Quality checks of illicit drugs is one way, writes Kenneth Tupper. In recent years across B.C., a public-health tragedy has resulted in thousands of preventable deaths from street drugs containing powerful opioids such as fentanyl or its analogs. Toxicity from adulteration has occurred not just in the heroin supply, but also in stimulants, club drugs and counterfeit pills. Border agents and police have tried to reduce or disrupt the supply, but they have had little success in stemming the tide of illicit drug importation and consequent deaths. [continues 751 words]
Any overdose death is a tragedy. It's a preventable death and I consider it my duty as mayor to ensure that the City of Toronto is doing everything it can to help prevent those tragedies. Each person who dies from an overdose is someone's son, daughter, friend or loved one. They are human beings and they should not be abandoned by society due to a particular addiction. I'm proud to have the women and men of Toronto's public service helping me in the fight against the overdose epidemic. [continues 561 words]
If half a dozen deaths in Toronto last week were likely attributable to fatal opioid-related overdoses, how many do you think would have died if those drugs were legal? Fewer? I don't see the logic in that. Easier access to drugs and no criminal liability wouldn't discourage use, surely. And we're not talking here about a mild mind-bending substance such as pot, which is to become decriminalized in Canada next year. Still stupid - dumb-downing of the populace . . . but it is the consensus will of the nation - because we seem to be just fine with the stupefying effect of "recreational" marijuana and hash despite all the evidence of young lives going off the rails when teenagers toked to the gills lose interest in school and sports and healthy activities. [continues 920 words]
Mihevc misses the irony in his drug stance When the truth came out about then-mayor Rob Ford's crack cocaine use in late October of 2013, 26-year NDP councillor Joe Mihevc quickly joined the queue of councillors and media pundits who savaged him. In fact, in one interview on Oct. 31 of that year, Mihevc claimed that Torontonians were "shocked and disappointed" because Ford "clearly has an addiction issue of one form or another" and associates with the "wrong people" (meaning, drug dealers). [continues 579 words]
TORONTO - The swaying man stood in front of the convenience store, his head drooping near his knees, a bag of ladies' jeans in one hand. The pants retailed for $ 35 apiece, he said, but he'd take $10 for the lot. A prospective customer checked out the bag. The security tags were still on the pants. Plus, he noted, they were too small for his girlfriend. He eyed the salesman, struggling now. "He needs a hit," he said. "He's sick." [continues 779 words]
News that an Ottawa group is moving to start an opioid-substitution program - a form of supervised injection project - for city addicts is being applauded by another harm-reduction group that says it wants to follow suit. Meanwhile, city police and the local city councillor say they need to find out more about the new program before commenting on it. Ottawa Inner City Health is a not-for-profit that receives some provincial funding. It told the Citizen this week it wants to have a managed-opioid program running at the Shepherds of Good Hope in the ByWard Market by September. [continues 510 words]
Last weekend was a particularly dangerous one for opioid users in Toronto. It was so perilous, in fact, that Toronto police put out a safety alert after the city saw four drug-related deaths and 20 overdoses in just two days. Authorities believe the deaths and overdoses were from heroin laced with fentanyl, an opioid that is 50 times stronger than heroin. Sadly, things did not get better from there. On Tuesday the bodies of two teenage girls were found in an Etobicoke condominium. Police suspect they, too, died of overdoses. [continues 853 words]
Wrong-headed! Coun. Joe Cressy must have been licking his lips with glee Thursday. The recent spike in opioid overdoses in the city would garner him more media - and the NDPer just loves media attention especially when he can blather on about the fact that more public money is needed for (insert affordable housing, bike lanes here), or, as he claimed Thursday, the "escalating drug crisis." Since he'd already informed us before he guilted the mayor and council into approving three new harm reduction (aka feed addicts their poisons, but safely) sites last summer that there'd been a drug crisis in the city for the last 10 years, Cressy had to insert "escalating" to make the crisis seem, well, really crisis-like. [continues 510 words]
The federal government has approved the first supervised consumption site in Victoria for illicit drug users, but it will be at least a year before it opens. "This is going to save lives and take us beyond what our overdose prevention sites are doing," said Dr. Richard Stanwick, chief medical officer for Island Health. "Now they won't be a stop-gap measure, they are a bridge." The site approved by Health Canada is at 941 Pandora Ave. and will be called the Pandora Community Health and Wellness Centre. It's next to Our Place Society, which offers various services to Victoria's vulnerable citizens. [continues 498 words]
Shirley Jones said she was devastated to learn that three young men in her family from the Tseshaht First Nation in Port Alberni died in recent weeks from suspected fentanyl overdoses. "It's heart-wrenching living this [crisis] at work and then hearing about these young people in my mother's family," said Jones, who is a custodian at Our Place Society on Pandora Avenue. An overdose-prevention site has operated at the site since 2016. "Even here, I've seen young natives who were chronic alcoholics die from overdoses, and I had no idea they even used," she said. "It was hidden." [continues 504 words]
I've got to say that in my years of covering city hall, I've never seen Mayor Gregor Robertson cry. He almost did Wednesday. He shifted in his chair in council chambers, made one of those faces people make before the tears roll, then paused mid-sentence. "There's a loss of hopeĀ " The mayor was referring to the drug overdose crisis and the mounting death toll. He had just heard from city staff that 216 people in Vancouver this year have died of a suspected overdose. [continues 780 words]
As the opioid crisis worsens, the more we learn about why people are dying. One thing is evident: the drug supply is becoming more toxic. The deadly drug fentanyl is being detected in more than 72 per cent of all overdose deaths in British Columbia. Two years ago, it was found in only 29 per cent; two years before that, just 15 per cent. While untold fatal overdoses have been prevented by first responders, other health-care providers, and peer groups, the increasingly poisonous drug supply is clearly undermining the efforts to reduce overdose deaths. [continues 485 words]
New approach is needed to tackle the overdose epidemic, writes Evan Wood. We're now more than a year into the public health emergency declared by British Columbia's provincial health officer as a result of the province's rising rate of drug overdose deaths. Tragically, the death toll continues to mount. The latest report from the province's coroner shows we're on pace to see more than 1,500 people die of overdoses in 2017 - more than the last two years combined. [continues 764 words]
Chief says Indigenous people must be given a bigger role in addressing crisis With addictions rates to opioids in First Nations communities above the national average, Isadore Day, chiefs committee chair on health at the Assembly of First Nations, is calling on the federal government to consider a First Nations-specific opioid strategy. The federal government has been working on addressing Canada's opioid crisis over the past year, but Day says Indigenous peoples have not had a big enough role in the discussion. [continues 544 words]
Vancouver Coastal Health will open the doors to Vancouver's newest supervised injection site on Friday in the Downtown Eastside. The Powell Street Getaway, located near Oppenheimer Park at 528 Powell St., will be the third such facility in Vancouver. The Dr. Peter Centre, an HIV-AIDS clinic, has offered supervised injection along with other services in Vancouver's West End since 2002, while the Downtown Eastside's Insite facility was the first sanctioned supervised injection site in North America when it opened in 2003. [continues 304 words]
A Downtown Eastside activist and a local entrepreneur are hoping to spearhead the first nonprofit organization of its kind with support from Vancouver's cannabis community. The vocal support of Sarah Blyth, the founder of the Overdose Prevention Society for grassroots, peer-led harm reduction led to the establishment of several safe-consumption sites in Vancouver and beyond. Unfortunately, the ongoing overdose crisis hasn't slowed-numbers for 2017 are set to double last year's count of 935 overdose deaths provincewide-so when Blyth, who doesn't use cannabis, came across an American study that found that states with legalized marijuana saw a 33-percent reduction in overdose deaths, she decided to explore the concept further. [continues 817 words]
Powell Street Getaway opens to help deal with worst health crisis in decades With more than 200 people dead from drug overdoses in Vancouver already this year, health officials hope the city's third federally approved injection site will provide relief from a devastating public health emergency. On Friday, Powell Street Getaway begins operating its new, supervised-injection site seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., after receiving an exemption from Health Canada in May. It opens amid an illicit-drug overdose crisis that killed 640 people in B.C. in the first five months of 2017, up from 347 during the same period last year, according to the B.C. Coroners Service. Most involved fentanyl poisoning. [continues 532 words]
With more than 200 people dead from drug overdoses in Vancouver already this year, health officials hope the city's third federally approved injection site will provide relief from a devastating public health emergency. On Friday, Powell Street Getaway begins operating its new supervised-injection site seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., after receiving an exemption from Health Canada in May. It opens amid an illicit-drug overdose crisis that killed 640 people in B.C. in the first five months of 2017, up from 347 during the same period last year, according to the B.C. Coroners Service. Most involved fentanyl poisoning. [continues 509 words]
The first supervised injection site in the nation's capital could be open within months now that the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre has a conditional approval from Health Canada. The federal government signed off on the health centre's application Wednesday after receiving the request for an injection site last January. Once a followup inspection is done and provincial money comes through, clients will enter one of five injection stations on the first floor of the health centre's facility on Nelson Street and shoot his or her drugs under the supervision of health experts. [continues 576 words]
