that a lot of people. That's in the millions in this country, in the United States and in other places, tens of millions. And I know that's not really generally the numbers that's subscribed to a podcast. But we want it to be accessible to anybody who's connected, who's family member might be in there, or who are a drug user themselves. But you know I also really want Justin Trudeau to listen to it. I want Doug Ford do listen to it. I want the premier in my province, John Horgan, to listen to it. I think it's important that we start changing the conversation around this because it's not getting the results that we need yet.

AMT: And as you point out, I mean opioid use and other drugs touches more people then we tend to realise, but I'm guessing you are someone to reach out to those people they need to hear them. We all need to hear the voices of people who might have a stereotypical view of and might learn something.

GARTH MULLINS: Absolutely. You know part of this is how fortunate we are to be where we are because we have a drug user movement here. But people don’t have that collective opportunity in most places. Like most of my life and most of other drug users lives you're in isolation. You're doing this stuff primarily alone or with contact with a small group of people and you keep quiet about it. We want to be able to bring that to people and kind of break some of that isolation.

AMT: Garth it's good to talk to you. Thank you for taking the time.

GARTH MULLINS: Thanks very much Anna Maria.

AMT: Garth Mullon's is the creator and host of Crackdown, apodcast that launches today and he joined us in our Vancouver studio. That's our program for today. Stay with Radio One for Q. Sarah McLachlan has been named host of the 2019 Juno Awards. She'll be with Tom Power today for a career spanning interview. We are going to leave you today with a little more from the podcast Crackdown with Garth Mullins. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

If it's Russian roulette why do we do it?

[Music]

Many reasons. Avoiding dope sickness is a big one. Now I've done some dodgy things to avoid that dope sickness. Like this one time I'd spent the rent. There's an eviction notice on the door of my apartment and I'm dope sick. Cold chemical sweat is dripping down my back. At a pawn shop, not far from here, I sell the boots off my feet. Wet November pavement seeping up through my socks was just the price of doing business that day. Drugs can [unintelligible] out, if just from mourning, the trauma of colonisation, or partner's violence, or the drudgery of work, or the terror of homelessness, or the brutality of racism. Drugs can dull the pain of injuries we got on the job. And also, drugs just feel good.

[Seagulls’ sounds]

[Music: Theme]

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Wednesday January 30, 2019 Full Transcript

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