TORONTO - An aging construction worker arrived quietly in the building's basement, took his seat alongside three other men and struck his lighter below a cooker of synthetic heroin. A woman, trained to intervene in case of an overdose, placed a mask over her face as his drug cooked and diluted beneath a jumping flame. He injected himself, grew still and then told of the loss of his wife who died alone in her room upstairs - an overdose that came just a few months before this social service nonprofit opened its doors for supervised injections. [continues 1757 words]
It's all about harm reduction and improving community health outcomes No doubt some Hamiltonians are chuckling to hear city council is considering banning sugary drinks from city buildings to protect people's health. With good reason. The proposed ban by the public health department lands at the same time the city is moving ahead with opening its first safe injection site for drug addicts. It's more than a little ironic that the city may be cracking down on sugar while enabling the use of illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine. [continues 581 words]
"You can't help dead people - that's the point of injection sites" There you go again, being a "bleeding heart." A recent letter writer is correct. Injection sites are encouraging and abetting druggies in their bad habits. There is no point to safe-injection sites. And if they die, as they surely will if they don't kick their habit, why should I give a hoot? They chose to live on the edge as they do. Suffer the consequences! They know better, and yet refuse to accept the inevitable. Stop or die! And you should stop trying to be the social conscience of your readers. (Look, we're not fond of illegal drug use. But caring about what happens to our fellow citizens - especially the weakest - is important in a civilized society.) [end]
Doug Ford says he is "dead against" supervised injection sites and believes the focus should be on drug rehabilitation instead. And if elected premier of Ontario in June, the Progressive Conservative Leader says he will do everything he can to fight the opioid crisis and get people who are struggling with addiction the help they need. "If your son, daughter, loved one ever had an addiction, would you want them to go in a little area and do more drugs? I am dead against that," Mr. Ford said Friday. "We have to help these people. We can't just keep feeding them and feeding them." [continues 541 words]
"By the time I was 17, 18," Nelson Abbott said, "I graduated to heroin." He tried to stop many times, both by going cold-turkey and tapering off the drugs, but he hated the withdrawal pains and he wasn't really ready to quit. Therapy didn't work out, either. But then his best friend overdosed and died. When Abbott's parents checked him into the Caron Treatment Center in Berks County, he didn't fight. [continues 1883 words]
At the height of a heroin epidemic in Vancouver, British Columbia, Inspector Bill Spearn -- then a rookie cop -- was assigned to a beat in the heart of the crisis. It was 1996, and though he had been responding to overdose after overdose in Downtown Eastside, one of Canada's poorest postal codes, Spearn wanted no part of the harm-reduction measures the city was considering to save the lives of people in addiction. A safe injection site, where drugs could be used under medical supervision, was out of the question: "I thought it would be a big magnet," he told a crowd at Temple University Medical School on Monday night. "I thought it would empower people to use drugs." A few years later, with the debate still raging, he left the neighborhood for another position in the police department. [continues 729 words]
In Kensington, this much is clear: No other neighborhood in Philadelphia has seen more overdose deaths, or more visible suffering amid a city opioid epidemic that claimed an estimated 1,200 lives in 2017. Along with neighboring Fairhill, it occupies less than 2 percent of Philadelphia's land area, but 18 percent of all city overdoses occurred in that small space, according to an Inquirer analysis of city data. On Tuesday night, when city health officials arrive in the neighborhood for a community meeting on the epidemic, they'll come armed with dire statistics and information on the city's 18-point plan to fight the crisis. But they won't have an answer to the question that's roiled the neighborhood since the plan was announced in January: Will Kensington host the first safe-injection site in the city, and possibly the nation? [continues 677 words]
Midway through a community meeting in Northeast Philadelphia on the opioid crisis Monday, a man stood up at the back of the room and yelled out a question to city Health Commissioner Thomas Farley: "Doctor, where do you live? Can we put a safe injection site next door to you?" The crowd of 150 in the Fox Chase community center applauded and burst into shouts in a display that vividly showed the tough sales job the city is facing as it tries to fulfill a promise to allow a place where people in addiction can use drugs under medical supervision. As heroin has been adulterated with the deadlier opioid fentanyl, often without the user's knowledge, the overdose death rate has soared. Quick administration of a reversal medicine can save lives. [continues 678 words]
Jason Kenney stated recently that the best way to combat drug addition in general, and the opioid crisis in particular, is by controlling supply. This demonstrates that he is little more than a cynical, career politician. He will say whatever he thinks will resonate with his base in the hope of becoming the next premier. Mr. Kenney has routinely prostrated himself at the alter of the free market, and is one who regards state intervention in the economy as devil's work. He knows that where there is a demand, entrepreneurs will invest capital with the aim of meeting that demand. In light of well-established and widely accepted market theory, Mr. Kenney should know - as I suspect he does - that the best way to address crises such as the one we are witnessing is to also address the demand side of the equation. [continues 168 words]
The sheer volume of human suffering has been increasing exponentially in recent months as a new and deadly wave of opioids scythes through local drug users and addicts, says Const. Ryan Darroch, a 15-year veteran of the Lethbridge Police Service, and a beat cop with the downtown policing unit. "We have not yet confirmed carfentanil (behind the recent overdoses) through our lab analysis," he emphasizes, "but we have seized carfentanil in the city. A lot of the street people we talk to in the downtown, and all over this city, refer to it as 'Car.' It almost looks like that candy Nerds. They tell us they take that carfentanil and mix it with a water solution in those little blue vials people may see on the streets on the ground. They mix that solution in little green mixing bowls, and it breaks down the opioid inside that and they may then draw that solution into a needle and inject it into themselves. Fentanyl or [continues 622 words]
John Lavergne believes a safe injection site will help save lives KITCHENER - John Lavergne lost eight friends last year. All of them died of an opioid overdose. Six of them were in Waterloo Region. Three of them hadn't used in months and had a relapse. They couldn't tell their partners, friends or families they were using again. They used alone and now they are dead, Lavergne said. The Kitchener man says a supervised injection site would have helped them live. [continues 407 words]
Two people using fentanyl at London's temporary overdose prevention site on the weekend were resuscitated by a nurse after they overdosed, Middlesex-London's medical officer of health says. "These people were inexperienced, and fentanyl is a drug where it's easy to miscalculate how much you are taking. If this had happened in a back alley or stairwell somewhere, it could have easily resulted in death," Dr. Chris Mackie said Sunday. The drug users were resuscitated Saturday using oxygen, he said. [continues 492 words]
Alberta's supervised consumption sites should be permitted to offer drug testing to help users learn what dangers might be lurking in their illicit narcotics, the province's opioid commission recommended Friday. While questions persist about the effectiveness of fentanyl-sensing strips and other testing devices, providing insight to users on what they plan to inject or ingest will undoubtedly save lives, commission leaders said. "Anytime you can give people a bit more understanding than absolutely none about what's in their drugs, I think that's a positive," Elaine Hyshka, co-chair of the Minister's Opioid Emergency Response Commission, told a news conference downtown. [continues 390 words]
More supervised injection sites planned as opioid-overdose numbers skyrocket The construction trailer that houses the illegal, volunteer-run overdose prevention site in Toronto's Moss Park is about to open for another evening, as a dozen drug users, some clearly anxious for their fix, cluster around its muddy entrance in the cold. Activist and harm-reduction worker Zoe Dodd, named one of Toronto Life magazine's most influential people last year, alongside Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and R&B star the Weeknd, unloads an extra box of anti-overdose naloxone kits from her beat-up sedan. [continues 934 words]
City's fatality rate is now nearly double Ontario average, fuelling more concern Opioid-related deaths in Hamilton have soared more than 80 per cent in one year. From January to October, 75 Hamilton residents died from an opioid overdose in 2017 compared to 41 during the same period the year before. "Opioids are continuing to have a devastating impact on individuals, families, and the community," Hamilton's medical officer of health Dr. Elizabeth Richardson said in a statement Friday. "The sustained trend of rising opioid related deaths, which are preventable, in Hamilton is very concerning." [continues 437 words]
The war on drugs has never been won by anyone, anywhere. But Jason Kenny figures that it can be won here in Alberta by stricter law enforcement and by limiting safe injection sites. He is against safe injection sites, because in his conservative way of thinking, they promote the use of drugs. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Safe injection sites help save lives. On the street, drug addicts can be exposed to bad batches of drugs or they can be thrown in jail for possession of illegal drugs. I'm quite sure addicts are not happy they have to resort to safe injection sites to get their fix. And by going to safe injection sites, they are not demonized for being addicts and they can go to these places so that they can get off their dependence on drugs for good. Dennis Wanechko, Leduc [end]
WATERLOO REGION - Waterloo Region plans to look further into pursuing three supervised injection sites, following a study that found a need and support in the community for the service to combat fatal opioid overdoses. Sites are proposed for the central cores of Kitchener and Galt, and a third spot to be determined that could be a mobile unit. "In Waterloo Region, we know that overdose is on the rise," said Grace Bermingham, regional manager of information, planning and harm reduction. Bermingham presented findings from the first phase of a feasibility study on supervised injection sites to a regional committee on Tuesday. The second phase involves identifying potential locations and further consultations with people who live, work or go to school near a proposed site. [continues 654 words]
United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney said he would be opposed to expanding Safe Consumption Sites across the province if elected premier. "Helping addicts inject poison into their bodies is not a solution to the problem of addiction," he said bluntly while visiting Lethbridge on Wednesday. Disagreeing with local Lethbridge government, aid organizations and law enforcement officers who have championed the site, Kenney went on to state he did not feel safe consumption or injection sites work, as evidenced by the spike in opioid overdose deaths in Vancouver despite having a safe injection site in that city for over a decade. [continues 142 words]
How do we get out of this box? It may be time to follow Portugal in legalizing drugs British Columbia has a $250,000-a-day drug habit that is spiralling out of control - and it's not supported by the Downtown Eastside street bazaar. Rather, it's the opioid substitution program. The province now spends more than $90 million a year on "treatment" and health services for participants of the drug-maintenance program - that's more than it provides for legal aid. [continues 666 words]
An emergency situation demands an emergency response. When people are trapped in a burning house or wrecked car, the priority should be getting them out alive first, and then worrying about damaged property or blocked roadways. This is how people in Waterloo Region need to understand the horrific and rising number of opioid overdoses ravaging their community. We are, collectively, facing an emergency. People are dying in staggeringly high numbers. Others are suffering terribly. For all their sakes but also for the welfare of this region, we must offer help - even as we work out the details. [continues 419 words]
