A B.C. school district is investigating after a guest speaker appears to have ended their presentation by handing out “safer snorting kits” to assembled teenagers.
The kit includes straws and wallet-sized cards for cutting powdered drugs into snortable lines — as well as a booklet on “staying safe when you’re snorting.”
“Have condoms and lube with you. You may want to have sex while high,” reads one tip. Another advises the drug user to decorate their snorting equipment. “Adding a personal touch to your snorting equipment will help you better recognize your own when using with others,” it reads.
The booklet also notes the wide variety of drugs that can be consumed via snorting, from cocaine to crystal meth and even fentanyl and ketamine.
“You may be new to snorting drugs or have snorted drugs for many years. Either way, this resource has something for you,” reads an introduction.
The kit’s distribution to minors was first brought to light by conservative commentator Aaron Gunn. In a Saturday tweet that has since garnered more than 600,000 views, Gunn included images of the kit, saying it had been handed out at a high school in the Cowichan Valley — a region just north of the provincial capital of Victoria.
“Today in British Columbia … they are handing out ‘safer snorting’ kits to children as young as 15,” he wrote.
In a series of social media statements, the Cowichan Valley School District confirmed the basics of Gunn’s story, but said the kit had been distributed by a “third party” and was not in keeping with district policy.
“We were recently made aware of materials that were left at one of our school sites from a third-party harm reduction and drug addiction presentation that we do not consider school or age appropriate,” wrote the district on Sunday, adding that it was undertaking a “full investigation” of its policies regarding third-party presentations.
The Safer Snorting booklet at the centre of the controversy is manufactured and distributed by the Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange (CATIE), a group largely funded by government grants, including from the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Ontario Ministry of Health.
The province-run BC Centre for Disease Control, meanwhile, offers bulk shipments of “harm reduction supplies,” including syringes, tourniquets, flavoured condoms, pipes and snorting straws. Their most recent supply requisition form offers up snorting straws in bags of 250 in one of four colours.
In 2021, the Centre stated that it was “pleased” to announce that drug snorting straws would now be offered in biodegradable paper rather than single-use plastic, which was deemed to be more environmentally harmful.
While free distribution of drug paraphernalia may not be standard practice at Canadian public schools, it’s an entirely different story at the post-secondary level.
Last year, a York University student obtained 1.2 million views for a TikTok post featuring a “safer snorting kit” handed out to students, joking that the Toronto school was handing out “coke kits.”
The University of Victoria maintains an on-campus Harm Reduction Centre offering free, no limit, no-questions-asked packages of “safer snorting supplies,” “safer injection supplies” and “safer smoking supplies.”
“We won’t ask you for ID when you order or pick up your supplies. Plus, supplies come in non-identifiable packaging,” notes the Centre, which also encourages orders to be made via an alias.
Although the service is ostensibly reserved only for registered UVic students, the Harm Reduction Centre’s only check of student status is a single, anonymous online check box.
This is not the first time that a B.C. school has had a problem with a “third party” invited to speak to students. In March, a public health nurse invited to speak to grade eight students at a Fort Nelson, B.C., school handed out cards containing descriptions of extreme sex acts such as “snowballing” and “felching.”
“A hole in a wall intended to have anonymous sex through,” read a “glory hole” card distributed to one student.
