Students vaping marijuana juice, crushed Oxycontin, says principal High school students are vaping marijuana juice and crushed Oxycontin before and during school. The startling news came in March when Almaguin Highlands Secondary School principal Donna Breault made a presentation to the Near North District School Board about vaping and its dangers. Board chairman David Thompson says parents need to be aware of what their kids are doing. "I think parents would be shocked," Thompson says. "Students are vaping marijuana juice, crushed Oxycontin and sharing filters, which is putting them at risk of some serious health concerns like hepatitis." [continues 386 words]
CAMBRIDGE - Waterloo Regional Police drug officers closed down a marijuana dispensary in Cambridge on Wednesday. Police raided the storefront business at 184 Samuelson St. near Elgin Street North at 1 p.m. Police spokesperson Cherri Greeno said the illegal business did not have an official name. During the raid, police seized a large amount of marijuana, marijuana products, a small amount of suspected cocaine and prescription pills, including Xanax and Oxycocet. A 29-year-old Cambridge man and a 21-year-old Cambridge woman were arrested. Both face several charges, including possession for the purpose of trafficking and possession of a controlled substance. [continues 130 words]
More U.S. workers are testing positive for illicit drugs than at any time in the last 12 years, according to data coming out today from Quest Diagnostics Inc., one of the largest workplace-testing labs in the nation. The number of workers who tested positive for marijuana rose by 4%, while positive results for other drugs also rose. The increases come against a backdrop of more liberal marijuana state laws and an apparent resurgence in the use of drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine. [continues 546 words]
Knowing more about impairment key to setting fair and safe workplace rules: expert Alex Boucher says the looming legalization of marijuana is opening up a whole new frontier for employers. He's an expert in wellness areas, including disability management and workplace accommodation, and works with employers, unions and communities. He acknowledged that medical marijuana use has posed challenges in the workplace, and that legalized pot will add an extra level of challenge for employers wanting to be fair and yet ensure the workplace is safe. [continues 915 words]
Introduced to the dangers of narcotics during public seminar held Tuesday night Parents need to be involved and informed to help lower the risk of accidental drug overdoses among young people. That was the message heard Tuesday night at a public seminar organized by Hastings Prince Edward Public Health at Bridge Street United Church. About 50 people attended the talk, which was intended as an introduction for parents to the dangers of opioids, also known as narcotics. They include such drugs as codeine, morphine, oxycodone and fentanyl. [continues 591 words]
Mark Baratta works with drug users on the front lines of Ontario's opioid epidemic. But as deaths mount, Baratta's story illustrates how far society has to go to end the crisis . . . if it so chooses Like most people who might be called heroes, Mark Baratta shies away from the label. A lean and purposeful man, Baratta has saved 17 people, each on separate occasions. He chalks it up, with a shrug of his shoulders, to keeping his head in the presence of death. [continues 3104 words]
Ex-soldiers tell trade show how natural drug has helped them battle war's after-effects Trev Bungay says the horror began in 1998 when he was among Canadian soldiers scouring the beaches of Nova Scotia in cleanup operations after the crash of a Swissair jet just off the Atlantic coast. "That was really my look at trauma for the very first time," Bungay told a panel discussion on Sunday at the inaugural O'Cannabiz Conference and Expo. Then came international missions in Africa, Bosnia, Haiti and four combat tours in Afghanistan. [continues 660 words]
Young brains more vulnerable to fentanyl and opioid addiction At 23, Cameron Shaver seemed to be on track for success with a landscaping business, a new car, and he was thinking about heading back to school to take culinary arts. The jack-of-all-trades from Winnipeg was an inspiration to his friends. He'd come a long way from his earlier teen years, when he had struggled with drug addiction. Back then, it was ecstasy. Cameron had been clean for years when, last September, his mother Sandi received the phone call that no mother should get. Cameron had died of a fentanyl overdose. [continues 1441 words]
The Record speaks to a wide range of people who shun normal painkillers KITCHENER - William Campbell and his wife were on their way to a friend's 25th wedding anniversary one night in 2008 when a drunk driver pulled out in front of them. They didn't have time to stop. Campbell, 53, was hospitalized after the head-on collision, and everything in his life would change. Earlier that day, he'd aced an exam to become a lab technician, after getting laid off from a furniture factory where he'd worked for 22 years. [continues 2148 words]
How drug units deal with fentanyl The death toll for fentanyl continues to rise in 2017, with nearly double the number of deaths being reported in the first six weeks of the year. According to Health Canada, from Jan. 1 to Feb, 11, 51 people died from overdosing on fentanyl. In 2016 during the same six weeks, 28 Albertans died as a result of a fentanyl overdose. The drug was first found in St. Albert in 2014 and since then the St. Albert RCMP's drug unit said that currently there is at least one pill found in around 80 per cent of their overall drug cases. [continues 938 words]
Medical marijuana may assist in keeping addicts off dangerous opioids. The patients at Dr. Mark Ujjainwalla's methadone clinic are trying to beat their addiction to heroin, narcotic painkillers and other opioid drugs, but most of them still smoke pot. He estimates that 90 per cent of his patients at the Recovery Ottawa clinic on Montreal Road already use marijuana, and he's begun writing prescriptions so they can buy it legally. Medical marijuana, used appropriately, can reduce insomnia, anxiety and cravings for opioids, says Ujjainwalla. Marijuana cannot replace methadone or suboxone, the drugs he uses to treat addicts, he says. [continues 1146 words]
Maybe it was the ski masks that did it. Or it could have been the steely look in the eyes of Lake County, Fla., Sheriff Peyton Grinnell as he deadpanned: "We are coming for you. Run." Perhaps it was the muted background music: an eerie melody that wouldn't have been out of place in a Batman movie. In the end, what could have been an unremarkable public service announcement about opioid abuse in Lake County spread widely on the internet, garnering about a million views on the Facebook page of the sheriff's office, where it was first posted Friday. It sparked concerns about police militarization and drew more than a few comparisons to Islamic State recruitment videos. [continues 915 words]
Money from reserve dispensaries 'going right back into community' With the federal government on the verge of creating a multi-billion dollar legal marijuana industry, Brian Marquis worries aboriginal people will be left high and dry. Marquis, 57, is a patient at the Legacy 420 dispensary on the Tyendinaga Mohawk territory near Kingston, Ont. And after nearly three years of frequenting the business, he says he has seen the financial potential and medical benefits of cannabis. Now he wants to see storefront dispensaries sprout up in reserves across Canada: providing an economic engine that will help lift indigenous people out of poverty and, he says, provide an antidote to Canada's opioid addiction crisis. [continues 911 words]
NIMCA gathers to discuss national strategy to fight opiod crisis with pot TYENDINAGA MOHAWK TERRITORY - A newly-minted First Nations organization is hoping to lead, not follow, when it comes to the regulation and dispensation of marijuana on reserves. On Sunday, members of the National Indigenous Medical Cannabis Association (NIMCA) - hailing from provinces across the country - gathered at the Mohawk Community Centre on the Tyendinega Mohawk Territory Ontario to discuss its national strategy. With a federal government, which ran on a platform of legalizing marijuana in power and a growing opioid crisis across the country, members say something needs to be done sooner rather than later. [continues 910 words]
Street expert says 'acceptance is huge' - to show others that someone cares KITCHENER - When Larissa Ziesmann was homeless, she often slept in shelters, stole from stores and sold goods on the street to feed her heroin addiction. Home was the seedy Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Ziesmann, now a recovering addict, recalls when the deadly drug fentanyl hit the streets of Vancouver. "People that I knew they were dying. One day they were there and then dropping off, a few a day," said Ziesmann, who tried fentanyl once. [continues 718 words]
City health authorities considering heroin to treat addicts Ottawa's health unit supports prescribing heroin to treat severe addicts and at least one treatment clinic is considering it as the city fights the rising rates of overdoses from it and similar opioid drugs. "We really see it as more an extension of our opiate substitution therapy program than part of our supervised injection efforts," said Rob Boyd, the head of the drug-treatment programs at the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre on Rideau Street. Boyd has been leading the charge to add an injection site to the centre's existing methadone clinic. [continues 863 words]
Ottawa's health unit supports prescribing heroin to treat severe addicts and at least one treatment clinic is considering it as the city fights the rising rates of overdoses from it and similar opioid drugs. "We really see it as more an extension of our opiate substitution therapy program than part of our supervised injection efforts," said Rob Boyd, the head of the drug-treatment programs at the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre on Rideau Street. Boyd has been leading the charge to add an injection site to the centre's existing methadone clinic. [continues 866 words]
While it seems out of context for a career progressive, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson has gone law-and-order rogue in his quest to stem the plague of fentanyl overdoses and deaths in the nation's capital. He wants manslaughter charges laid against drug dealers if the illicit narcotics they peddle end up causing death. And he is not wrong in wanting this. The time is now to stop whistling past the graveyard, and ignoring the fact there is a fentanyl crisis that is not going away anytime soon - aided by the fact the lethal drug, 50 to 100 times more powerful than heroin, is being laced into counterfeit pain killers disguised as known prescription narcotics of specific strengths. [continues 368 words]
While it seems out of context for a career progressive, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson has gone law-and-order rogue in his quest to stem the plague of fentanyl overdoses and deaths in the nation's capital. He wants manslaughter charges laid against drug dealers if the illicit narcotics they peddle end up causing death. And he is not wrong in wanting this. The time is now to stop whistling past the graveyard, and ignoring the fact there is a fentanyl crisis that is not going away anytime soon - aided by the fact the lethal drug, 50 to 100 times more powerful than heroin, is being laced into counterfeit pain killers disguised as known prescription narcotics of specific strengths. [continues 499 words]
While it seems out of context for a career progressive, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson has gone law-and-order rogue in his quest to stem the plague of fentanyl overdoses and deaths in the nation's capital. He wants manslaughter charges laid against drug dealers if the illicit narcotics they peddle end up causing death. And he is not wrong in wanting this. The time is now to stop whistling past the graveyard, and ignoring the fact there is a fentanyl crisis that is not going away anytime soon - aided by the fact the lethal drug, 50 to 100 times more powerful than heroin, is being laced into counterfeit pain killers disguised as known prescription narcotics of specific strengths. [continues 510 words]
