Pubdate: Wed, 12 Aug 2015
Source: Red Deer Advocate (CN AB)
Copyright: 2015 Black Press
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/QU97nuCm
Website: http://www.reddeeradvocate.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2492
Author: Greg Neiman

IGNORING A SIMPLE SOLUTION

There's no such thing as a "normal" day in Vancouver's drug scene, but
last Sunday must have broken all records for abnormality. In that one
day, there were 16 potentially lethal overdoses - at least those that
made it into the official record. In one hour alone, there were six.

The drug involved? It was a pink concoction of heroin, mixed with
fentanyl.

Fentanyl is deadly - it's a painkiller hundreds of times more powerful
than heroin and 80 times more powerful than Oxycontin, which is sold
on the streets in fake form as green pills that contain fentanyl.

You can buy them in Red Deer, if you know the right (wrong) people.
And we know that at least six people in Red Deer have been killed by
fentanyl - or their drug dealer, depending on how you look at things.

The line between getting high on fentanyl and being dead on fentanyl
is extremely narrow. But it is cheap for drug cartels to buy in bulk
overseas, easy to mix with other substances, and to press into pills
and distribute.

An overdose is easy to spot and easy to treat, if someone calls for
help in time. A drug called Naloxone, sold as Narcan, can be injected
and within minutes it binds to the gateway cells in the brain than
take in opiates, blocking opiates from having any effect.

In the case of a fentanyl overdose, blocking the effect means the drug
user continues to breathe and continues to have a heartbeat. Pretty
simple.

The federal government continues to oppose at every opportunity
community efforts to reduce the harm of drug addiction and to save the
lives of people who have overdosed. Right up to the Supreme Court,
which ruled unanimously that Vancouver's safe injection program,
Insite, must be afforded exemption from drug enforcement laws in order
to operate.

As a result, although people do overdose on their illegal drugs at
Insite, thus far, none of them has died from it. That's a pretty
amazing accomplishment.

Canada, it seems, is one of the top countries in the world for opiate
abuse. And with the arrival of fentanyl in bulk on our shores over the
past couple of years, B.C. has experienced overdose deaths at a rate
of about two deaths every three days. In Alberta, the overdose rate in
2014 was reported at roughly one every three days.

An overdose from fentanyl is easily treated with Narcan at a harm
reduction site.

Many would think these deaths are among street-level addicts. As if
that makes it easy for us to look the other way. The experts who
follow this are quick to point out that this is not the real picture.

Regular middle class teens, well rounded kids with a great future, go
to a party and are given a green pill they believe is Oxycontin. Jack
Bodie, 17, died from that mistake.

Amelia and Hardy Leighton, caring parents of a two-year-old, thought
they'd inhale a recreational drug one evening. Not a good couple
activity; it was fentanyl, and they died.

Some 11,600 tabs of fentanyl were reported seized in a police raid in
Calgary earlier this year. You can safely bet a portion of them were
bound for sale in Red Deer. Forty tabs were seized in Lacombe not too
long ago. Each one could be a potential death.

The staff at Insite in Vancouver describe it this way. Fentanyl is
bought as a bulk powder by drug gangs, and mixed down with other stuff
in a bathtub and the appropriate green or red dye is added. It is then
pressed into pills and sold.

Each pill is like a chocolate chip cookie. Some cookies have lots of
chocolate (fentanyl) chips in them, some have just a few. Pick the
wrong cookie and you die.

Jennifer Vanderschaege, executive director of the AIDS network in Red
Deer, said in an interview earlier this year that a big barrier to
people reporting a friend's overdose is fear of exposure, and fear of
legal reprisal. This is highly illegal activity we're talking about
here, after all.

She'd like to see a law in the books like a Good Samaritan law, where
people could call authorities and save a friend's life without having
to fear exposure or reprisal.

Adrienne Smith of Pivot Legal Services in Vancouver would like to see
the complete repeal of Bill C-2, the federal Respect for Communities
Act.

The Supreme Court unanimously decided that Insite saves lives and
should therefore get its legal exemption to operate.

The feds came out with Bill C-2 and said, basically: Sure, we'll give
you your exemption, but you have to reapply for it every year, and
every year anyone in the community and in law enforcement can come out
and speak against it during a rigorous review process.

Insite still operates precariously under Bill C-2, but the review
process bar is so high, it's highly unlikely any other city could get
a life-saving site like Insite. This, during a poisonous fentanyl
crisis that kills people across the country every day.

Even in the unlikely event the Conservatives are defeated in the Oct.
19 election, a new federal health minister cannot issue another
licence for a safe injection site, until Bill C-2 is repealed. The
legal process just prohibits doing that.

Probably, some time or other in this long election campaign, someone
will bring this to greater public attention. Saving lives should
matter, during an election.
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MAP posted-by: Matt