When Lisa was released on bail, following an arrest for possession for the purpose of trafficking, British Columbia's Provincial Court ordered the Downtown Eastside resident to stay away from the busy hub of Hastings Street. But she says that condition, that she stay away from the street where she was arrested, made little sense. "My bank was there, my home was there, my probation was there, my doctor was there, like come on guys! All of Hastings Street? Hello! My whole life is there! They're going to arrest you every time you want to go home?" [continues 535 words]
Government will work with harm-reduction workers operating pop-up site Ontario is dispatching its Emergency Medical Assistance Team to set up a tent in Moss Park to provide a heated and insulated space for safe injections. "This is an overdose crisis. People are dying and, today, Minister Eric Hoskins and the Ontario government have stepped up," Councillor Joe Cressy said Wednesday night. The tent will be set up Thursday and replace a temporary site run by the Toronto Overdose Prevention Society (TOPS). The ministry will work with TOPS staff, Cressy said. [continues 517 words]
Talks to move Toronto's illegal popup supervised drug-use site inside a nearby homeless centre have failed, but the harm-reduction activists who have been setting up their tents in an east-end park every evening say they plan to stay put. The crowdfunded, volunteer-driven Toronto Harm Reduction Alliance (THRA) has operated its controversial pop-up site in Moss Park near Sherbourne and Queen Streets since August, with tacit approval from police and city officials amid a growing number of opioid overdose deaths. [continues 706 words]
The City of Toronto and the province are asking the federal Minister of Health for the "immediate approval" of a proposed indoor supervised drug-use site at an east-end homeless centre where an illegal outdoor site has been operating for months. In a letter to Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor dated Oct. 31, Toronto Mayor John Tory and Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins say the illegal site, set up in Moss Park near Sherbourne Street and Queen Street East, has saved many lives since it was launched in August by reversing overdoses in a neighbourhood that had been hit by an increase in such deaths. [continues 660 words]
The federal government will be spending an additional $36.4-million over five years to educate Canadians on the dangers of using cannabis at a young age and impaired driving, hoping to address growing concerns over the drug's legalization. The new money comes in addition to $9.6-million in previously announced spending on public awareness campaigns, with eight months to go before the government's July 1 deadline to legalize cannabis for recreational use by adults. The federal campaign will target young Canadians and other vulnerable groups, such as Indigenous people, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and Canadians with a history of mental illness. Health experts have pointed out that cannabis users under the age of 25 face greater long-term risks than adults. [continues 623 words]
Here in Vancouver, it's tempting to praise ourselves for our forward-thinking approaches to illicit drug use. We're home to Insite, the first supervised-injection facility in North America, the success of which paved the way for Health Canada to start approving prospective supervised-injection sites in other cities across the country this year. We're also home to the first and only prescription heroin program on the continent, which has proven how life-changing it can be for a person entrenched in opiate addiction to have access to a clean, regulated supply of drugs. [continues 970 words]
Tory Leader open to new ideas for tackling crisis in B.C., but remains leery of supervised drug-use sites and further decriminalization Federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer says he is trying to keep an open mind on options for dealing with the opioid overdose crisis in British Columbia, but is not backing off key tenets on harm reduction his party pushed in government. That includes reservations about supervised drug-use sites. In an interview on Wednesday ahead of a visit later this month to the Lower Mainland, Mr. Scheer also said prosecuting drug users may steer them into rehabilitation programs that would reduce the risk of overdoses. [continues 591 words]
Cannabis activists say they still have work to do after legislation takes effect CANNABIS activists say that while they've succeeded in helping to push for marijuana legalization across the country, their work is far from over. The federal government has committed to making recreational cannabis legal by July 1, 2018, but has tasked provincial governments with establishing their own business and regulatory models that will make the new legislation a reality. Activists say they need only look at the early versions of provincial plans to find targets for future campaigns. [continues 653 words]
Re. "MP hosts impassioned debate over supervised injection sites in southwest," Oct. 30 The title should have been "MP misses the point." Supervised consumption services (SCS) primarily save lives, and anyone who has lost a loved one can tell you how important that is. Our son Danny died from an overdose in 2014. He was only 25, was a promising young chef and is dearly missed. There are many families like ours who are members in our group Moms Stop The Harm, who live in MP Matt Jeneroux's riding of Edmonton-Riverbend. I encourage him to meet them. [continues 111 words]
A Brantford man who has battled drug addiction for more than 40 years hopes the city follows through with safe injection sites as part of its strategy to combat substance abuse. But Randy Roberts, 53, said there is also a need for the treatment of trauma as part of a program to treat substance abuse. "I want people to remember that we're all hurting," he said. "There has been a lot of work done on this and for most addicts the root cause of their addiction is childhood trauma -- physical, psychological, sexual abuse." [continues 701 words]
Coalition of agencies is working to provide 24/7 service, Shelley Williams writes. Access to Medically Supervised Injection Services Edmonton, known as AMSISE, is a coalition of 25 individuals and groups, including people with lived experience, community agencies, medical, academic, and public sector representatives. AMSISE started as a conversation with Edmonton's harm reduction needle distribution service, Streetworks, in January of 2012 and continues to be a community-driven initiative. The focus is on people with severe and chronic addictions, usually homeless, whose chaotic and furtive injection-drug use takes place in unsafe environments, including parks, back alleys, behind dumpsters, along fences, and in agency and public washrooms. Multiple studies have established a direct link between unstable housing and public injecting. Communities will benefit by reducing unsafe needle debris as an unintentional hazard. [continues 438 words]
WATERLOO REGION - Potential locations for supervised injection sites in Waterloo Region will be made public by January, as Waterloo Region Public Health begins a feasibility study into whether the harm reduction service is needed here, what concerns the community might have and how to address them. A supervised injection site would provide a safe, clean place for people to use their own drugs under the care of trained staff. Its goals would be to reduce overdose rates and overdose deaths; reduce transmission of diseases from shared needles; help drug users connect to other health and social services, including drug treatment; and reduce drug use in public places and the amount of unsafely discarded needles and other litter. [continues 567 words]
A pilot project was launched Tuesday to provide the first outdoor after-hours needle disposable drop box, with the aim of curbing the high rate of hepatitis C, locally. The sharp disposal kiosk is located on the property of AIDS Support Chatham-Kent at 67 Adelaide St. S. in Chatham, which has partnered with the ChathamKent Public Health Unit to provide a safe place to dispose of needles. When looking at best practices of other communities where these types of sharp disposal kiosks are available, it's a program that's been tested, said Steve Pratt, harm reduction program manager with AIDS Support C-K. [continues 284 words]
The solution lies in public education, not punishment, writes Terry Lake. Recently, I attended a meeting hosted by We the Parents, a Kanata organization trying to address the challenge of addictions and the very real tragedies that befall affected families. I saw grieving parents struggling to understand both the complexities of addiction and the way our health and criminal justice systems are responding to it. Understandably, many who attended were looking for straightforward, actionable solutions to this crisis. They were met with a response by one former senior police officer that those selling drugs should be given harsher sentences. While it may seem appealing to go after the dealers instead of the user, in fact, many dealers are themselves struggling with addiction and using whatever tools are at hand, including selling drugs, to cope with that addiction. [continues 590 words]
Ontario's proposed liquor-style monopoly would keep black market, cost taxpayers We need a made-in-B.C. solution to cannabis legalization that pays attention to public health and safety, but also considers economic development in B.C.'s mature cannabis industry. Speaking to the recent meeting of the Union of British Columbia Municipalities, Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth said it was "important to get it [cannabis legalization] right." "We are unique in B.C.," the minister said, adding that we have a "long, established history." [continues 714 words]
As little as five years ago, we imagine most people would have scoffed at the idea of needing a special group to pick up discarded needles in the community. Though the Comox Valley is not as badly affected as others, which are in the middle of a needle epidemic directly related to the opioid crisis that has killed so many across B.C. in the last several years, it isn't immune, either. The provincial statistics for 2017 to date are horrifying. This province has never faced a drug threat like that of fentanyl. [continues 224 words]
Supervised drug consumption site set to open Jan. 2 What's old will be renewed again in a bid to save lives from the rising number of drug overdoses in Lethbridge. Government officials and local media received a tour Friday of the city's future supervised consumption site, currently under construction. The former Pulse nightclub is being transformed into what will become a "clean and safe space" area for drug users to snort, inhale, inject or swallow drugs while under the supervision of healthcare professionals and without fear of arrest. [continues 1061 words]
New NDP leader supports harm-reduction model The response to Canada's opioid overdose problem should be elevated as a national issue with a significant harm reduction approach, new NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said during his first visit to Vancouver as party head Friday. "Thousands of people are dying in our country as a result of this crisis and it needs to be named a national crisis first," said Singh, speaking after taking a tour of Chinatown. Singh's first official visit to the city after winning the federal NDP leadership Oct. 1 came a day after the City of Vancouver released the latest grim statistics on the overdose crisis - 275 suspected overdose deaths to the end of Oct. 9 - and a week after it was revealed that possible overdose deaths across B.C. surpassed all of 2016 at the end of August with 1,013. [continues 238 words]
My hope is that the supervised injection sites recently approved at four locations in Edmonton will become a jumping-off point for heroin-assisted treatment (HAT) in our province. In my opinion, it is the only way to tackle the opioid scourge that is leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. Countries like Switzerland have experienced rates of homelessness and property crime associated with problematic drug use approaching zero per cent after approving the use of HAT by qualified doctors. This approach is counter-intuitive to many, but the numbers speak for themselves. The health authority in the United Kingdom figures that for every dollar spent on harm reduction, it saves $3 in health services and enforcement. Steven Zerebeski, Beaumont [end]
Vancouver's experience isn't very encouraging, writes Warren Champion. The news tells us the epicentre of opioid/fentanyl deaths appears to be situated in the urban core of Edmonton, specifically, in the communities of Central McDougall and McCauley. The three levels of government created an organization named AMSISE - Access to Medically Supervised Injection Services. AMSISE applied to the federal government on May 1 for a waiver that would allow approved sites to provide supervised injection services. The rationale given was "the spike in opioid-related overdose deaths has pushed the need for an effective set of responses into the forefront for community and government." [continues 618 words]
