Big purpose: UVic students move the needle on harm reduction
January 24, 2025

Dennis Hore and Bruce Wallace, a chemist and a social worker, literally worked on opposite sides of the campus when they were introduced by UVic’s Research Partnerships unit in April 2017.
One year earlier, illicit drug overdose had been declared a public health emergency in BC, and Wallace and Hore’s original idea was that people could bring in street drugs and have samples tested for adulterants, or substances that could prove toxic or deadly if consumed unknowingly or in the wrong amounts. Now, the project they named Substance operates out of a storefront on the edge of downtown Victoria with a highly engaged team that combines science and service.
From the beginning, Hore and Wallace brought UVic students together into a single interdisciplinary project that had people from chemistry, computer science, social work, public health and more working together every day.
Rory Hills was a biochemistry undergraduate, doing “small things,” like developing a user interface for lasers, for chemistry professor Dennis Hore. They were trying to apply that interface to an inexpensive Raman spectrometer, Hills explains.
At the same time, Hore and social work professor Bruce Wallace were creating a program that used scientific instruments, like a Raman spectrometer, to quickly and inexpensively identify the chemical components of street drugs. Their goal was to provide that information in real time to people who use drugs and, they hoped, reduce the incidence of poisonings and deaths in the midst of the province’s toxic-drug crisis. Hore and Wallace eventually named their program Substance.
That was 2018. After founders Hore and Wallace, Hills was one of the first people on board the innovative project.
“I was lucky to be involved so early,” says Hills, now a Rhodes Scholar working on vaccines at Cambridge. “I wore a huge number of hats and got to experience everything.”
Along with gaining skills in chemistry and programming instruments, Hills credits Substance with providing “greater insight into my community, into people and stories I had been shielded from.”
By meeting individuals who used Substance’s service, Hills says, “I gained a sense that I could make some small difference, be part of the good fight.”
That refrain is common amongst people who work with Substance.
Redefining research
As a third-year chemistry student, Ashley Larnder saw a posting for a last-minute co-op position. To get a reprieve from classes for a term, she applied. The job changed both her mind and her career trajectory.
“I have always been interested in health care,” she says. “You really get to work with people and there are so many aspects to it. I don’t want to be in a lab all the time and I thought that’s what research was.”
But Hore, Wallace and Substance shifted her understanding.
Wallace encouraged Larnder to keep a journal of her personal experiences at Substance, which has since been published. As safer supply initiatives emerged, Larnder and a pharmacist on the team saw a need to share with prescribers how opioids in the safe supply compared to the average concentrations of opioids found in the illicit supply. In fact, her experience with Substance led her to a PhD in epidemiology, where some of her work has looked at the increased spread of infectious diseases in low-income populations and people with substance use disorder, though her primary research is studying the gut microbiome and its effects on estrogen levels, which in turn alter breast cancer risk.
“[Substance] showed me what research can mean,” Larnder says. “On-the-ground, applied research.”
Back in 2017, Lea Gozdzialski had worked in Hore’s lab investigating how protein molecules attach to surfaces. She was a highly motivated scientist, and Hore spoke to her about joining his group as a graduate student.
But, she says, “I didn’t love lab work. I felt disconnected from the community, from people.”
So Hore told her about this other project, then in its very early stages. Gozdzialski had long been interested in health care and community work and with this, she says, “the stars just aligned."
She loved the variety, the multidiscipinarity of it: chemistry, harm reduction, computer programming.
“I never thought I’d be a coder,” she says, “but it’s my favourite part of what I do.”
Sharing the wealth – of knowledge
Gozdzialski gained, she reflects now, “such perspective on personal autonomy for everyone. It’s a huge thing in harm reduction: accepting everyone’s path. I’ve made amazing connections and learned so much.”
She was intent on engaging as many people as possible with the knowledge she was acquiring. In late 2022, she initiated Teaching Days to share with the people who use Substance’s services the science behind them. Analyzing the drug they’ve purchased on the street, they see first-hand how an infrared spectrometer compares the makeup of their sample to a library of known substances. A year and a half later, the project is creating a dedicated space in the building for people to peek behind the curtain and learn a bit about the science and technology that is helping them and so many others stay a bit safer.
Gozdzialski finished her PhD in chemistry in late 2023 and is now expanding the software and data sharing so that the advances Substance is making can be used in other facilities and regions. The project, in fact, is influential around the world, from Scotland and England to Australia.
A bigger picture
Julia Levy, another chemistry student and Substance alum, started as a volunteer in 2019 when it was still a small operation. After the Covid shutdowns lifted, she returned as an employee. Now a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, she has found another opportunity to apply science to service: she served on the first shift at The Loop, a new monthly drug-checking service in Bristol, England.
“The work I did at Substance,” she says, “has been a huge through-line for me. It’s the best job I ever worked at.”
She says she’s not a “chemist-chemist” although she’s recently completed an MSc in theoretical and computational chemistry and is currently working toward a Master’s in Modelling for Global Health. The international aspect of harm reduction interests her: supply and supply chain, for example.
“I want to do something about the way policy affects trans people and people who use drugs,” she says. “I will be thinking about ‘How can I best make change? Where? What am I best at?’”
Wallace and Hore, Hills and Larnder, Gozdzialski and Levy are outstanding people. Along with their world-class disciplinary expertise, each of them also exemplifies person-centred, big-picture thinking.
“Substance is doing something meaningful,” Levy says. “I don’t know how I can best contribute to society, but I do know I want to serve.”
All four of the former students have said the same thing, which Hills sums up.
“Substance gave me tangible proof,” he says, “that you can use science to benefit people.”
Rachel Goldsworthy