Panel: Inquest rules inmate died of lethal cocktail of drugs MONCTON - A coroner's inquest has ruled that a lethal cocktail of prescription and illegal drugs caused the death of an inmate on remand in a Moncton detention centre. The jury at the three-day inquest labelled the death of Derrick Phillip Urwin as accidental in its findings, but recommended that further action be taken to eliminate the flow of illegal drugs into the province's correctional facilities. "We recommend that as contraband will always be a problem, that correctional staff persevere and continue to develop new ways to detect contraband," said Mark Powers, the juror who delivered the five-person panel's findings on Wednesday. [continues 472 words]
Safeguards are in place to prevent take-home doses of methadone from getting into the wrong hands, according to the New Brunswick Pharmaceutical Society. But pharmacy protocols, which include instructing clients to keep methadone in a locked box, appear not to have been followed in the case of a 23-month-old girl from southeastern New Brunswick who was transferred to a Halifax hospital after ingesting the drug. "If clients are receiving take-home doses they are to present at the pharmacy with a lock box," Gary Meek, assistant registrar of the New Brunswick Pharmaceutical Society, said in an interview. "It's to prevent exactly this kind of thing from happening." [continues 198 words]
MONCTON - The number of seizures in New Brunswick of the drug methamphetamine has doubled in the past year, RCMP say. RCMP officers on Monday displayed quantities of methamphetamine, commonly known as "meth", seized in the province over the past few years. Compared to the rest of the country, New Brunswick still remains relatively clean from the addicting drug since no production labs have been discovered, the Mounties say, and they want to keep it that way. "What we are seeing in pockets across Canada are problems with methamphetamine," MacNeil said. "We want to keep it low (in the province); we do not want methamphetamines to come in here, but that being said, there are pockets in New Brunswick that have been affected by this drug." [continues 275 words]
