As legalization looms, experts say we're not road safe yet As Canada readies to legalize pot this summer, experts including an ex-traffic cop warn we're still stumped about stopping stoned drivers from hitting B.C.'S streets. "I've stopped lots of people who have been under the influence of marijuana," recalls retired West Vancouver traffic enforcement officer Cpl. Grant Gottgetreu. "You had to get really good at making observations. "Unless a person gets pulled over and there's an overwhelming smell of burned marijuana from the car there's still no instrument out there to test like there is for alcohol yet." [continues 532 words]
Demonstrators demand change to federal drug policies Around 200 drug users and advocates took to Vancouver's streets Tuesday, demanding changes to the federal government's drug policies. In a national day of action, co-ordinated with cities across Canada, demonstrators from the Canadian Association of People who Use Drugs (CAPUD), the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) and other groups marched through Vancouver's Downtown Eastside from Victory Square to the B.C. courts building at Hornby and Smithe St. [continues 470 words]
'Authority' included in new guidelines According to the province's latest cannabis retail laws, announced Monday in Victoria, city governments - such as Richmond - will be able to decide whether to allow pot shops. In the lead up to the federal government's July 1 marijuana legalization deadline, the province's new guidelines lay out rules for who can sell recreational cannabis where and when. At a Feb. 5 press conference, Minister of Public Safety, Mike Farnworth, said municipalities would have "the authority to make local decisions, based on the needs of their communities." [continues 781 words]
Police say booths have been selling weed to kids Despite a recent police crackdown, marijuana vendors who have been selling pot out of booths set up at Robson Square near the Vancouver Art Gallery say they have no intention of stopping. Police arrested four people on Jan. 22 and have charged a fifth person, Vancouver resident David Hill, with drug trafficking. At a press conference Tuesday morning, police said they have recommended 11 charges in total and more charges will be coming. [continues 269 words]
Vancouver VCH will offer many services in one location Tuesday, January 23, 2018 Vancouver Coastal Health has built a new supervised injection site. But until Health Canada approves the health authority's application, it will sit empty. The new room, built especially to offer injection-drug users a supervised place to shoot up, is part of the new Heatley Community Health Centre. It's designed to offer what its creators call "wrap-around" health care to patients from the Downtown Eastside. And its completion comes in the middle of the worst overdose crisis in B.C.'s history that saw over 1,200 British Columbians die from illicit drug overdoses in 2017. [continues 166 words]
Drug users need access to clean drugs: BCCDC head As Vancouver records its highest ever number of overdose deaths, the head of B.C.'s Centre for Disease Control says he wants to move ahead on a controversial but innovative idea he feels is vital in the fight to save lives. Dr. Mark Tyndall first proposed a vending machine back in December as a way to distribute prescription opioids to people with serious addictions who haven't responded to other treatments. [continues 431 words]
Feds have promised a deadline of July 1, 2018 The day marijuana advocates and enthusiasts have long been waiting for what will come in 2018 - recreational marijuana will be legalized on Canada Day. But with federal legislation comes a host of logistical and revenue issues for provinces and cities across the country. Vancouver may appear to have a head start, as the city established a licensing program for marijuana dispensaries in 2015, but it will need to follow provincial rules on the issue as well. [continues 348 words]
New tools are helping - but more needs to be done December 2016 is seared into the memory of people who live or work with people from the Downtown Eastside, the epicentre of B.C.'s opioid overdose crisis. "People were going down in alleyways," Karen Ward remembers. "It was a year ago that nine people died in one weekend. "I remember the night when three people died in my building." "BC Ambulance had its busiest day in history, St. Paul's hospital was fully blocked up and we were seeing the highest rates of overdoses that we had seen in the emergency room and at Insite," Dr. Mark Lysyshyn recalls. [continues 605 words]
Life-saving drug now accessible after web tutorial People can now learn how to administer Naloxone, the antidote to opioid overdose, by watching a five-minute video online. St. Paul's emergency medical team led the project and launched the online tutorial this month to help more people access the life-saving drug. At the end of the tutorial, participants receive a certificate they can show at a nearby pharmacy, or any Naloxone dispensing site, to receive a free kit. Previously, people who wanted Naloxone would have to attend a training workshop before receiving a kit. [continues 189 words]
Drug reliance stems from lack of social bonds, trauma: Expert To Janice Abbott, the link between housing and addiction is a direct line. "One of the things that happens when women don't have housing is that women use (drugs) to stay safe," the CEO of Atira Women's Resource Society told attendees at the Housing Central Conference in Richmond on Monday. "Young women on the streets use speed, any upper, to be able to stay awake so they can keep themselves safe from all the predation that's on the streets." [continues 461 words]
Conditions can push people to commit crimes: Study Releasing people on bail on the condition they do not go to the Downtown Eastside sets them up for failure, according to research from three Canadian universities. Judges often order people on bail to avoid certain "no-go zones" or "red zones" in an effort to prevent them from committing crimes. But it, in fact, does the exact opposite, says SFU geography professor Nicholas Blomley. "These are people who have yet to be found guilty of an offence," he said. [continues 391 words]
Canada should declare opioid crisis: Doctor The head of Portugal's addictions directorate is urging Canada to declare the opioid overdose crisis a national health emergency. On a tour of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, the innercity neighbourhood home to many people who struggle with addictions and mental health, Dr. Joao Goulao said the sheer number of deaths caused by the tainted supply of illicit drugs warrants the declaration. Portugal is often held up as a model of progressive drug reform. Policy changes started in the late 1990s in that country included decriminalizing drugs, something many public health advocates are now advocating for Canada as the only truly effective way to remove the risk of ingesting illicit drugs tainted with fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid. [continues 243 words]
Thursday is International Overdose Awareness Day, and Metro looks at just a few of the ideas to end an ongoing epidemic that's on track to kill 1,560 British Columbians in 2017. 1. Artisanal opiates? Most overdoses have been from drugs laced with fentanyl and its even deadlier cousins. An Aug. 17 B.C. Centre for Disease Control report asked, why not let opiate users grow their own poppies to ensure an untainted supply? It suggested authorities "explore medical opium" through "grower's clubs, production on a model similar to medical marijuana, personal cultivation." [continues 310 words]
Marijuana legalization is on the way, but cities say no one has bothered to consult them about it. Cannabis will feature prominently at this year's Union of British Columbia Municipalities convention - scheduled for the week of Sept. 25 in Vancouver - according to the UBCM's preliminary schedule released Tuesday. Specifically, the UBCM has made it clear they're not happy with the lack of consultation with the federal and provincial governments about legalization, even though it claims local government will bear the brunt of regulatory, compliance and enforcement costs. [continues 112 words]
High Hopes offers pot to help prevent overdoses Tuesday, August 29, 2017 A community organization in Vancouver has started offering people marijuana as an alternative to deadly street drugs. Struggling to contain a fentanyl overdose crisis that has already killed 232 people in the city this year - more than the 231 deaths in all of 2016 - the High Hopes Foundation has been operating for a month now in the Downtown Eastside. Its goal: to link drug users with community resources, going so far as to give them marijuana as a substitute for hard drugs. [continues 442 words]
Overdose crisis linked to prohibition, expert says Vancouver In 2001, Doug MacPherson developed the City of Vancouver's Four Pillars drug strategy, a policy that emphasized concepts like harm reduction (such as safe injection sites) as well as addictions prevention, treatment and drug trafficking enforcement. The deadly overdose crisis shows no sign of stopping. Earlier this week, Vancouver reported that at 232 deaths in 2017, the city has already surpassed 2016's entire total. MacPherson is now turning his attention to a "total rethink" of Canadian drug strategy and is calling for what he calls "the legal regulation" of all drugs. Metro spoke to MacPherson about political risk and what it takes to move controversial policies into the mainstream. MacPherson was recently awarded the Nora and Ted Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy from Simon Fraser University. He'll deliver a lecture on drug policy after receiving the award on Oct. 10. [continues 463 words]
232 people have died so far this year The number of suspected overdose deaths in Vancouver this year has already surpassed last year's total. So far this year, the city has seen 232 overdose deaths and is on pace for more than 400 deaths. In all of 2016, there were 231 overdose deaths in Vancouver. Provincially, 780 people died in the first six months of 2017. In 2016, it took until November to reach 755 deaths, at the time an alarmingly high number. [continues 267 words]
Medical officer wants to offer other forms of consumption The first new supervised injection site in Vancouver since 2003 opened Thursday in the midst of the province's overdose crisis. Starting July 28, a small room off the reception area at Lookout Emergency Aid Society will host an estimated 200 to 300 people a day, seven days a week. "In 1992 (this site) opened as the Living Room, now called the Powell Street Getaway, but it was called the Living Room because many of the folks in this community live in SROs in smaller-unit buildings that don't have a living room to socialize in," said Shayne Williams, the executive director of Lookout. [continues 480 words]
Tracey Morrison remembered for her tenderness and tirelessness A longtime advocate for drug policy reforms in Vancouver is being mourned after her unexpected death on Friday night. Tracey Morrison was of Anishinabe ancestry and president of the Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society. Also involved in the city's leading harm-reduction community organization, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), Morrison earned the nickname Tracey the Bannock Lady for her many years selling homemade fry bread in the Downtown Eastside. [continues 415 words]
Proposed shop linked to Sahota family angers activists Activists in the Downtown Eastside rallied at Vancouver City Hall on Wednesday afternoon - but this time their demand wasn't for more housing, to save Chinatown, or to halt a developer. They wanted to block a marijuana dispensary proposed for affluent Kerrisdale, Herban Legends, from appealing its rejection by the city for being within 300 metres of a school. The bulk of speakers and community letters submitted - 58 against, none for, the Board of Variance chair revealed - in the case weren't about the school issue, but the dispensary's connections to a family that owns poorly maintained single-resident occupancy buildings in the Downtown Eastside, including the condemned and evacuated Balmoral Hotel: the Sahota family. [continues 314 words]
City's health authority to use drug users' info to lower deaths Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) is rolling out an alert warning system that aims to bring drug overdose and contamination information to drug users faster. The eight-month pilot program will crowd source information from the drug users and relay it to their peers via harm reduction service providers in the community. Health providers currently post warnings whenever authorities receive word from police about a particularly dangerous batch of drugs or when service providers notice a spike in overdoses, but that information often comes a week or two after the fact, said Dr. Mark Lysyshyn, medial health officer at VCH. [continues 271 words]
One dispensary owner says licensing process is too strict It's been almost two years since Vancouver city councillors adopted new pot-shop regulations, but after dishing out more than 1,600 tickets, the city is still dealing with 57 marijuana retail businesses that are not abiding by the rules. That doesn't include the 38 dispensaries or compassion clubs that don't have licences but are exempted from ticketing because they say they are going to put an application together, said Kathryn Holm, head of licensing at the City of Vancouver. [continues 453 words]
Advocate fears lack of action due to power vacuum A British Columbian mother whose son died from a fentanyl overdose is watching the province's political uncertainty with some unease since the May 9 razor-thin election. With neither party commanding a majority of seats, government ministries have been treading water - maintaining existing programs but prevented from taking new policy directions. Leslie McBain's 25-year-old son Jordan died of an opioid overdose in February 2014. She wants whoever takes power to listen to those most directly impacted. [continues 329 words]
Experts discuss how educators can curb risks Feeling connected is critical to avoiding problem substance use. Cindy Andrew As New Westminster School District students continue to grapple with a tragedy that took the life of one of its 16-year-old students this week, and nearly killed another, experts have said their overdoses are a "call to action" for all schools. Both teens overdosed on an "unknown" substance they wrongly believed was the party drug MDMA, local police said. In Vancouver, several schools and teachers have been issued overdose reversal kits and training, Metro has learned. Several districts' substance use counsellors are raising awareness of fentanyl overdoses, and some teens even trained on overdose symptoms and first aid. [continues 307 words]
Vancouver will get one new site, while Surrey gets two Health Canada is allowing three additional supervised drug consumption sites to operate in the Lower Mainland - two in Surrey and one in Vancouver. The move fulfils a promise from Jane Philpott, Canada's federal health minister, to support and expedite applications to open more of the sites. At supervised drug consumption sites, nurses are present as people take illicit drugs and can assist in case of an overdose as well as connect people to other health or social services. Insite at 139 E. Hastings St., operated by Vancouver Coastal Health and the Portland Hotel Society, opened in 2003, while a supervised consumption site at Vancouver's Dr. Peter Centre has operated since 2002. [continues 229 words]
Six people died from overdoses last week in Vancouver As the number of overdose deaths continues to rise in Vancouver, the city announced it wants to see more fentanyl test strips made available to drug users. The strips test for the presence of fentanyl and a nine-month pilot project at Insite found users who knew their drugs contained fentanyl were more likely to decrease their dose and therefore less likely to overdose. It's an approach that could save more lives, said Mayor Gregor Robertson. "Our residents are literally dying waiting for both treatment options that will get them off dangerous street drugs and save their lives, and immediate interventions like expanded drug testing that reduce overdoses," he said in a press release. [continues 111 words]
Study finds cannabis can be used to help crack addicts Marijuana could be used to treat people suffering from addictions to crack cocaine, according to a new study from the BC Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU). Dr. M-J Milloy, a research scientist at the BCCSU, told Metro that his team has seen "significant declines" in daily crack-cocaine use among a cohort of 122 Vancouver-area people with addictions who reported substituting the drug with cannabis. Approximately 35 per cent of the people interviewed initially told researchers they would use crack cocaine daily. [continues 369 words]
Beach Avenue along Sunset Beach closed Thursday The stage is set for today's 4-20 pot rally at Sunset Beach in Vancouver and organizers say the annual protest is here to stay despite the federal government's intention to legalize pot next year. The unpermitted event, which drew 25,000 people to the beach last year, will feature more than 300 vendor booths and live music. Park board commissioners voted against giving 4-20 event organizers a permit for this year's event but that hasn't changed things on the ground, said marijuana advocate, Dana Larsen. [continues 327 words]
Consumption sites should be up to provinces: Medical chief Not enough is being done to speed up critical decisions that can save lives a year into British Columbia's overdose crisis, according to Vancouver Coastal Health's chief medical health officer. Dr. Patricia Daly and provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall were at Vancouver city hall Wednesday to brief council on the progress to date since Kendall first declared a public health emergency on April 14, 2016. Last year, 922 people died in the province of illicit drug overdoses - three times the number of people who died in motor vehicle accidents. [continues 344 words]
Board would have been able to charge 4-20 organizers $35K This year's kerfuffle over whether Vancouver would give 4-20 event organizers a permit or not holds some lessons for next year, says the park board chairman. This year's 4-20 pot rally in Vancouver will go on without a permit, making it harder for park board staff to ensure the event does not damage the park and that people are safe, said Vancouver Park Board chairman Michael Wiebe. [continues 333 words]
Protesters and tokers refuse to change 4-20 event venue It looks like tens of thousands of people will flock to Sunset Beach on April 20th this year to smoke and to buy marijuana from hundreds of booths regardless of whether city politicians like it or not. Vancouver city council was originally going to consider finding a new location for this year's 4/20 rally but event organizers made it clear with less than a month to go, it was too late. The race to find a new location was triggered by the Vancouver Park Board's vote to reject organizers' permit application for Sunset Beach. [continues 485 words]
Pot shop experts and a local city councillor are applauding the federal government for setting a date for marijuana legalization but warn its success rests on marijuana prices and provincial funding. The federal government announced Sunday night it will introduce legislation to legalize marijuana in April and that the law would come into effect no later than Canada Day 2018. But dozens of pot shops in the city operate in a legal grey area and experts say their fate is uncertain in light of the upcoming legalization. One marijuana dispensary manager says customers are already coming in with questions about the decision. [continues 444 words]
Council to look at motion to work with organizers Vancouver city council will consider whether it should work with local 4/20 protest organizers to find a new location for the annual pot rally, which failed to receive a permit from the Park Board for Sunset Beach. The main reason for the motion is money, according to Coun. Adriane Carr, who plans to table the motion Tuesday. "I'm a pragmatic person. I rather see the event permitted and then the cost born by the event organizers, not by the citizens," she told Metro. [continues 224 words]
MP Davies says Liberal budget is a fifth of what Tories proposed The New Democratic Party's health critic calls the amount of money devoted to fighting the ongoing overdose crisis in the federal budget shocking. Don Davies, MP for Vancouver Kingsway, says the $110 million set aside for the Canadian Drugs and Substance Strategy over five years is a fifth of the $556 million proposed by the former Conservative government in its last budget. The reduced spending comes at a time when many provinces are struggling to contain an ongoing overdose death crisis. [continues 490 words]
Activist couple arrested in Toronto, face 15 drug charges Vancouver police raided Cannabis Culture, headquarters of marijuana activists Marc and Jodie Emery, Thursday morning at the request of Toronto police. The couple were arrested in Toronto Wednesday and face 15 counts, including trafficking, drug possession and proceeds of crime charges. Police across the country have raided seven shops in the Emery chain, branded Cannabis Culture. The federal government has said it will legalize marijuana this year. A Cannabis Culture employee, who identified himself as Chris, said police took marijuana products as well as routers and computers from the store on West Hastings Street near Cambie Street. [continues 424 words]
Organizers say the rally will go ahead anyway Vancouver's Park Board has rejected an application for a special event permit for this year's 4/20 rally at Sunset Beach. Last year's unlicensed rally, which attracted at least 25,000 people to Vancouver's waterfront, was unlicensed and drew criticism from the park board chair who said the event was "unwanted and would not be welcomed back in 2017." The park board's 4-3 vote Monday night against the motion to provide a permit to event organizers reflected that sentiment, said chair Michael Wiebe. "The will of the board is we don't want it to happen in our parks. It is not okay for us to relax the bylaw for this protest group," said Wiebe. He says he is working with event organizers and the city to find a new location, not in a city park, for 4/20. [continues 299 words]
Health officer says it's the only real solution to emergency Vancouver's chief medical health officer Dr. Patricia Daly called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday to decriminalize all illicit drugs, labelling it the only real solution to a mounting death toll. At a press conference Friday morning, Trudeau said an earlier expert roundtable and tour of the Downtown Eastside in a police car was "an incredibly emotional opportunity" to listen and "see people struggle with an almost insurmountable challenge." [continues 406 words]
Disease control director says more should be prescribed One of British Columbia's top experts on diseases has slammed longstanding "drug policies that criminalize drug users," in an op-ed in the B.C. Medical Journal's new issue, and pushed for the expansion of government-prescribed opioids. Dr. Mark Tyndall, provincial medical director of the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, wrote about the province's opioid overdose epidemic, which has killed almost 1,000 people in the last year "despite a public-health emergency announcement in April 2016." [continues 355 words]
Vancouver city council may pump another $370,000 this week into its efforts to fight the ongoing overdose crisis. Council will be briefed on two initiatives Wednesday, one providing peer-based outreach to drug users in single room occupancy hotels and shelters, and another to enhance mental health support for first responders. According to the report to council, 89.9 per cent of the province's record 914 overdose deaths last year occurred indoors. More than 26 per cent of all overdose deaths occurred at SRO hotels, motels, rooming houses and shelters, buildings with few staff, limited access to overdose prevention tools and where people often use drugs in isolation. [continues 146 words]
Last week, Vancouver city council made some decisions about how our city will use $3.5-million raised through a 0.5 per cent property tax increase to address the fentanyl crisis. While most of the money will go to supporting front line efforts, including funding a three-person overdose response team stationed at Firehall No. 2, more than $200,00 is earmarked to open and maintain a Strathcona Community Policing Centre. It's an idea that is opposed by front-line community groups and could make the overdose problem worse. [continues 381 words]
Kwantlen offers unique course as legalization on the horizon A continuing studies course that began as a joke two years ago has attracted more than 500 students who see medical marijuana as a growing job opportunity. "With 2,000 producers waiting for their licences, there are huge employment possibilities within the industry," said Laura Armstrong, who has a masters in horticulture science and experience working in cut flower greenhouses. She's currently completing Kwantlen Polytechnic University's Cannabis Professional Series online course. [continues 450 words]
Vancouver acts but Downtown eastside community opposes overdose funds for new policing Vancouver council has approved $2.1 million in spending to fight the city's deadly overdose crisis, including a controversial $208,000 to create a community policing centre in Strathcona. Drug users and their advocates vociferously opposed the funds going toward the new community policing centre. They said more policing is not an appropriate response to a public health crisis and suggested the money would be better spent supporting groups like the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users and Portland Hotel Society in opening more overdose prevention sites and doing peer-to-peer outreach to encourage drug users to come inside or out of their isolated SRO hotel rooms. [continues 144 words]
Agencies won't have to wait to have applications sped up: Minister B.C.'s health minister believes health agencies won't necessarily have to wait for federal legislation to pass before having their existing new safe injection site applications sped up. "Even under that existing regime I know the minister's officials at Health Canada have talked directly to Vancouver Coastal Health to try to expedite the two applications that they have at the moment," said Terry Lake at the opening of an emergency mobile medical unit in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. [continues 337 words]
"We need to bring the death toll down. We need to bring down the number of people with brain damage." That was the stark assessment of British Columbia's ongoing drug overdose crisis from Dr. Perry Kendall, B.C.'s provincial health officer. The addition of the synthetic opioid fentanyl to drugs like heroin has already contributed to a spike in overdose deaths: between January and October 2016, 622 people died from overdoses in B.C. That number will certainly rise when the B.C. coroner reports November numbers, said Kendall. [continues 514 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]
Remember the old "gateway drug" theory that marijuana leads to harder drugs like cocaine or meth? Now researchers at the University of British Columbia believe the idea might actually work in reverse. A new study touted as one of the "most comprehensive" ever suggests that drug users - particularly those addicted to opioids and alcohol - could benefit from using marijuana as a reverse "stepping stone" away from more dangerous substances. According to UBC associate professor of psychology Zach Walsh, "research suggests that people may be using cannabis as an exit drug to reduce use of substances that are potentially more harmful, such as opioid pain medication." [continues 71 words]
Vancouver firm designs new tool for law enforcement Turns out there's an easier way to catch motorists driving high than offering them munchies. A Vancouver start-up has invented what it claims is the world's first device that can tell accurately if you're either drunk or on drugs - based on an eye test inside a headset. "We made this device to make the current sobriety test better," said Ehsan Daneshi, co-founder of Ophthalight Digital Solutions Inc., at a press conference Thursday. "We cannot determine what drugs the driver has used; only a blood test can find that. [continues 242 words]
Health officials hope to help Downtown Eastside Even with Insite, demand for new supervised injection sites remains highest in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Vancouver Coastal Health says. The health authority announced this week it is preparing applications for two new supervised injection sites in that community in response to the British Columbia's epidemic of overdose deaths. Chief Medical Officer Patricia Daly hopes that eight more supervised consumption spaces - approximately half of Insite's capacity - split between the DTES Mental Health and Substance Use drop-in centre (528 Powell St.) and the Heatley Community Health centre (330 Heatley St.) will be up and running early next year if approved by Health Canada. [continues 322 words]
In harm-reduction circles they say every overdose is preventable. By that standard, B.C. is failing dramatically. Speak to those at the front lines of the unprecedented drug overdoses hitting Vancouver and, if they've been around long enough, the 1990s will come up. It was a decade of headline-grabbing OD deaths, peaking in 1998 when 417 people in B.C. died from illicit-drug overdoses. But 2016 is shaping up to be far, far worse. Already, at least 371 people have died in the province, a two-a-day rate that could translate into 800 deaths by year's end. The provincial health officer declared an emergency in April. [continues 717 words]
Dispensaries say it can help some dogs with anxiety Pot can help man's best friend too, say several Vancouver pot shop operators, but at least one vet is warning pet owners to proceed with caution. A sign outside Cannawide, a medical marijuana dispensary on West 4th, claims cannabis products can help dogs with anxiety and joint pain. Some people come into the store solely to buy cannabis products for their dogs with no intention of using medicinal pot products themselves, said Andrew Gordon, community integration director at the Cannawide. [continues 233 words]
