Many at the UN General Assembly this week, not least the Latin American countries, tired of the problems borne of criminalising users, will make the case for harm-reduction programmes, writes Kerry Cullinan. FOR THE first time in 20 years, the UN has convened a special session on "the world drug problem" amid fierce international debate about whether drug users should primarily be punished or rehabilitated. The UN General Assembly special session on drugs, which started yesterday and runs until tomorrow, was called after Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala appealed to the body to revise the global approach to illegal drugs. [continues 830 words]
Many members of the UN General Assembly are tired of the problems borne of criminalising drug users, and will be making the case instead for harm-reduction programmes, writes Kerry Cullinan For the first time in 20 years, the UN has convened a special session on "the world drug problem" amid fierce international debate about whether drug users should primarily be punished or rehabilitated. The UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs, which started yesterday and runs until tomorrow, was called after Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala appealed to the body to revise the global approach to illegal drugs. [continues 852 words]
In a province that has led Canada since 2010 in the rate of HIV infections and in a city where researchers describe intravenous drug use as an "epidemic," the call by Saskatoon Tribal Council (STC) Chief Felix Thomas to investigate the value of establishing a safe injection site is a highly sensible idea. It's time to put to rest the knee-jerk, anti-science attitude of the former federal Conservative government, which ignored credible data on the lives saved and harm reduced by Vancouver's Insite facility, and seriously explore whether Saskatoon might benefit from a similar service. [continues 359 words]
In 1998, a special session of the United Nations General Assembly agreed to set a 10-year deadline to make the world "drug free". After an embarrassing failure to achieve this goal, the deadline was extended a further 10 years, setting the world up for another inevitable failure in 2019. In the years since the use, availability and variety of illicit drugs have escalated exponentially. It is estimated by the UK charity Transform Foundation that 300 million people worldwide used illegal drugs in 2012, contributing to a global market worth $US330 billion a year. [continues 626 words]
50 Parents, Including Five Canadian Mothers, To Address Session On Global Problem Donna May's daughter had been in a downward spiral for months. Once a happy young woman, with dimples and a quick sense of humour, Jac had become addicted to opioids. She first took OxyContin to cope with the pain from a fall down the stairs in her home in Sault Ste. Marie. When the prescription ran out, she turned to fentanyl patches - a highly addictive opioid 20 times stronger than heroin, and readily available on the street. [continues 695 words]
World leaders have an opportunity to act on the global drug problem that causes untold human suffering and costs billions a year. The discussions will have an immediate flow-on effect to changes in drug policy being contemplated in Australia and around the world. In 1998, a special session of the United Nations General Assembly agreed to set a 10-year deadline to make the world "drug free". After an embarrassing failure to achieve this goal, the deadline was extended a further 10 years, setting the world up for another inevitable failure in 2019. [continues 781 words]
A U. N. Special Session Will Examine the Effects of the Hard- Line Approach and Will Study Alternatives. At what is being billed as the most significant high-level gathering on global drug policy in two decades, the stage will be set for world leaders to discuss what would have once been unthinkable - reversing course in the war on drugs. The United Nations General Assembly Special Session on the World Drug Problem, which begins Tuesday in New York, will bring together government, human rights and health leaders to discuss whether the hard-line tactics of combating drug trafficking and money laundering have failed. [continues 800 words]
Former Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour is among a host of international jurists, politicians, celebrities and sports stars to sign a letter that denounces the "disastrous" war on drugs and urges the United Nations to lead the world toward a more enlightened drug policy. "Humankind cannot afford a 21st century drug policy as ineffective and counter-productive as the last century's," reads the letter, delivered to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in advance of next week's UN special session on drugs. [continues 347 words]
Supporters of Vancouver Facility Have Faced Many Obstacles but Are Seeing Successes Before there was fentanyl, the highly addictive opioid at the centre of an ongoing national crisis, there was OxyContin, another drug that took the lives of vulnerable populations. And before Oxy, there was heroin. In Vancouver's impoverished Downtown Eastside, heroin's ravages helped tip the province into a public-health crisis in the late 1990s. Born of necessity 13 years ago, Insite, a supervised injection clinic that remains the only one of its kind of North America, persevered under the former Conservative government's tough-on-crime anti-drug strategy, which ran counter to such treatment models. After successfully battling the government in a series of court cases, the facility has emerged as a model in harm reduction, representing a new approach to addiction treatment that the federal Liberal government has embraced - and one many communities, including Toronto, are trying replicate. [continues 1658 words]
The Vancouver politician who championed supervised injection sites in that city says Mayor Jim Watson should try to understand drug addicts before rejecting a plan that would keep more of them alive. "I just get annoyed at politicians who don't go out into the field and talk to the participants and find out what's really going on," former Vancouver Mayor Philip Owen said in an interview with Postmedia. "You can't always rely on reports from your staff." Watson attends hundreds of community events each year, but Sean LeBlanc, chair of the Drug Users Advocacy League of Ottawa, said the mayor has yet to accept one of his invitations. "We have invited Mr. Watson to several events over several different years. He has attended none of them," said LeBlanc. [continues 651 words]
Ex-Vncouver Mayor Pans Ottawa Boss Over Safe-injection Sites The politician who championed supervised injection sites in Vancouver says Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson should try to understand drug addicts before rejecting a plan that would keep more of them alive. "I just get annoyed at politicians who don't go out into the field and talk to the participants and find out what's really going on," former Vancouver mayor Philip Owen told Postmedia. "You can't always rely on reports from your staff." [continues 431 words]
Saskatoon Tribal Council wants to study establishing a location in city The chief of the Saskatoon Tribal Council wants to investigate the merits of a safe injection site in the city. "We haven't determined whether or not there should be one here yet. My standpoint is we need to look at the facts and the data and make an informed decision," Felix Thomas said. The new Liberal federal government appears more friendly to the concept than its Conservative predecessor - last month, Health Canada granted a four-year exemption from federal drug laws for Vancouver's Insite. [continues 585 words]
She'll take the message to the UN ... An Edmonton mother is part of a Canadian contingent attending a global drug policy summit at the United Nations headquarters in New York next week to urge governments to forego the "war on drugs" and embrace harm reduction. The harm reduction approach promotes policies and programs that support and reduce the risks and dangers drug users face, rather than prohibiting the drug itself and punishing users. Lorna Thomas's 24-year-old son, Alex Thomas-Haug, died by suicide in 2012. Thomas-Haug was a welder and snowboarder who suffered from depression. His mother later found out he'd also been using cocaine. [continues 467 words]
The most dangerous consequences of narcotics largely stem from their criminalization, yet we continue to try to control supply Canada is in the midst of a fentanyl crisis. Actually, fentanyl is just the latest drug to take centre stage in a seemingly never-ending string of crises featuring the "fill-in-theblank" drug du jour: opium, cocaine, heroin, crack, OxyContin, heroin again and now fentanyl. What's next? The word on the street is that W-18, a drug 100 times more potent than fentanyl, is displacing it. [continues 806 words]
An Edmonton mother is part of a Canadian contingent attending a global drug policy summit at the United Nations headquarters in New York next week to urge governments to forego the "war on drugs" and embrace harm reduction. The harm reduction approach promotes policies and programs that support and reduce the risks and dangers drug users face, rather than prohibiting the drug itself and punishing users. Lorna Thomas's 24-year-old son, Alex Thomas-Haug, died by suicide in 2012. Thomas-Haug was a welder and snowboarder who suffered from depression. His mother later found out he'd also been using cocaine. [continues 412 words]
Addiction Treatment Agencies Say It's Needed A coalition of addiction treatment agencies has unanimously endorsed the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre's plan to open a supervised injection site in downtown Ottawa. "There is clear evidence of need for supervised injection services in Ottawa," Lise Girard, chair of the Champlain Addiction Co-ordinating Body, wrote in a letter of support obtained by Postmedia. The co-ordinating body represents 20 government-funded agencies in the region that offer drug and alcohol treatment programs. [continues 417 words]
Those in the Field Say Such a Facility Would Be First Step in Treatment A coalition of addiction treatment agencies has unanimously endorsed the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre's plan to open a supervised injection site in downtown Ottawa. "There is clear evidence of need for supervised injection services in Ottawa," Lise Girard, chair of the Champlain Addiction Co-ordinating Body, wrote in a letter of support obtained by Postmedia. The co-ordinating body represents 20 government-funded agencies in the region that offer drug and alcohol treatment programs. [continues 567 words]
Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins has suggested he will only consider funding a safe injection site for Ottawa if the project has municipal approval. In a statement issued to Postmedia, Hoskins said decisions about safe injection sites rest mostly with federal and municipal governments. "I understand that such a proposal is currently being considered by the City of Ottawa," he said. "Our government has been clear that we will consider a request for a safe injection site if a municipality were to come forward with a proposal." Asked to clarify whether the province would consider a proposal that came directly from a health centre, not a municipality, an official in Hoskins's office said, "We're not going to prejudge the outcomes of the municipal process." [continues 526 words]
A lawmaker from Stockton wants California to take a radical approach to prevent overdose deaths: Give users a clean place and medical supervision to shoot up. Democratic Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman has introduced a bill that would allow local health departments such as the OC Health Care Agency to set up "supervised consumption services" in their communities, typically places where people bring in drugs they bought on the streets and safely ride out their high while monitored by nurses. "I know when you first hear about it, it's like, 'What? You're condoning drug use.' No, we're acknowledging people are dying on the streets," Eggman said Tuesday at the Assembly's public safety committee hearing in Sacramento. "In the U.S., we have chosen to treat addiction from a criminal perspective. It's high time we start treating it like a public health issue." [continues 533 words]
Lawmaker's Proposal Comes As S.F., Other Cities Weigh Sites SACRAMENTO (AP) - A lawmaker wants to allow California addicts to use heroin, crack and other drugs at supervised facilities to cut down on overdoses, joining several U.S. cities considering establishing the nation's first legal drug-injection sites. The proposal introduced Tuesday comes as San Francisco, Seattle, New York City and Ithaca, New York, weigh ordinances to set up the facilities, citing the success of a site operating in Canada since 2003. [continues 158 words]
