News & events

This year’s recipient of the Harold Johnson Award is Bryany Denning. Join us in presenting her with this award and hear more about her work on alcohol policy in the Northwest Territories at 10am Wednesday, June 4 on campus at UVic.

A new report from Sarah Littlechild uses auto-ethnographic and Indigenous approaches to consider how decolonial and Indigenous harm reduction could apply to drug checking.

What does harm reduction look like in a Colombian context? Julian Quintero and Vanessa Morris, co-directors of the Colombian non-profit Acción Técnica Social (ATS), met with Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research (CISUR) researchers in October 2024 to share their perspectives on the state of harm reduction in Colombia and emerging trends from the country.

British Columbians are consuming less alcohol than they have since the turn of the millennium.

Congrats to Drs. Bruce Wallace and Dennis Hore for winning the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia (CUFA BC) Ehor Boyanowsky Academic of the Year Award for their work on the Substance drug checking project.

Learn more about Substance Drug Checking Project alumni.

Researchers from UVic’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research (CISUR) are launching KnowAlcohol.ca, a tool and calculator designed to generate personalized estimates of the potential health risks related to an individual’s alcohol use—and the benefits of cutting back.

CISUR is excited to welcome Jennifer Lavalley and Taylor Fleming, two 2024 Michael Smith Health Research BC Research Trainees. Jennifer Lavalley is a Nêhiyaw-Saulteaux Métis scholar from Regina, SK (Treaty 4 territory) and a registered member of Piapot First Nation. She currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia (BC), located on the unceded and occupied territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-waututh Nations, where she has been working in qualitative and health research with Indigenous Peoples who use illicit drugs (IPWUID) in the Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. Her research background concerns questions of substance use, harm reduction, resurgence, and Indigenous and decolonial methodologies. She is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Victoria at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research and the Centre for Indigenous Research and Community-Led Engagement under the co-supervision of Drs. Bruce Wallace and Sarah Hunt. Jennifer’s postdoctoral research project seeks to characterize the needs and perspectives of IPWUID in accessing innovative drug checking technologies to develop Indigenous centered and culturally safe drug checking technologies and services. Dr. Taylor Fleming is a qualitative health researcher whose work uses community-based methods to advance the health and wellbeing of people who use drugs and who experience housing vulnerability. Having previously completed her MPH (2017) at Simon Fraser University, Taylor recently completed her PhD (2024) at the University of British Columbia, where she studied how marginal housing environments shape overdose vulnerability. Under the supervision of Dr. Marilou Gagnon at the University of Victoria and the Canadian Institute of Substance Use Research, her postdoctoral research fellowship aims to characterize the experiences of people experiencing homelessness in relation to drug decriminalization/recriminalization in BC, document resulting health and social harms, and develop policy-relevant approach to reduce these harms. Learn more about the 2024 Research Trainee recipients.

This past fiscal year, CISUR welcomed a new advisory board chair, celebrated 20 years as a research centre, and completed a new strategic plan. Read all about it in our latest Annual Report.

University of Victoria Nursing PhD student Nancy Henderson has seen first-hand how access to a safer supply can change the lives of people who use drugs.

A new estimate of alcohol harms in New Zealand is the latest analysis powered by the International Model of Alcohol Harms and Policies (InterMAHP), an open access alcohol harms estimator and policy scenario modeler developed by CISUR researchers. CISUR scientist Adam Sherk was a co-author on the report, led by researchers at the University of Otago in Wellington. The multi-year program of research found that 901 deaths and 29,282 hospitalizations were attributable to alcohol annually and has received attention in the New Zealand press. InterMAHP was developed by Sherk as part of his PhD research at UVic and has been used to power similar analyses in Canada, Japan, Sweden and Finland.

Yvonne is a member of the Snuneymuxw First Nation who has dedicated 29 years of her professional life to leading Tsow-Tun Le Lum NNADAP Treatment Center, retiring in June 2015. Tsow-Tun Le Lum has long been acknowledged as an innovator and leader in treatment for First Nations people.

After record highs during the early days of COVID, per capita alcohol consumption in BC has fallen for the second straight year in a row. However, it still remains well above the Canadian average.

Read CISUR's annual report for the 2022/23 fiscal year.

Dan Reist, longtime CISUR scientist and head of our Knowledge Exchange division, passed away September 12 after a battle with cancer.

New national guidance to help people with severe alcohol addiction has been published by the BC Centre on Substance Use in partnership with the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research. The first-ever Canadian guidance for Managed Alcohol Programs (MAPs) has been developed to support scaling up of these evidence-based programs for treating severe alcohol use disorder (AUD).

A CISUR-led project reveals worsening alcohol policy grades across the country and proposed detailed steps to get Canada back on track.

New guidelines, developed by CISUR researchers and partners at SFU and the Victoria Foundry Youth Clinic. are intended to offer evidence-based and youth-led strategies to help young people who use cannabis. The variety of evidence supporting these guidelines and the focus on youths’ lived experience provides nuanced, practical, and feasible strategies to help mitigate the harms of cannabis while maximizing the event-level benefits.

In the most recent year of our BC Alcohol and Other Drug (AOD) Monitoring Project data (2021/22), BC recorded a decrease of 0.13L in age 15+ per capita ethanol consumption, down to 9.19L from 9.32L. While this year marks a decrease to 2019/20 levels of consumption after a record high year in 2020/2021, consumption levels in BC based on AOD monitoring remain well above the Canadian average of 475 SDs per capita.

Dr. Marilou Gagnon has won the Provost’s Advocacy and Activism Awards in Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

Three researchers at UVic’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research—director Tim Naimi and scientists Adam Sherk and Tim Stockwell—were part of an expert panel that helped create the new Canadian Guidance on Alcohol and Health.

A new toolkit developed by researchers at CISUR, Vancouver Coastal Health, UBC and BC Centre on Substance Use is designed to make public bathrooms safer for people who use substances and reduce overdose risk.

Dr. Jaime Arredondo Sanchez Lira is the new Canada Research Chair in Substance Use and Health Policy Research, one of three new UVic CRCs.

British Columbians drank more alcohol during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic than they have in the past 20 years, according to the latest analysis of BC alcohol sales data from the University of Victoria’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research (CISUR).

CISUR has created a new evidence-based, public-health-oriented guide for municipalities considering allowing drinking in their public outdoor spaces.

CISUR scientist and former assistant director Scott Macdonald has published Cannabis Crashes: Myths and Truths, a new book looking at the epidemiological evidence supports Canada's new cannabis-impaired driving laws. Download a free copy from our site.

Cannabis products in BC are getting cheaper and more potent, and its year-over-year sales have doubled between 2019 and 2020, according to a new report from the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research (CISUR). In 2020, sales added up to nearly 8,000 kg of THC—equivalent to approximately 400 million joints (at 20mg of THC each) and accounted for about $290 million in gross revenue.

CISUR Scientist and Nursing professor Dr. Bernie Pauly has won the 2021 Canadian Public Health Association's Ron Draper Health Promotion Award.

CISUR Director Tim Naimi co-authors this blog post for BMC Public Health on the relationship between alcohol and firearm policies and suicide rates in the US.