Recommendations too late for many families 'broken apart' by flawed drug and alcohol tests The Ontario Motherisk Commission's two-year effort to repair the damage to families ripped apart by flawed drug and alcohol testing has produced sweeping recommendations aimed at preventing a similar tragedy, but in only a handful of cases has it reunited parents with their lost children. Alice, a Hamilton mother whose daughter was apprehended in 2011 after hair testing from Motherisk purported to show she was a heavy drinker, is among the lucky few. [continues 2231 words]
Judge nixes jail for Stones guitarist, orders community service instead More than 40 years have passed since the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had to "slap'' Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards awake at a Toronto hotel so they could arrest him for possession of heroin for the purposes of trafficking. The charge, which carried a minimum of seven years upon conviction, was based on the 22 grams of heroin found on Feb. 27,1977, during a raid of Richards' room at the Harbour Castle Hilton (now Westin Harbour Castle), while he was sleeping. [continues 1149 words]
Every morning, Kevin Thompson takes a short stroll from his apartment to the Crosstown Clinic, where he signs in, gets his prescription medicine, then sits in a small room and injects it before heading off to work. He follows this routine up to three times a day and has done so virtually every day for more than a dozen years. The medicine is diacetylmorphine, the medical term for prescription heroin. "It saved my life. No question, it saved my life," Mr. Thompson, 47, says emphatically. [continues 683 words]
Two years after the province abandoned using an Ontario laboratory for drug and alcohol testing in custody cases, a decision by a Sydney Supreme Court justice is casting doubt on whether a Halifax lab is any more reliable. The decision by Justice Theresa Forgeron of the court's Family Division rejected a bid by the Department of Community Services to have the director of the Capital Health Authority's toxicology lab, Dr. Bassam Nassar, give expert opinion evidence concerning urine testing samples from a Cape Breton father. [continues 486 words]
Congressman Pete Sessions used a speech to a group of doctors and other healthcare providers at an opioid epidemic summit Tuesday to suggest that marijuana is the gateway to addiction and as a campaign against the medical and recreational legalization movement. The Republican from Dallas called the rising number of deaths from opioid overdose a "national crisis" and implored those on the front lines of the fight, the scientific and medical communities, he said, to provide solutions he can bring to Congress, saying he will get the appropriate funding added to next month's budget bill. [continues 1053 words]
Earlier this month, front-line health workers in Toronto raised the possibility that part of the city's cocaine supply may be tainted with fentanyl, after a handful of drug overdoses were connected to users unknowingly consuming the deadly opioid while smoking crack. This dismal scenario is common in Canada. Across the country, illicit drugs are being cut with the synthetic painkiller - which is up to 50 times more potent than heroin - because it is cheap and powerful and saves dealers money. During a month-long period in the summer of 2016, 86 per cent of the street drugs tested at Vancouver's supervised injection sitewere laced with fentanyl. [continues 628 words]
Police seize 5.8 kg in January - half of what was seized in 2017 MAKE no mistake: Winnipeg has a meth problem. That's the message city police drove home Thursday at a lengthy news conference, painting a dark picture of a city in the grips of a methamphetamine epidemic and the strain placed on front-line services that are trying to contain the street drug. "The emergence of methamphetamine that we're experiencing in our community is getting to the level where it's starting to keep me awake at night," Winnipeg Police Service Chief Danny Smyth said. [continues 944 words]
Latest stops in northwestern Minnesota show surge of drug traffic into the state. It seemed like an innocuous driving violation: A woman was motoring through Otter Tail County in northwestern Minnesota with an obstructed license plate. Then the observant state trooper discovered she was sitting on packages of marijuana. Troopers seized more than 300 pounds of the weed during the stop last Friday, the latest of several large pot busts the State Patrol has made in the past few weeks and a sign that the surge of large quantities of pot and illegal drugs into Minnesota is continuing. [continues 329 words]
One target drove a Mercedes and lived in a waterfront condo on Boston Street; another was homeless, essentially living out of a storage unit where he kept his money balled up in a sock. One lived with his extended family in a house he bought with a lead poisoning settlement; yet another had a half-million-dollar home on two acres of land in Westminster. The circumstances of the people who were targeted for robbery by the Baltimore Police's Gun Trace Task Force ranged widely, according to witnesses in the federal trial of two of its former members. The sums allegedly taken went from three figures up to six. [continues 1429 words]
Three weeks ago, after Philadelphia announced that it would encourage the opening of a safe injection site, I praised the decision as a bold kind of leadership. It showed that the city was stepping on the national stage in the middle of a life-and-death catastrophe. I still think that. Now the city has to sell it. Sure, it's only been three weeks. But in the absence of an immediate city PR strategy for saving lives - it feels funny even writing that - you can feel myths proliferating. The city cannot simply react to the discourse. It must help lead it. [continues 805 words]
"I believe that nicotine is not addictive." This was the position the CEOs of the seven largest American tobacco companies staunchly stood by while testifying in front of an infamous 1994 Congressional hearing. The scientific evidence at the time rendered their ostensible belief a tragic joke - a term that accurately describes the idea that Canadians should blindly trust marijuana producers and distributors to design their own packaging. Ottawa would do well by having health experts take the lead in ensuring marijuana packaging is transparent. [continues 579 words]
There aren't a lot of concrete answers as to why marijuana transactions are deadlier, but there are theories. The morning Kim Ambers turned 50, her oldest son, Richard Ambers, called to wish her a happy birthday. I love you, he told her. It was a tradition for the Ambers family members to see one another on birthdays, but Kim Ambers' celebration would have to wait. Richard was working and had a Halloween party afterward. The whole family would go out for breakfast the next day, on Oct. 29, 2016. [continues 1106 words]
Dundas mom says 17-year-old is on 'lockdown' in home after knife-wielding outburst When his father roused his son from a drug-induced slumber, he flew into a rage. The 17-year-old ended up pulling a knife and locking his dad out in the freezing cold. Now, his parents take turns watching him - constantly. "We just kind of keep him down on what we call 'lockdown,'" says his mom, a school teacher who lives in Dundas. Her son is addicted to drugs and alcohol. He has tried to kill himself, been in and out of hospital, in homeless shelters and jail. [continues 875 words]
The fire department in ElizabethtownKitley wants to opt out of carrying naloxone kits in its fire trucks. In a report to council set to be discussed on Monday, the township's fire department says it unanimously decided it does not want to participate in the Ontario Naloxone Program at this time. The provincial fire marshal and chief of emergency management informed the township in December they will be expanding the naloxone program to include funding for two naloxone kits for each fire truck used in their role as first responders. [continues 553 words]
Sometimes so little is going through my head that if Ralph were to say something, I'd actually have room to listen to him. Those few times that's happened also seems to be my week to write an article which then leaves me scrambling. Other times, I start the article only to be sideswiped by some event making me set it aside and start over. Such as todays. I am an old fogey when it comes to the decriminalization of marijuana. [continues 777 words]
A day after what would have been her son Ashley's 38th birthday, Betty Niemi told the story of her only child's losing battle with addiction to a rapt audience Thursday night. Niemi, who has started a local chapter of Grief Recovery After Substance Passing (GRASP), took to the podium at the fourth Not My Kid: Adolescents and Addictions seminar before a crowd of about 300 at the Caboto Club. "Losing a child is like having an arm or leg amputated, but no one can see it," Niemi told the crowd. [continues 496 words]
Committee to look at report next week Sudbury could become home to a safe injection site. The community services committee will hear next week about the prospect of undertaking a feasibility study for a site, which will cost $150,000 to $200,000. Council is being asked to endorse the report. "Through community consultations, under the mental health and compassionate city community priorities, the suggested action includes the study of and possible establishment of a supervised injection site," a staff report indicates. "In addition, the establishment of (a safe injection site) has been prioritized by the community drug strategy as part of the harm reduction pillar area of responsibility." [continues 439 words]
Decades after Canada abandoned the field, the B.C. Centre on Substance Use is investigating the benefits of drugs like MDMA and psilocybin In 2011, Gerald Thomas was invited to an Indigenous community in a remote area of British Columbia. Working for the Centre for Addictions Research of B.C., he was one of a small team of scientists who observed 12 people take ayahuasca, an Amazonian mixture that induces vivid visual and auditory hallucinations as well as deep emotional and intellectual reflection. [continues 2903 words]
A new multi-site study has found that children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are more likely to engage in substance use than youngsters without the disorder and had higher rates of marijuana and cigarette use going into adulthood. The study's takeaway message, suggested lead author Brooke Molina, should be that parents of children with ADHD need to keep in touch with their children's activities and friends, even into the teenage years. "They should keep their antenna up," said Molina, a psychiatry professor with the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. [continues 433 words]
Dissenting opinion found charter rights were violated during 'fishing expedition' A senior Ontario judge has called out Toronto police officers who arrested a man on gun and drug charges for "casually intimidating and oppressive misconduct," and wondered if their actions would have been different in a whiter and wealthier neighbourhood. The criticism came in a dissenting opinion from Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Peter Lauwers, who recently disagreed with his two colleagues on a panel hearing the appeal of Tom Le, convicted in 2014 of firearm and drug-related offences and sentenced to five years in prison. [continues 742 words]
