The (earlier on) that they become attached to ... role models and mentors, the greater the resiliency. As preteens march off to elementary schools in Surrey this week, a group of elder peers is making plans to steer them away from the deadly path to gang life. Yo Bro | Yo Girl, a program for youth at risk, is expanding to protect children as young as 11 from entering a violent lifestyle that is claiming the lives of young men on Surrey's streets. [continues 527 words]
B.C.'s former health minister, Terry Lake, is moving to the Ottawa area this weekend to become a vice-president of a medical marijuana company that is poised for massive growth. Hydropothecary Corp. is a Health Canada-authorized producer of medical marijuana with a 26-hectare facility in Gatineau, Que., that is about to get six times larger. The firm was co-founded in 2013 by a stalwart Liberal, Adam Miron, who also helped start the news website ipolitics.ca. [continues 605 words]
Cheryl Guardiero should have spent Thursday celebrating her son's 30th birthday. Instead, she attended an International Overdose Awareness Day vigil in Nanaimo, her boy now among the dead for whom they grieved. Brett Colton Mercer was born in Nanaimo on Aug. 31, 1987, to loving parents who eventually had five children. He died Aug. 19, 2017 of an accidental drug overdose, alone in a motel room in Hope, where he had recently landed a job with an oil and gas firm. [continues 812 words]
Chatter was spreading online and through the Downtown Eastside on Sunday and Monday, a rumour about cops busting an unlicensed pop-up cannabis dispensary. The dispensary in question is different from the roughly 60 unlicensed pot shops running in Vancouver, many of which are slick commercial operations. The High Hopes Foundation, a small booth that opened this summer in the Downtown Eastside, is run by the people behind the Overdose Prevention Society and works toward the same goal of saving lives as an escalating overdose crisis rocks the city and province. [continues 681 words]
Action, not words, is what we need to fix problem writes Michael McPhie. Like most of us in B.C. over the past few months my attention has been focused on the goings on in Victoria and, more recently, the significant effect from the wildfires. I have to commend both the province and the federal government for their response to the wildfire situation. It has really been quite extraordinary and I'm sure has saved many homes and ultimately lives. It clearly demonstrates what is possible when focus and resources are provided in a timely manner. [continues 1046 words]
Sensitive patient data supplied to a Vancouver cannabis dispensary has been either mishandled or - according to the shop's owner - stolen, a situation that again highlights the confusion over the regulation of retail pot. Most people in weed-friendly Vancouver, it seems, don't have a problem with dispensaries. A Nanos poll of Vancouverites last year found only 14 per cent supported banning medical dispensaries. But the city's decision to take the lead in Canada by licensing a still-illegal industry has contributed to a regulatory haze where many in Vancouver - including cannabis users and non-consumers alike, and even those involved in the weed business - have expressed confusion about the state of affairs while Canadians await expected federal legislation to legalize nonmedicinal marijuana. [continues 581 words]
In the 1960s, the name Abe Snidanko sent chills up the spine of every hippie in Vancouver. Snidanko worked undercover with the RCMP drug squad and busted longhairs for pot and other drugs. Snidanko's fame went international when former Vancouverite Tommy Chong used him as the inspiration for Sgt. Stadanko, the opening track on Cheech and Chong's 1973 comedy album Los Cochinos. The fictional Sgt. Stadanko also appeared in the Cheech and Chong films Up in Smoke and Nice Dreams. But what the real Sgt. Snidanko thought about his fictional counterpart is unknown - he declined interviews. [continues 861 words]
Quality checks of illicit drugs is one way, writes Kenneth Tupper. In recent years across B.C., a public-health tragedy has resulted in thousands of preventable deaths from street drugs containing powerful opioids such as fentanyl or its analogs. Toxicity from adulteration has occurred not just in the heroin supply, but also in stimulants, club drugs and counterfeit pills. Border agents and police have tried to reduce or disrupt the supply, but they have had little success in stemming the tide of illicit drug importation and consequent deaths. [continues 751 words]
B.C.'s new solicitor general wants to review the province's anti-gang programs to see if changes are needed to more effectively battle brazen gun violence. Mike Farnworth, the NDP's longtime critic of the public safety portfolio, told Postmedia News the public is understandably concerned by the ongoing violence. In recent weeks, there have been several shootings in Surrey, Abbotsford and Vancouver, as well as a killing in Chilliwack that police say was a targeted attack. "It is a critical issue in the Lower Mainland and at the end of the day, it doesn't matter where you are - whether you are in Surrey or Vancouver or Pouce Coupe or Prince Rupert - you deserve to feel safe in your home," Farnworth said. "People deserve to be safe and feel safe in their communities." [continues 462 words]
Don't use alone, chief coroner urges, as 2017 death toll in opioid crisis hits 780 Fewer people died of drug overdoses in June than in earlier months of this year, but the death rate continues to be far higher than last year. According to the B.C. Coroners Service, 780 deaths so far this year can be attributed to overdosing on illicit drugs. That's up 88 per cent from the same period a year ago, when there were 414 deaths. In total, there were 978 overdoses deaths in B.C. last year. [continues 700 words]
The sun was setting on Coal Harbour last week when the Vancouver police marine squad took special notice of a charter boat called the Magic Charm. Aboard the vessel were dozens of young men, some of whom were linked to the Red Scorpion gang. Several had chest tattoos reading "My brother's keeper." The anti-gang Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit was called in to check the party boat crowd when it docked beside the Westin Bayshore around 9 p.m. on July 25. It was another tense interaction between the police and some of those involved in the [continues 617 words]
B.C.'s overdose crisis is disproportionately impacting Indigenous people, who are three times more likely than non-First Nations people to die, according to data released Thursday. The preliminary numbers show that 14 per cent of overdoses in B.C. were experienced by First Nations people, who were five times more likely than non-First Nations people to overdose. Ten per cent of overdose deaths in B.C. were First Nations people, who comprise 3.4 per cent of the population. [continues 557 words]
New approach is needed to tackle the overdose epidemic, writes Evan Wood. We're now more than a year into the public health emergency declared by British Columbia's provincial health officer as a result of the province's rising rate of drug overdose deaths. Tragically, the death toll continues to mount. The latest report from the province's coroner shows we're on pace to see more than 1,500 people die of overdoses in 2017 - more than the last two years combined. [continues 764 words]
With more than 200 people dead from drug overdoses in Vancouver already this year, health officials hope the city's third federally approved injection site will provide relief from a devastating public health emergency. On Friday, Powell Street Getaway begins operating its new supervised-injection site seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., after receiving an exemption from Health Canada in May. It opens amid an illicit-drug overdose crisis that killed 640 people in B.C. in the first five months of 2017, up from 347 during the same period last year, according to the B.C. Coroners Service. Most involved fentanyl poisoning. [continues 509 words]
Overdose-prevention sites are making a difference in Vancouver's opioid crisis, say health officials, even in the face of grim figures that suggest the city is on pace to hit 400 deaths in 2017. More than 200 people have died of a suspected drug overdose in Vancouver this year to July 2 - that's almost as many as the 228 deaths recorded in 2016. But officials say the death toll could have been higher. "Based on the analysis of experts, the deaths would have been much worse if those sites hadn't been opened," said Dr. Patricia Daly, Vancouver Coastal Health's chief medical officer. [continues 430 words]
Vast majority of overdose deaths happen to men Is it because males are more likely to isolate themselves? Is it because men, to deal with their suffering, are more inclined to consume alcohol and other drugs? Is it because men, who do the most dangerous jobs, are much more likely to be seriously injured at work and to take opioids to kill the pain? Dr. Paul Gross is among those who want to get to the bottom of why 15 of the 60 regular members of Vancouver's Dudes Club have in the past year died of fentanyl and other opioid overdoses. [continues 926 words]
This week's Conversation that Matters features Anne McLellan, who leads the task force on legalizing marijuana in Canada. She says, "it's a bold move" because Canada becomes the first G-20 country to make pot legal. In doing so, we contravene three UN treaties that control or prohibit access to drugs like marijuana. There are risks and rewards. On the upside, she says, Canada will set the standard internationally and could become the supplier of choice to a growing international medical market, and the government can collect tax. [continues 65 words]
A copy of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms graces a wall around the corner from where a woman lies on the floor as a needle full of heroin is injected into her neck. She rises quickly, sweeps her long brown hair over one shoulder and sits on a chair as a man is handed a needle by another woman also wanting his help at an overdose prevention site located at the office of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users. [continues 720 words]
The audacity of the Sahota family is breathtaking. Its patriarchs are notorious slum landlords, who wanted to branch out and run a cannabis shop in the heart of Vancouver's west side. Their licence application was rejected Wednesday as the board of variance refused to bend on the prohibition on pot shops within 300 metres of schools. The proposed Herban Legends was 260 metres away from one of the city's most prestigious private kindergartens, York House Little School. You can't blame the Sahotas for trying. [continues 721 words]
Board butts out plans for pot shop The Sahota family, whose dilapidated Balmoral Hotel on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside was evacuated last month, is being slammed for its failed effort to open a cannabis dispensary on the city's west side. Herban Legends, at 3038 Arbutus St., sought to sell cannabis 220 metres from York House School's "Little School" against regulations that require all dispensaries to be at least 300 metres from schools. Wednesday afternoon, Herban Legends had an appeal hearing with the city's board of variance. [continues 386 words]
