Aggressively pursuing a mandate the past two years to reduce crime in Kelowna has life harder for local criminals, says the Kelowna RCMP detachment superintendent. Nick Romanchuk gathered the local media Wednesday afternoon at the Doyle Street police headquarters to report that Kelowna's Census Metropolitan Area police-reported crimes ranking, number one for highest crime rate in 2012, now sees the city ranked fourth out of the 33 CMA areas across Canada. In 2013, the city had risen from the worst to number three in the rankings, compiled by Statistics Canada. [continues 752 words]
Every month in Red Deer, the Central Alberta AIDS Network Society gives away an average of 38,000 new needles to individuals who are mostly using drugs that are not prescribed. It raises that bigger question we don't hear very often, perhaps because the helping agencies are just too busy doing the front line work: Why doesn't this city have a residential addictions treatment program? Some of the drugs that people across this region are injecting themselves with include crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine and opiate derivatives like heroin. [continues 901 words]
MHPS acknowledge hard times in the community mean crime and drug addiction will follow The Medicine Hat Police Service shares concerns with other provincial enforcement agencies that the economic downturn could spur greater violence by outlaw biker gangs and other organized crime groups. "In fact, we've already seen hints of that going on with some locals in town trying to control the drug trade," said Insp. Brent Secondiak, as those involved in the drug trade "try to monopolize the limited funds that are out there." [continues 540 words]
Let's begin with a worst-case scenario hypothetical. A young woman attending last weekend's Evolve Music Festival - Antigonish's three-day "celebration of music, culture and social awareness" - decides she wants to alter her mind with some mind-altering substance. She asks around, discovers a guy selling what she thinks she wants to buy. She buys. She takes. But the drug isn't what she thought. She collapses. She's rushed to hospital. She dies. That horrific hypothetical isn't all that hypothetical. [continues 296 words]
Polling North Bay and Callander residents to gather information about how policing resources should be spent is not, in itself, a bad idea. The North Bay Police Service should take the pulse of its customers at regular intervals. It's a service agency, after all. Including questions about how much more people are willing to spend is not just bad taste, it smells of self-serving politics. The public should also be concerned that the police, through a board of directors poorly designed to create broad-based social policy, would use the feedback as ammunition to bolster its ranks. [continues 251 words]
Crime: Kingston Police Report Startling Increase in Seizures of Crystal Methamphetamine This Year Kingston Police have seized almost twice the amount of crystal methamphetamine in the first six months of 2015 as they did in all of 2014. "It's cheap," Staff Sgt. Greg Sands, in charge of special services with the Kingston Police's Drug Unit, told the Whig- Standard Friday. "An addict is an addict, and a true hard-core addict, they're going to get high on something, and crystal meth is cheap." [continues 662 words]
Conservative MLA says testing condones drugs; professor calls it harm reduction In situations where recreational drug use is inevitable, should users be able to find out exactly what it is they're taking? Or should they trust they got what they paid for and hope for the best? That's the debate surrounding the Evolve Festival in Antigonish this weekend. Like most large music festivals, Evolve is notorious for hard-core partying and heavy drug use. Earlier this week, Evolve producer Jonas Colter announced there would be free drug testing available so users could test the purity of their stash. He said the tests would "minimize harm," and "protect the people" from overdosing on contaminated drugs. [continues 406 words]
London provincial hotbed for criminal charges The London area is running Ontario's highest rate of criminal charges involving the cheap street drug crystal methamphetamine, a just-released report shows. Bad as that is, police have already seized four times the amount of crystal meth this year as they did in all of 2013 - the year the data was collected by Statistics Canada. But though the numbers detail crime statistics, they point to an underlying addiction problem in this region that can be linked to years of job losses, stresses and mental health issues triggered by the last recession, say some observers. [continues 676 words]
I am outraged by the arrogant and uninformed comments by Health Minister Rona Ambrose concerning the medicinal use of cannabis. I suffer from chronic foot pain and have spent thousands of dollars for surgery, a titanium implant, orthotics, orthopaedic shoes, and pain killing drugs. Nothing available in Canada has relieved the pain. I had the opportunity in Colorado to use a legal Extreme Relief THC Salve that comes in a tube that looks like an underarm deodorant and is just as convenient to use. It is the only effective relief that I have found for my condition. The salve is not smoked or taken internally. So why can't we have it available in Canada? Gary Whitten (The appetite for alternate delivery methods is likely strong enough to sway government.) [end]
Let the game of crack shack whack-a-mole begin. After a police bust of a well-known drug house next to Chilliwack secondary school last week, residents breathed a sigh of relief. And as arrests were made, other junkies and dealers-who tormented the area for years-cursed and gestured rudely at neighbours who watched them scurry away like cockroaches when the lights come on. The issue of the so-called crack shack in a neighbourhood is not exclusive to downtown Chilliwack. This is a problem in every city to varying degrees. [continues 694 words]
METH Addiction, availability and difficult withdrawal symptoms add to problems Explosive growth in the use of the street drug crystal methamphetamine is causing havoc in London, with those who work with addicts saying the city isn't equipped to deal with the fallout. Easily produced, cheap to buy and easy to find, the drug has become such a problem that street outreach workers, police and public health providers all say a higher-level community response is needed. Just three years ago, only 3% of the people seeking help from the only drug withdrawal management centre in the city were fighting the demons of the crystaline drug that sells for about $10 a hit on the street. [continues 912 words]
Shy, anxious, depressed 18-year-old accidentally overdosed on heroin Heroin killed his daughter, and now a grieving Penticton father is sharing her story in the hopes it will save a life. Coroners have tentatively determined Chloe Highley, 18, died on April 26 after accidentally overdosing on the drug, according to her father, Danny. "Young people need to be aware of the potentially fatal effects of heroin," he said in an interview Wednesday at the family's spacious Pineview-area home. [continues 498 words]
Emergencies Soar As the Drug's Use Here Becomes Rampant Drug overdose calls to 911 in London are skyrocketing, with paramedics responding to more than three times the calls they fielded only two years ago, The Free Press has learned. Since January this year, paramedics have dealt with 251 drug overdoses - that's an average of more than two a day, and more than triple the number of calls during the same period in 2013. "Saddened" by the dramatic spike, the region's medical officer of health says the numbers prove London agencies need to start working differently and together to support addicts. [continues 611 words]
The Supreme Court of Canada decided Thursday it will hear an appeal of mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offences in a Vancouver case, which could provide clarity on how sentencing policy fits in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It's the first challenge under the Safe Streets and Communities Act of 2012 brought in by the Stephen Harper government requiring one-year mandatory minimum jail terms for drug convictions. Downtown Eastside resident Joseph Lloyd was 25 when he was caught carrying less than 10 grams of heroin, crack cocaine, and crystal meth. When he was sentenced, he told the court he was addicted to all three drugs. [continues 166 words]
The special constables who work at the Chatham courthouse have anything but a boring job. Thanks in part to the range of characters the courthouse draws for criminal matters mostly. The special constables are members of the Chatham-Kent Police Service who are tasked with providing a range of functions, with security being job No. 1. On any given day, Const. Jayme O'Reilly, who also works at the courthouse, says the special constables deal with visitors trying to enter the building with knives in their pockets. [continues 451 words]
Few areas of public concern involve higher stakes. Results of controversial hair-strand testing, checking for drugs and alcohol, have been used in court to send people to jail. In other cases, the findings have been used to label parents unfit and deprive them of their children. But questions swirl around the accuracy of this process, especially analyses performed at the Hospital for Sick Children's Motherisk lab. Serious doubts have emerged and they're of vital concern to society. Innocent people's lives may have been wrecked. [continues 607 words]
Lawyer suggests Sick Kids may 'have discovered more problems' The "stakes are too high" to allow the Hospital for Sick Children's Motherisk laboratory to perform hair drug and alcohol tests for use in court, the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC) says. In a letter to retired Appeal Court Justice Susan Lang, who is probing the reliability of five years' worth of drug tests on hair conducted by Motherisk, AIDWYC's James Lockyer argues that such analysis should only be done in a forensic lab, which has more rigorous standards than a hospital setting. [continues 860 words]
Decision follows Star investigation into results used in criminal and child protection cases across Canada The Hospital for Sick Children has permanently discontinued drug and alcohol hair tests at its embattled Motherisk Drug Testing Laboratory after an internal review "further explored and validated" previous, and as yet undisclosed, "questions and concerns." The decision, announced on Friday, comes amid a Star investigation and mounting pressure from critics to shutter the lab, whose drug and alcohol hair tests have been used in criminal and child protection cases across the country, typically as evidence of parental substance abuse. [continues 815 words]
Safe Handling Methods Crucial to Cleaning Up Across Prince Albert, the snow is disappearing and needles are appearing. It is an unfortunate reality of spring, but one that a number of local agencies are prepared to deal with. There are seven permanent needle drop boxes in Prince Albert - most found in the downtown - and two numbers to call for help with needle disposal. While the vast majority of the needles, or "sharps," used for intravenous drug use in P.A. are returned to the Straight to the Point Harm Reduction Program on 15th Street East or disposed of in the yellow drop boxes, thousands are revealed once the snow melts. [continues 371 words]
Re Hair tests halted at controversial Sick Kids lab, March 6 In explosive articles, the Star reported how Sick Kids' Motherisk lab, directed by Dr. Gideon Koren, adjudged parents such as Christine Rupert to be drug abusers - with children then seized from the home - despite vigorous challenges to Motherisk's methods and reliability. Now finally, they have been stopped. Sick Kids, it seems, should have listened closer to Koren's colleague - Dr. Nancy Olivieri - who sounded the alarm on threats to the integrity of our healthcare system and shone a light on Big Pharma money in drug research. While Motherisk and Sick Kids face scrutiny, let us celebrate Dr. Olivieri, and the Star's reporting. Both embody true and patriotic service to us, the public. Joanna Gualtieri, retired chair, Government Accountability Project, Washington, D.C. [end]
