Hospital should own its role, and help foot bill, in fallout from faulty drug tests, CAS head says Children's aid societies are calling on the Hospital for Sick Children to "step up" and own the role it played in the Motherisk scandal that saw faulty drug and alcohol hair tests used in thousands of child protection cases. Mary Ballantyne, executive director of the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies (OACAS), said Sick Kids, which housed the discredited Motherisk Drug Testing Laboratory, should do more to assist in the significant efforts underway to deliver justice to those affected. [continues 867 words]
The anti-marijuana-legalization movement has made the claim that legalization will lead to an eruption in teenage marijuana use a central part of its narrative. But it turns out that the kids didn't get the memo. The University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research is out with its latest national survey of teenage drug use, including marijuana use, and what it found was that since 2012, the year that Colorado and Washington state legalized pot, teenage drug use is down, not up. [continues 647 words]
OTTAWA - Eighteen-year-olds should be allowed to buy recreational cannabis when the Liberal government launches a globe-leading social experiment in legalizing marijuana next year, a federally appointed task force said Tuesday. The age limit - and the hazy science of pot-impaired driving - were among the most contentious aspects during five months of hearings and research, task force vice-chair Dr. Mark Ware told a news conference in the parliamentary precinct. The framework report is recommending storefront and mail-order sales to people 18 and older, with personal growing limits of four plants per person and a 30-gram limit on personal possession. [continues 736 words]
New legislation will allow the province to involuntarily detain young people at the Hope Valley Centre in Grand Falls-Windsor for drug withdrawal and treatment. The new law, which will be debated in the House of Assembly on Thursday, lays out steps for a court order that will allow officials to detain young people between 12 and 18 years old. The detention in the Hope Valley Centre's secure treatment unit can be from five days up to a maximum of 10 days. [continues 233 words]
Until he found the lifeless body of his son on the bedroom floor Friday morning, Joe Frocklage had no room in his heart for hate. At just 46 years old, Joseph Edwin Audie Foy, best know to friends and family as "Bear," died from what is believed to be a heroin/fentanyl overdose, a drug he's thought to have used a short time earlier. "When we were growing up my parents never raised us to hate and I could never say that I hated any person, no one, but that's all changed," said Frocklage, as he looked down at the spilled container of marijuana believed to be laced with the opiate that was found in Bear's jacket pocket that day. "They're murdering our kids with this shit. It's got to stop. I mean how many people are sitting there just like us and their kids are dying over this shit, I can't believe it. [continues 783 words]
Re: Panel suggests new pot policies, John Ivison; Dec. 2 The legalization of marijuana products fails to take into account the fact that the bulk of the market for marijuana is youth users, who will continue to obtain marijuana illegally under any regulation schematic. The suggestion that the federal task force report, due out on Dec. 21, will recommend an age limit of 18 or 19, would see high school students gaining legal access. What this country needs is a massive public education campaign to reduce the demand for marijuana, not new laws that could entice a generation of senior level students to try their hand at supplying younger kids drugs for profit. The risk of legalizing marijuana is that, with legitimacy, we could well see greater use, a larger black market and more damage to a generation of young Canadians. No responsible government would take such a risk with our kids. Pamela McColl, Vancouver [end]
Police forces are warning parents after a raid Tuesday night at the Canna Leaf marijuana dispensary in downtown St. John's that the cannabis candies and cookies seized are similar to what can be purchased in regular stores in the province, but can be harmful to children. "They are infused with (THC) tetrahydrocannabinol, which is the psychoactive constituent of cannabis," the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit (CFSEU - NL) stated in a news release. Members of the CFSEU-NL executed a search warrant at Canna leaf Medical Dispensary around 10 p.m. Tuesday, which the release describes as "an illegal marijuana dispensary in downtown St. John's." [continues 159 words]
Sadly kids are not told the truth very often like 100 people die each day directly from tobacco use. It must make them wonder why tobacco is legal while no one has ever died directly from cannabis use which is illegal. Another sad fact is underage drinking was much higher during the prohibition of alcohol and only went down after booze was legal again. If you understand history you are less likely to repeat its mistakes. Doug Sharpe (Herald, Nov. 21) believes the Liberals are to blame for everything wrong in our nation yet these are the same problems that the Conservatives failed to fix. [continues 51 words]
Nanaimo firm will supply cannabis for pioneering research to help children with epilepsy Researchers at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children are about to begin a clinical trial using cannabis extracts to treat children with severe epilepsy whose seizures cannot be controlled with existing medications. The trial is believed to be the first in Canada to test an oral preparation that contains both CBD and THC, compounds in marijuana that have been shown in the laboratory and through anecdotal reports to have anticonvulsant properties in children with treatment-resistant epilepsy. [continues 821 words]
University dispenses naloxone as part of fentanyl campaign The University of Alberta has dispensed 11 fentanyl overdose response kits since the start of the fall term to head o the province's most pressing and deadly health crisis. Even though the injectable naloxone packs have been available since last year, the uptake by students is being attributed to the fact the stigma associated with accessing the packs is slowly disappearing as more and more people realize the lethality of the opioid. [continues 532 words]
It was the night after Thanksgiving. The little boy, not quite 3, wore no socks, despite the cold. He sat on his unconscious mother's lap in the idling car, a spray of vomit dried on the window, according to the police. His father was slumped on the steering wheel, his seat belt wrapped around his arm like a tourniquet. In the back seat, the toddler's baby brother slept under a blanket. The parents, Tamara Bruce, 33, and Jacob Davis, 27, later told police that they had driven their children more than three hours from Manchester, Vt., to Lawrence to buy heroin and shoot up. When they passed out in a parking lot, another driver thought they were dead and summoned police. [continues 717 words]
"Children are our most valuable gifts of nature. Let us try our best to safeguard those gifts. Cultivating a garden requires hours of vigorous digging, planting, watering and weeding. The flowering and fruit only come as a result of backbreaking work, constant self-giving and taking in all that is life sustaining from the world around us", (Joseph A. Califano). As a parents it is our solemn duty to become good role models for our children, protect them from unhealthy life style, and inspire and motivate them to achieve their dreamed goals. [continues 912 words]
Dear Editor: The federal government legalized euthanasia up against the backdrop of a rash of suicides on First Nations reserves and at a time when there was (and still is) no national suicide strategy or national palliative care strategy in place. Now, while people are dying by the hundreds from an epidemic of opioid drug use, the federal government marches on with their plan to legalize marijuana. It can't be just me. Others must see the blindness of our Members of Parliament in Ottawa. But you know who isn't blind? Our children. They are watching our government make these kinds of decisions and some regrettably are believing the narratives cobbled together around the justifications for the government's reckless actions. And worse yet, some children will buy into the lie that suicide is justifiable and drug use must be okay. Because their government says so. Thank God parents and those who will vote in 2019 are watching too. Doug Sharpe Summerland [end]
As a mother, I understand the fears about legalizing marijuana. Parents want the best for our children. We worry about addiction. But research unfailingly has shown that most hard-drug users start with alcohol or tobacco, not cannabis. And marijuana has never caused a single death, unlike opiates or alcohol. Parents worry about teen use. Question 1 will better protect our kids, who, everyone agrees, should not use marijuana. From other states, we know Maine teens won't use more marijuana if we vote "yes" on 1. In addition, black-market dealers do not check IDs and do not test their products, putting our kids at risk. Maine can create a legal, regulated market for adults that tests and labels products for safety, conforms to marketing restrictions, requires child-proof packaging, only sells to adults, and is accountable to us. Tammie Snow Portland [end]
One in five youth report heavy alcohol and marijuana use - frequently driving while impaired - and are concerned about their growing dependency, according to a new study. The report Changes and Challenges, which highlights a decade of observations of the health and well-being of young adults in British Columbia, was produced by Island Health and the University of Victoria. The study spans a decade, from 2003-2013, of repeat interviews with 662 people from Greater Victoria as a random sample of youth from age 12 to 18. [continues 432 words]
Two treatment programs closed THE closure of two youth-treatment programs has raised concerns about access to addictions treatment for young people involved in Manitoba's criminal justice system. The youth addiction and mental health treatment programs run by the Behavioural Health Foundation closed permanently this spring because of a lack of funding. The shuttering of the two programs - one in Selkirk for boys and the other in St. Norbert for girls - was already in the works when a Red River College student was brutally attacked by two boys at the Selkirk facility during the final shift of her child and youth care practicum last May. [continues 892 words]
As overdose-related deaths are on the rise, Maple Ridge services and advocates are looking to create strategies of prevention in the community. Following a recent case of fentanyl-related overdoses that put nine young people in hospital in a matter of 20 minutes in Delta, it was made clear to Strong Kids Team co-chair Susan Carr that fentanyl is reaching far and wide across the region, bearing no mind to age. According to Fraser Health statistics presented at a recent forum organized by the team, Maple Ridge will see a predicted total of 10 more fatal overdoses by the end of 2016, in addition to the 20 deaths that have already hit close to home for residents. [continues 738 words]
A 15-year-old Metis boy died in a court-ordered program in Campbell River last year after his desperate parents turned to the youth justice system for help with their son's drug addiction, a new report shows. B.C.'s child watchdog says in the report that Nick Lang ended up in court after falling through cracks in the youth mental health and addictions system. "He was a teen in serious distress who did not receive the specific supports he needed when he needed them - and neither did his family," writes Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, B.C.'s representative for children and youth. [continues 610 words]
Here's a sobering fact: One in four teens involved in a fatal collision tests positive for marijuana. It's a devastating, preventable loss. Young drivers, inexperienced by definition, are already at significantly higher risk for motor vehicle collision than any other age group. When they smoke pot, the risk doubles. Twenty-one per cent of teens have gotten behind the wheel within an hour of using drugs, according to data compiled by Parachute, a national charity dedicated to injury prevention. In fact, drug use has overtaken alcohol as a factor in fatal collisions - and young drivers are no exception. [continues 469 words]
Father hopes to make care for youth a ballot-box issue in next election This government has had 10 years to do something and they haven't done it. The father of a 15-year-old drug-addicted boy whose death has sparked calls for government-funded services says he will push for change in the run-up to a provincial election so other youth can get the help they desperately need. Peter Lang spoke out Thursday after British Columbia's representative for children and youth released a report on his son's June 2015 death. [continues 560 words]
