Alex Betsos
About Alex Betsos
Alex is trained as a cultural anthropologist with an interest in “science and technology studies”, namely, how knowledge & science are embedded within certain drug practices, and the wider range of issues of knowledge that directly impact people who use drugs. They currently work at the BC Centre on Substance Use as the “Peer Research Coordinator” for Dr.’s Jade Boyd & Ryan McNeil, doing research related to the overdose crisis. Alex has also used their past research/harm reduction work looking at drug checking to try to create open source tools for harm reduction organizations and people who use drugs to explore drug checking results.
Over the past several years, Alex co-founded their own harm reduction group, known as Karmik, which provided festival and nightlife harm reduction out of Vancouver from 2014-2017, Alex currently sits on the Board of Directors for the new Karmik non-profit, to help them get the harm reduction project back off the ground once COVID-19 allows for nightlife and festival HR again. Alex is also outgoing from the Board of Directors for Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, where they have been the International Representative since 2017.