Supporters of Edmonton's Chinatown packed a meeting Thursday on how to let community members guide the implementation of the city's new supervised injection sites. But the olive branch was too little, too late for some, with many residents left feeling bitter and ignored by city council's vote on injection sites last May. "Supervised injection is not just a health services issue," said resident William Lau. "You know why we're frustrated, angry, why we're scared Do you know why we feel insulted?" [continues 498 words]
Eighteen or 21? The age of legal pot consumption was a topic of debate at hearings on Thursday, with two medical associations at odds. The Canadian Pediatric Society said 18 should be the minimum age to legally purchase recreational marijuana when the federal government legalizes it by July 1, 2018. A few minutes later, the Federation des medecins specialistes du Quebec, representing medical specialists, said it should be 21. The two groups were among dozens of organizations presenting briefs at a provincial public consultation in Montreal on Thursday and Friday. [continues 565 words]
I have a simple request of the Ottawa police in regard to the "safe" injection site and marijuana shops: Stop interpreting the law and enforce it. Surely, not too much to ask! Gary Voellmecke Gloucester (You wouldn't think so, but here we are.) [end]
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]
I am so tired of hearing about Liberals picking and choosing what laws they will abide by or enforce. Pot is illegal. Close the illegal pot shops down. Heroin is illegal, yet police stood by and watched people break the law and did nothing. What happens if somebody dies or nearly dies? I bet they will sue the city for allowing them to take illegal drugs in an illegal supervised-injection site. Occupying a city park is against the law yet there is no bylaw enforcement. I am a conservative-minded person and I don't condone this behaviour. I am sure that there are few people who support this illegal activity. [continues 134 words]
Situation not yet an emergency, Coderre says After meeting with police and public health officials, Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre said Tuesday the city is actively preparing to handle a coming opioid crisis. "I was reassured about the status of the situation right now, but clearly it's an anticipated crisis that we have to address and face," Coderre said during a news conference at city hall. The mayor's remarks came days after Montreal's public health department confirmed 12 overdose deaths in the city during the month of August. Another 24 people were saved by the use of naloxone, a medication that can be used to prevent fatal opioid overdoses. [continues 353 words]
Earlier this month, people in Canada witnessed the importance of community resistance and activism on issues of drugpolicy reform. Vancouver's lead organizers and front-line workers in Toronto pushed Health Canada to do what is right and necessary in order to effectively respond to the overdose crisis. A community of care, driven to save the lives of friends, family and neighbours, set up two white tents in Toronto's Moss Park. Inside, volunteers at this pop-up "overdose prevention site" supervise drug use and save lives - something the federal government should have been doing long ago, when communities across Canada first began sounding the alarm. I visited the site last week and was moved by the commitment and compassion of the volunteers who were valiantly saving lives, day after day. [continues 639 words]
The sheer magnitude of Ontario's opioid crisis became tragically clear with last week's revelation that 865 people in this province had died after overdosing on one of these powerful drugs in 2016. To put this heartbreaking figure in perspective, consider that in the same year Ontario recorded 206 homicides while motor vehicle collisions claimed 482 lives, which included 96 alcohol-related deaths. People and politicians are rightly committed to protecting human lives by preventing homicides, making roads safer and cracking down on drunk driving. [continues 392 words]
Discarded needles in the spotlight as Edmonton tackles overdose crisis, safe injection sites Cardboard boxes filled with syringes fill every nook and cranny of the Streetworks office at Boyle Street Community Services. They're stacked on top of cabinets, in corners and underneath a table in the centre of the brightly lit office. Unboxed sharps, wrapped in plastic, are stored in bins along a counter where people who use drugs can pick up clean supplies. The boxes go "wherever we can stuff them," said Marliss Taylor, program manager at Streetworks. Last year, the service distributed a record two-and-a-quarter million syringes through its needle exchange van and exchange sites throughout the city. The goal, Taylor said, is to "flood the market" with clean needles, reducing the health impacts of intravenous drug use. [continues 621 words]
There are a lot of very smart people in North Bay. It would be interesting to see if the bright lights here can find an opportunity hiding in the weeds to solve the opioid crisis. And I'm not referring to emergency funding injections or quick-fix policy. More than 700 health-care professionals urged the province this week to declare an emergency so more funding can flow to Ontario's front-line programs. Overdose prevention sites, they say, need a boost to stem the tide as deaths are mounting beyond even the HIV pandemic decades ago. [continues 651 words]
The legalization of cannabis and rapid scale up of supervised-injection sites - as well as community-led initiatives, such as the site set up by Overdose Prevention Ottawa in Lowertown this month - have thrust Canada back into the limelight of global drug policy. Against the backdrop of a national overdose crisis and a fracturing of global consensus on drug prohibition, these are welcome changes. Yet they only begin to chip away at the drug policy challenges facing Canada. Canada's policy community remains divided about how best to tackle the overdose crisis. As the death toll mounts, should we invest more in law and order approaches, treatment, harm reduction or some combination? [continues 582 words]
Advocate sees a role for public health nurses in fighting opioid crisis in rural communities The opioid crisis in St. John's is far from over, and a community advocate wants to see changes. "We see people every day who are at risk," said Tree Walsh, the harm reduction manager at the Safe Works Access Program (SWAP) for the AIDS Committee of Newfoundland and Labrador. "We're trying to save lives, and we're trying to prevent deaths, but as soon as the pharmaceutical supply of opioids dries up, which is happening now things are going to get so much worse." [continues 559 words]
Dear editor, As someone who recently lost a brother to the disease of addiction due to overdose after recovery, I must respond to the letter from Mary-Ellen(Reader appalled that government supports safe injection sites, Aug. 24) that argues against safe injection sites in the Comox Valley. The Overdose Prevention Centre on Sixth Street is a necessary response to the current opioid overdose crisis. It is not just a "safe and comfy place for drug addicts." Overdose Prevention Services are locations where trained staff monitor and provide rapid intervention if necessary. It's a place that saves people from death. This centre is not creating an unsafe environment in our community - it is actually helping to make our community safer. [continues 200 words]
Urged to declare an emergency, province promises "significant resources and supports" The opioid drug crisis flaring up in Southwestern Ontario is becoming so bad across the province, hundreds of doctors, nurses and others are pushing Queen's Park to declare an emergency. In an open letter to Premier Kathleen Wynne Monday, the health workers say limited resources and poor data are preventing them from responding properly to a disturbing, sustained increase in overdoses. "The consequences have been clear: lives lost, families destroyed and harm reduction and health care worker burnout," they write. [continues 794 words]
Your deputy editor Tyler Dawson's piece in Saturday's Sun is incredibly naive. Residents and law-abiding citizens have every right to complain about a pop-up harm reduction site in a city park and the resulting unleashing of stoned drug addicts carrying illegal and potentially lethal drugs wandering the park and the surrounding streets while families and their children play. A two year old could tell you injecting illegal drugs into your bloodstream is bad. Observing the process in a city park in a tent to make sure they do it properly, if that is even possible, is asinine. [continues 58 words]
Work is underway to find the pop-up supervised injection site in Moss Park a new home. Mayor John Tory confirmed there are ongoing talks with the volunteers who run the site to relocate it to another, indoor space in the community. The mayor said Thursday that he visited the site earlier this week and understands the work being done there is important. "There are discussions ongoing to find a way in which we can make sure that the needs of the human beings whose lives are sometimes put in jeopardy in that neighbourhood are met, that do not find their way into the public park," he said. "We are looking within the context of those discussions for ways to try to do that within one set of regulations or another." [continues 167 words]
Public health researchers behind Edmonton's effort to develop supervised drug consumption sites say they have a plan to study how the yet-to-be-approved facilities affect both clients and communities. Assuming the four sites win approval from Health Canada and begin operating, a robust evaluation process will be needed to gauge the benefits and residents' reactions to the facilities, the researchers said in a new report. The evaluation will be conducted by the University of Alberta's School of Public Health, with Elaine Hyshka serving as the lead. [continues 153 words]
Funding set for advanced drug-testing system The planned supervised injection site at the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre will include world-class drug-testing technology. With funding from the Canadian Institute of Health Research, the program will be able to operate a mass spectrometry machine, which can determine the chemical makeup of users' drugs, Lynne Leonard of the Ontario HIV Treatment Network announced Thursday. Drug-testing services are themselves rare, and it is even rarer for harm-reduction organizations to offer testing as technically advanced as mass spectrometry. The system at Sandy Hill will be the first of its kind in Ontario. [continues 87 words]
It is not enough to move slowly while people are losing their loved ones, family members, friends, colleagues and patients from preventable deaths More than 700 harm-reduction workers, nurses, physicians, nurse practitioners, public health officials and others working within our health-care system, from 59 different cities and towns in Ontario, have signed a letter calling on the provincial government to declare an immediate emergency in response to opioid overdoses and related deaths in Ontario. The Ontario provincial government has been slow and ineffectual in its response to the deaths of Ontarians from the opioid crisis. Drug users and their allies have been left to respond to the recent opioid crisis alone, without sufficient funding or support. Appallingly, the most recent data available for Ontario is from 2016. It showed that opioid deaths jumped 11 per cent in the first half of 2016. For those on the front lines, it is evident that the current rate of opioid-related deaths is exceeding the mid-2016 estimate of two deaths per day and the rate of emergency department opioid-related visits has risen dramatically. This crisis has impacted people all across the province, including in northern Ontario. [continues 428 words]
Hundreds of health-care workers are urging the province to call the recent spate of opioid overdoses and deaths across Ontario by a different name. More than 700 front-line workers want the province to declare a state of emergency over the opioid crisis, in hopes that the urgent classification will boost funding for front-line workers, open up more overdose prevention and safe-injection sites and increase support and treatment programs for drug users. Whether or not the province chooses to declare the epidemic an emergency, it must start treating it as one immediately. [continues 326 words]
