Event aims to break stigma around overdose and drug use

About 75 Cape Bretoners gathered at Wentworth Park Bandshell on Thursday to pay tribute to loved ones who died by drug overdose or who are struggling with addiction.

Tears flowed and people could be heard quietly sobbing and sniffing during the Overdose Awareness Day event, especially when the names of people who died of drug overdoses were being called out.

Antoinette Murphy, who lost her son to an overdose five months ago, was there with her three daughters and a granddaughter.

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Overdose awareness event equal parts memorial and educational

The Ally Centre of Cape Breton is hosting an event for International Overdose Awareness Day to remember those lost to overdose and bring awareness to the opioid crisis on the island.

"Each year we try to make an impact, somehow, to draw attention to overdose and the effect it's having on our communities," explained Christine Porter, executive director of the Ally Centre.

From 2008-2016, there have been 169 overdose deaths in CapeBreton.

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Medicinal marijuana dispensary in Stellarton offers variety of products

This isn't your grandma's home remedy.

Although maybe it is - maybe your grandma is totally on board with medical marijuana taking away the aches and pains that can come with old age.

"If you eat that ice cream, you're going to feel very, very relaxed. We've got people in their 80s coming in here," said Hank Merchant, chief executive officer of HBB Medical - a medicinal pot dispensary in Stellarton that opened several weeks ago.

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Staff suggest HRM consider how to handle legalization

Halifax is starting to think about how legal marijuana will roll out in the municipality.

In a staff report coming to regional council's meeting on Tuesday, staff recommend starting the process to consider amending land-use bylaws to determine the best places for marijuana-production facilities and dispensaries in the municipality ahead of next summer's promised legalization.

The federal government introduced legislation to legalize marijuana this spring. The bill passed first and second reading, and was referred to committee for further debate. The government intends to bring the law into effect no later than July 2018.

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Legal pot was inevitable the moment society became inexorably bound to runaway technology.

Friday, with a digital lifeline severed, pasty-faced, disoriented humans stumbled out of the disrupted dichotomy - separate connection - to join other disoriented, confused survivors wandering, lost and untethered, in the foreign world of a decade back.

Sitting stoned alone in your backyard would clearly be a healthier psychological response. When everything depends on one thing, and that one thing is undependable, dupable and destructible, there needs to be a fallback, and "who gives a crap" is a viable option.

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Some so-called experts say the human brain keeps growing until age 25 and a CTV poll found a majority of people said the legal age for marijuana should be 21 or 25

This does not make sense to me. In Canada, you can join the military at 18, get a driver's licence at 16 and vote at 18.

A lot of kids 18 and younger are smoking marijuana. Bought legally, it will be safer than from the black market. Government, instead of organized crime, should be profiting from the sale of cannabis. Drug stores are the best place to sell marijuana and the legal age should be 18.

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Victoria County's first and only medical marijuana dispensary opened in June. It is listed with the Nova Scotia Registry of Joint Stocks and has a CRA business number, a bank account and 25 clients. The RCMP are well aware of it. However, dispensaries are illegal in Canada. So how does it still exist? The Standard's Carolyn Barber explores the making og a gray area where some choose to roll the dice.

Our story about the medical marijuana (cannabis) dispensary that opened in June in Bay St. Lawrence began as a typical business profile. On July 16, The Standard's Carolyn Barber interviewed sole proprietor and operator Kevin Mackinnon, his wife Amy, and daughter Danielle at their dispensary located on Buchanan Lane in the northern Cape Breton village. Some basic background research on medical marijuana dispensaries generated further questions. That's when it became more than a profile.

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Investment Property Owners Association of Nova Scotia (IPOANS) is not in favour of the proposed Federal Government's cannabis legalization legislation.

"Nova Scotia's Cannabis Legalization Working Group must take into consideration multi-family unit dwellings' high-density living environment when writing cannabis regulations," says IPOANS president Jeremy Jackson. Adding "The current legislation, as is, fails to protect tenants' right to peaceful enjoyment of their homes, a right guaranteed under the Nova Scotia Residential Tenancy Act."

According to Statistics Canada's 2011 National Household Survey, there are 111,000 renter households in Nova Scotia. Taking into account an average 1.5 occupancy factor per renter household, marijuana use and cultivation places 166,000 Nova Scotians' health and safety in jeopardy.

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If last week's meeting of provincial premiers is any indication, the issue that most unites Canadian provinces in the summer of 2017 is the timing of the introduction of legalized marijuana.

Canadians should be forgiven for thinking that the premiers face more daunting and serious problems - starting with the state of provincial health care systems. A study by the New York-based Commonwealth Fund concludes Canada's health care system ranks in the bottom three in a group of 11 wealthy countries.

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The association representing Nova Scotia's apartment building owners is speaking out against the federal government's proposed cannabis legalization legislation.

In a media release issued on Monday, the Investment Property Owners Association of Nova Scotia (IPOANS) expressed concerns about secondhand marijuana smoke.

The release said the association's members have heard from tenants with respiratory conditions, young families, seniors and non-smoking residents who've expressed concerns about "inhaling drifting (second hand) marijuana smoke and drifting airborne toxins from marijuana plant cultivation."

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"Go slow, take your time," is the excellent advice Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was given last year on his plan to legalize recreational marijuana in Canada. The speaker was none other than Anne McLellan, leader of the federal government's task force on the issue, and her message was do your homework and get the job right the first time around.

The caution from this former Liberal deputy prime minister was wise. It seems even more urgent now after nine Canadian premiers told the prime minister last week they have so many concerns about his promise to legalize recreational pot starting July 1, 2018 that they may ask him to postpone the change.

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Advocate calls for more details on N.S. opioid plan

Nova Scotia's plan to offer hundreds of free naloxone kits will undoubtedly save lives, but one advocate says a lack of hard timelines and specific plans to help people outside an opioid emergency raises "more questions than answers."

Amy Graves, founder of the non-profit Get Prescription Drugs Off The Street Society, has been raising awareness around the dangers of prescription drugs and pushing for changes since 2011, after the loss of her younger brother Josh to an accidental hydromorphone overdose.

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Access to drug will save lives, says front-line worker

A Halifax woman working on the front lines of the opioid crisis describes the province's decision to expand access to naloxone as "a great first step.".

Naloxone can reverse an opioid overdose. A department of health and wellness media release reports that the life-saving medication has saved at least 40 lives in Nova Scotia since January of 2016.

"We had three overdoses in one week. My team has naloxone training," said Rebekah Brounstein, residential co-ordinator with the Salvation Army's Halifax Centre of Hope.

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Dalhousie duo say recreational, medical need to be separate

Dalhousie researchers are lending their voices to the debate on keeping the medical and recreational streams of marijuana separate.

The Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation published recommendations in a framework for legalization of cannabis in Canada in 2016.

It stated recreational marijuana be accessed separately from medical marijuana.

The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) came out against that recommendation in favour of a single stream instead.

The task force noted patients felt a separate system was necessary to avoid losing their current access rights to cannabis.

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The distinctive smell of weed was permeating the air around the concert grounds.

And I was panicking.

Not because I had sparked one up and feared getting caught.

No, I was afraid of a question: "Daddy, what's that smell?"

You see, I was doing my rock'n'roll duty, trying to pass my burning love of concerts on to my young'uns.

It was their first show. It was a Canada Day freebee and it was spectacular, with a lineup that included The Novaks, a St. John's-based rock machine, and The Sheepdogs, the Saskatoon band with big sound and even bigger hair.

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Custio Clayton alleges racial profiling by Montreal police

A cloud still follows Custio Clayton after one spring night in Montreal.

The former Olympian turned professional boxer has been in his hometown of Dartmouth for three weeks now, following his biggest pro victory to date. But this period of rest and relaxation has been sullied for the 29-year-old father of four.

Clayton says he was racially profiled by Montreal police during a traffic stop April 4 - during which a veteran officer accused him of being a drug dealer hiding marijuana inside a 2017 Yukon Denali.

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Approximately 200,000 Canadians have a medical marijuana prescription, but it isn't covered by most health insurance plans. (File)

Since the implementation of Canada's national medical cannabis system in 2001, attitudes toward cannabis have changed significantly. What was once stigmatized as a street drug has come to be understood as a substance with broad therapeutic uses.

Today about 200,000 Canadians have a prescription to use medical cannabis under a doctor's care for management of symptoms caused by chronic pain, bowel diseases, spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis, certain mental health disorders and a host of illnesses. Patients use cannabis because it works for them with manageable side effects.

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It happened like clockwork. Every year, the RCMP would raid a Shelburne man's property as his neighbours looked on.

The police were looking for pot and Dave Butler fully admits they were going to find it.

"They've come every year since 2001… they never missed a year," said Butler.

Butler's property, or the land around it, was always a place to find marijuana growing. Most of the time, he's managed to avoid charges - until recently.

Butler was expected to stand trial on production of marijuana charges June 19 at Shelburne Supreme Court after an arrest in 2014 but instead pleaded guilty to the lesser, included offence of possession. He was sentenced to 12 months of probation and will be given a total discharge if he complies with his probation order and pays a $100 victim surcharge.

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Canada's law enforcement agencies, MADD Canada and other first responders took to the country's roads and highways recently in their annual campaign to promote safety on our highways over the summer holiday season.

Adding to the complexity of addressing the issue of impaired driving is the steady increase in the numbers of drivers who have been stopped for drug impairment.

Law enforcement is also concerned that the impending legalization of marijuana by the Trudeau Government will compound the problem.

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Two questions: What drug is the most addictive and can give you a condition that can kill you?

What other drug has the worse withdrawal effects and can destroy your brain? Answers! No. 1 is nicotine. It is so addictive because no matter how much you ingest your body still craves more and as it leaves your body the craving gets more intense.

Over time it can cause lung disease. Answer No. 2 is alcohol/ Longtime excessive use can lead to brain damage. It even has a name - Korsakoff Syndrome. You can also die from the DTs if you go cold turkey and are not under a doctors care.

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