A new clinic giving access to a drug similar to prescription heroin is likely heading to Edmonton's inner city. Alberta Health is planning two clinics as a pilot project, one each in Edmonton and Calgary. Treatment would require opioid addicts to visit the clinic several times each day to inject drugs supplied by the clinic. It means users no longer need to buy drugs on the black market, and studies at Vancouver's Crosstown Clinic found patients in the program cut back their use of illicit drugs from at least 14 times a month to less than four. [continues 319 words]
This week marks a historic first for the City of Lethbridge. The Supervised Consumption Site (SCS) will open its doors and will be the first of its kind in North America to offer all four modes of consumption - ingestion/oral, injection, intra-nasal/snorting and inhalation. Despite this milestone, it's fair to say the facility has been met with mixed reviews, including people who have come to me to "blame" the police service for letting it happen. This not only demonstrates a narrow view of Canada and our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but a failure to understand the role of the police in social-political decisions that are driven by municipal , provincial and federal officials and the mandate they support. [continues 905 words]
Iam increasingly concerned with the inadequacy of our approach to the opioid crisis, both as a society and in the field of public health. There is no question that when people are dying in large numbers, we have to respond, and that has been happening. Safe injection sites, the distribution of naloxone kits and similar efforts are important. But this response is sadly inadequate. It repeats the "upstream" story that I told in the first column I wrote, in December 2014, one that is fundamental to the public health approach. In essence, villagers living on the banks of a river are so busy rescuing drowning people that nobody has time to go upstream to learn how they are ending up in the river and stop them being pushed in. [continues 602 words]
St. Catharines council is unanimously supporting the creation of a temporary supervised injection site in the city to help deal with the opioid crisis. "It is pure harm reduction. It is stopping people from dying," said Sandi Tantardini of Niagara Area Moms Ending Stigma, speaking in support of the site at Monday night's council meeting. Tantardini and Jennifer Johnston founded the group of moms, families and friends of people who have been lost to or are struggling with addiction. "When we're talking about the effects of the opioid crisis, our group and its representatives and our families, we're the faces of it," said Johnston, whose son Jonathan, a chef who trained at Niagara College, died of a fentanyl overdose in Toronto. [continues 328 words]
As a national opioid crisis wages on, Toronto police have decided to equip their downtown frontline officers with the opioid antidote naloxone. "This is about life and death, and that's what we signed up to do," Chief Mark Saunders told the Toronto Police Services Board at their meeting Thursday. Chief Saunders was tasked last year with submitting a report to the board on how the service might go about deploying the antidote, which can be used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. [continues 571 words]
Protesters carrying signs saying "Injustice is fatal!" laid dozens of white carnations next to a coffin on the steps of Montreal City Hall Tuesday, each representing a life lost to a drugoverdose. A coalition of community groups, crisis workers, activists and drug users held a demonstration demanding the government repeal drug laws that marginalize drug users. They also held a moment of silence - joining several vigils held simultaneously across Canada. The opioid crisis claimed nearly 3,000 lives in 2016, and the estimated death toll last year is pegged at 4,000 people. [continues 426 words]
Every morning, Kevin Thompson takes a short stroll from his apartment to the Crosstown Clinic, where he signs in, gets his prescription medicine, then sits in a small room and injects it before heading off to work. He follows this routine up to three times a day and has done so virtually every day for more than a dozen years. The medicine is diacetylmorphine, the medical term for prescription heroin. "It saved my life. No question, it saved my life," Mr. Thompson, 47, says emphatically. [continues 683 words]
With toxic street drugs such as fentanyl killing four British Columbians a day, much of the response has focused on overdose treatments with naloxone, and supervised injection sites. Yet public-health staff have concluded that emergency interventions such as these will not stop the epidemic. If the supply of these drugs cannot be halted - and no war on drugs has ever been won - the only option is to prevent the downward slide that leads to street-drug addiction. Many of the victims are middle-age men and women who have fought a lifelong struggle against such challenges as alcoholism, mental illness, the lasting effects of childhood abuse and more. [continues 513 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]
Rally in response to the opioid crisis hears tales of loss and 'burnt out' workers Kim Pare said his family did everything they could to help their bright and beautiful daughter, but in the end she couldn't fight the illness of addiction. It's been almost four years since Kaitlyn died, at 24, from a prescription opioid overdose and from her father's perspective nothing has really changed. "We are losing a generation of people who could be valuable members of our society. We have to help them,' Pare said, speaking to about 30 people at a rally at King and York Sts. Tuesday's event was part of a National Day of Action in response to the opioid and contaminated drug crisis. [continues 607 words]
Earlier this month, front-line health workers in Toronto raised the possibility that part of the city's cocaine supply may be tainted with fentanyl, after a handful of drug overdoses were connected to users unknowingly consuming the deadly opioid while smoking crack. This dismal scenario is common in Canada. Across the country, illicit drugs are being cut with the synthetic painkiller - which is up to 50 times more potent than heroin - because it is cheap and powerful and saves dealers money. During a month-long period in the summer of 2016, 86 per cent of the street drugs tested at Vancouver's supervised injection sitewere laced with fentanyl. [continues 628 words]
The AIDS Network is putting itself forward to run Hamilton's first supervised injectionsite at its downtown Effort Square location. The AIDS service organization is preparing proposals to the provincial and federal governments for a permanent site where people can inject illegal drugs under the watchful eye of trained staff without fear of arrest. Meanwhile, it is also proposing a smaller temporary overdose prevention site as a stopgap that would allow supervised injection until the permanent location was approved and operating. [continues 417 words]
Watchdog stands firm on requirement it be notified in cases involving the drug Ontario's police watchdog is pushing back at chiefs for suggesting their officers might hesitate to provide the life-saving drug naloxone out of fear that it could prompt an investigation by the civilian agency. In a strongly worded letter Thursday, the director of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) said the agency would not back down on its expectation that it be notified in cases where a civilian is injured or dies after an officer administers naloxone, a drug that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. [continues 793 words]
Decriminalization is the right move , say James Hutt and Emilie Taman. Canada's overdose crisis is getting worse, not better. In 2016, there were 2,861 opioid-related deaths. Last year, there were more than 4,000. All of them were preventable. As the NDP gathers in Ottawa this weekend for its national policy convention, many hope that this issue will be front and centre. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has already indicated that he favours the decriminalization of all drugs - not because it's the popular but because it's the right thing to do. [continues 551 words]
Thank you, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, for giving me cover so I don't wind up being painted as the "worst person in the world," the label Keith Olbermann used on his TV show to hang on people he didn't like. I have been silent as the opioid epidemic raged because I had no clear-cut solution. The debate currently swirls around the idea of city-approved "safe injection sites," more formally known as CUES -- comprehensive user engagement sites. [continues 545 words]
Three weeks ago, after Philadelphia announced that it would encourage the opening of a safe injection site, I praised the decision as a bold kind of leadership. It showed that the city was stepping on the national stage in the middle of a life-and-death catastrophe. I still think that. Now the city has to sell it. Sure, it's only been three weeks. But in the absence of an immediate city PR strategy for saving lives - it feels funny even writing that - you can feel myths proliferating. The city cannot simply react to the discourse. It must help lead it. [continues 805 words]
Drug treatment can't help dead people. That's why San Francisco is scheduled to open two safe injection sites later this year, where drug users will be allowed to shoot up under medical supervision. If an addict overdoses, trained staff will be available to revive them with an overdose antidote like naloxone, commonly known as Narcan. Staffers can also recommend treatment options to those interested. In an effort to stem fatal overdoses, safe injection sites are now under discussion in such cities as Philadelphia, Seattle, and Ithaca, N.Y. [continues 494 words]
Provincial plan aims to fill gap for communities waiting on permanent services for opioid crisis A temporary supervised drug use site will open its doors in London, Ont., Monday - the first of what is expected to be many under a new provincial emergency-response program that will fill the gap for communities waiting on permanent sites. Thousands of people are dying from overdoses every year across Canada. In Ontario alone, there were 336 opioid-related deaths between May and July last year, up 68 per cent from that same period the year before. Fentanyl, a drug so potent that mere grains of it can be lethal, was a factor in 67 per cent of those deaths - up from 41 per cent in 2016, and 19 per cent in 2015. [continues 648 words]
Ontario's first legal drugoverdose prevention site opens Monday in London. The site, temporary while the search continues for a permanent site, will be located at 186 King St. The site is part of the health unit's response to the opioid crisis sweeping Canada, whose toll ran to nearly 1,500 people in the first half of last year alone. The London site, embebbed within the Regional HIV/AIDS Connection program location, has been granted an exemption from Canada's criminal drug laws. [continues 91 words]
The Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit has expanded its harm-reduction strategy related to intravenous drug users. With opioid addiction an increasing problem in the local area and elsewhere, the health unit has set up three 24-hour disposal sites where users can dispose of old needles. Needle disposal is a concern for health officials because intravenous drug abuse is highly correlated with blood-borne illnesses, such as HIV and hepatitis. Used needles that aren't properly disposed pose a hazard to young people who may pick them up or people passing by who are inadvertently stabbed. [continues 235 words]
