Cop faces hearing over removal of cat from stoned owner's home An award-winning Durham Regional Police officer who rescued a "cowering" kitten from a stoned pet owner's home will face a police tribunal on Monday, charged with discreditable conduct. Const. Beth Richardson is accused of "removing a kitten from a residence without the owners'" knowledge or consent on Jan. 12, 2016. "She was dispatched as a back-up officer to attend an Oshawa home to check on the well-being of a female who had been using drugs (crystal meth) for several days," the notice of hearing says, adding Richardson "observed a kitten cowering under a table and (believed) it was not being properly cared for." [continues 683 words]
On April 14, 2016 the B.C. Ministry of Health announced the number of drug-related overdoses in the province had become a public health emergency, citing 474 preventable overdose deaths in British Columbia in 2015. In the six months that followed, they collected more data about overdoses (both fatal and non-fatal) and tried to proactively warn people about risks. During that same period, hundreds more died of illicit drug overdoses - 622 in the first 10 months of 2016, with at least 60 per cent of those directly linked to fentanyl. [continues 528 words]
Chatham-Kent Children's Services working with independent review of case files When the Ontario government launched an independent commission earlier this year to assist families caught between flawed laboratory drug testing and the province's 46 children's aid societies, Chatham-Kent Children's Services (CKCS) opened its case files for more scrutiny. Between 2005 and 2015, CKCS used the Motherisk Laboratory operating out of SickKids Hospital in Toronto 76 times to conduct hair strand tests in cases of suspected drug use. [continues 388 words]
Therapists treat study patients on pure form of ecstasy Several Vancouver psychotherapists behind a head-turning Canadian drug study may not be raving ecstatically or blissed out. But after wrapping up Canada's first-ever trial treating trauma using the drug MDMA - the pure form of what's popularly called ecstasy - they are nonetheless optimistic, Metro has learned. According to psychiatrist Dr. Ingrid Pacey, the study's principal investigator, the MDMA assisted psychotherapy trial showed promising results for its six patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) so severe that no previous treatments had worked. [continues 610 words]
Bundle overdose-fighting naloxone with opioid prescriptions to save lives, area health unit urges It's been proven to be the most effective weapon in the fight to prevent deaths from opioid overdose, a major killer in Ontario. Now the Middlesex-London Heath Unit wants anyone who gets an opioid prescription to get access to and counselling on naloxone, the medication that reverses the deadly effects of an overdose by restoring respiration. The health unit board voted Thursday to make that recommendation to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. [continues 489 words]
Police are seeing more fentanyl and crystal meth cases in the city and some locals have overdosed on fentanyl, they say. "Prior to, you know, within the last year, 2016, fentanyl really didn't exist here," said Moose Jaw Police Deputy Chief Cliff Froehlich. Moose Jaw is now facing the national problem of increased opiate addiction. On Wednesday, Moose Jaw Police Deputy Chief Cliff Froehlich spoke at the Moose Jaw South Central Drug Strategy luncheon. Two of the most problematic drugs for local police are crystal meth and fentanyl. [continues 833 words]
The popularity of cocaine with 18 to 25 year olds in Huron County is growing, said Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Detective Constable Max Miller of the Huron County Drug Office, Community Drug Action Team. All street drugs are present in Huron Count y , but cocaine is becoming more popular with this demographic because it is seen as a party drug that has fewer negative side effects than methamphetamine, the detective said during a public forum the night of Oct. 19. "It's hard for us to combat cocaine usage because you can be a functioning addict but hold down a 9-to-5 job. So it's hard for us to kind of get into the cocaine scene because it's not like methamphetamine where people are doing anything they have to to get it," he said. [continues 789 words]
Pop-up facility in Downtown Eastside may be illegal, but it has been welcomed by addicts who don't feel comfortable at nearby Insite Sarah Blyth was weary of rushing to counteract an overdose every time someone screamed "Narcan!" from a nearby alley in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, so she joined other activists to set up a supervised drug-consumption tent for addicts. Ms. Blyth acknowledges the so called pop-up site is illegal, but said she couldn't stand by and watch as people overdosed. [continues 380 words]
The question Sherry Hebeler wanted answered Wednesday at the fentanyl forum in Maple Ridge was where was the help for her son when he needed it. Her son Bradley Porter, 33, died in a hospital washroom in November 2015, after apparently taking crystal meth that had been laced with fentanyl. He had been admitted to hospital and was addicted to painkillers, but had gone missing. "Nobody found him for two hours," Hebeler said, adding hospital security later found him. And three times previously when her son overdosed, when he was released from hospital, she had called police and asked that he be picked up on outstanding warrants. [continues 346 words]
Shift in drug habits, supply chain blamed The Calgary Police Service has seen a 292 per cent increase in methamphetamine seizures in the second quarter of 2016, compared to the same time last year, according to a report presented to the Calgary Police Commission on Tuesday. Staff Sgt. Martin Schiavetta said the increase is measured in both small busts, such as a person carrying a baggy of the drug, all the way up to large busts. In conjunction with the ever-increasing fentanyl issue in the province, they're seeing some scary outcomes. [continues 116 words]
City police brass want more training, and equipment, for officers to deal with potentially hazardous narcotics. Fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamines are increasing in popularity among drug users, said Deputy Chief Sean Sparling during a Sault Ste. Marie Police Services Board meeting Tuesday at Civic Centre. They're all "very potent," especially powdered fentanyl. "It's also dangerous for the officers to handle," Sparling told The Sault Star following the meeting's open session. "We have to be very mindful of how we're seizing the stuff." [continues 501 words]
Imagine if a bomb exploded every other week in British Columbia, killing 30 people each time. Or that two people were shot to death on city streets each day. Or that a fully loaded commuter plane crashed each month, killing everyone on board. How would we react? Such is the carnage brought by the recent epidemic of drug overdoses in this province. And yet our response has been tepid at best. In the first eight months of this year, drug overdoses killed 488 people - roughly two a day. [continues 514 words]
Cops say drug scourge, trend-busting 2015 spike in thefts from vehicles downtown may be linked As crime drops in London, one offence is stubbornly bucking the trend in some areas of the city and defying its nationwide decline. Police believe they know what's driving that. Relentless reports of thefts from vehicles downtown seem to correlate with crystal meth addiction that's taking a heavy toll on the health of many Londoners, police say. "There appears to be a correlation between the increased use of crystal meth and the increase in these offences," police said in 2015 crime statistics presented to the police services board Thursday. [continues 581 words]
Price, availability, addictiveness appeal to young people, police say THE city's youth are fuelling a surge in methamphetamine use because it's a cheaper way to get a long-lasting high. In fact, "because of its affordability, addictive nature and accessibility, the methamphetamine user base in Winnipeg has increased significantly over a few short years, allowing traffickers to prosper," the Winnipeg Police Service said in a statement. Sadly, both police and health officials don't expect the situation to get better any time soon. [continues 1087 words]
Hospital, former lab director point fingers at each other, deny allegations in proposed class action lawsuit The Hospital for Sick Children and the director of its former Motherisk laboratory are now battling each other in court. The two sides have issued cross-claims against each other as part of their statements of defence filed in a proposed class action lawsuit. The lawsuit was launched by parents who claim they lost their children because of faulty drug and alcohol hair tests carried out by Motherisk. [continues 574 words]
It's been more than a decade since North America's first legal supervised injection site opened its doors on the Downtown East Side and now debate is flying over whether Surrey should have its own. It should. Full stop. With epidemic levels of overdoses, Fraser Health says they're putting together an "aggressive" strategy to combat the issue - possibly such a facility in Surrey. On the weekend of July 15, Surrey Memorial Hospital saw 43 overdoses. Since then? An average of three a day. [continues 736 words]
The City of Vancouver has long led the way on harm reduction. For more than a decade now, its two supervised-injection sites have made it the only jurisdiction in North America with facilities where addicts can inject drugs under the watchful care of nurses. But the suburbs that surround Vancouver have taken more cautious and conservative approaches to drugs, declining to host safe-consumption sites of their own. That's finally beginning to change. Fraser Health, the authority responsible for care in communities from Burnaby to Hope in the Fraser Valley, has revealed that it plans to open multiple sites where users can inject heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and other drugs. [continues 445 words]
Drug Conviction Quashed A man who hid drugs in his rectum had his trafficking conviction overturned Wednesday because Sarnia police detained him for 43 hours waiting for him to defecate before taking him to a justice of the peace. In throwing out the conviction, Ontario's highest court also criticized officers for how they treated Jeffrey Poirier during their "bedpan vigil search." "I do not accept that the officers were acting in good faith," the Appeal Court ruled. "The manner in which the search was carried out was a flagrant breach of the appellant's rights." [continues 296 words]
The spike in Calgary's crime severity index (CSI) can largely be linked to the increase in the city's drug activity and economic slump, according to Calgary police Chief Roger Chaffin, as fentanyl and other opioid use remains high across the province. On Wednesday, Statistics Canada released a report that showed Calgary's CSI index jumped by 29 per cent, the largest increase in Canada's metropolitan areas. The CSI measures the volume and severity of police-reported crime. According to Calgary police, there was a spike in methamphetamine, heroin and opiate drugseizures. [continues 176 words]
"We're talking about hundreds of deaths," Justine McIsaac lamented. For the past year, McIsaac has been on the front lines of Canada's opiate crisis, as an outreach worker for the Street Health Centre. The hundreds of lives lost, she explained, go beyond the city's boundaries, extending not just across the province but across the country. Last week, an announcement was made by Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott regarding the opiate crisis. Philpott signed an interim order to temporarily allow naloxone - a critical overdose-reversing drug - to be imported and sold in spray form across Canada. [continues 699 words]
