Drugs

Heroin is now legal in Vancouver – and addicts are celebrating

Police simply walk past drug users as new law comes into force despite 2,272 deaths from illicit substances last year in British Columbia

At just past 8am I am standing on East Hastings Street in downtown Vancouver with a small packet of crack cocaine in my hand.

Snow is falling gently and dozens, if not hundreds, of drug addicts are already on the move, unbothered when they tread in the human faeces littering the pavement.

Some have already had their fix, and slump lifelessly against shopfronts or slumber in makeshift tents where many stash guns and knives.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada, Drug Legalization, Drugs

As B.C.’s decriminalization pilot project takes hold, political hopes collide with public fears

Police forces across British Columbia are finalizing training on new drug laws that will limit or entirely cease their interactions with people who use drugs as the province becomes the first in Canada to decriminalize simple possession.

The legal change, which takes effect Tuesday, marks a monumental shift in policing drug-related offences. While many police departments have in recent years moved away from arresting and recommending charges for possession alone, officers will now also stop confiscating illegal drugs – a standard practice they have known their whole careers.

Vancouver Homeless Downtown Eastside

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inDrug Legalization, Drugs

Adam Zivo: The silencing of drug addiction experts who criticize ‘safe supply’

One of Canada’s leading experts on drug addiction says British Columbia’s provincial government asked him to delete a crucial database in an attempt to censor criticism of the province’s homeless policies. The incident appears to fit within a larger, nationwide campaign to silence experts who believe that, when it comes to homelessness and drugs, Canadian policy-makers are on the wrong track.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inDrug Legalization, Drugs

The drug trade has wrecked Amsterdam

Soft policies caused disorder and violent crime

“It’s fine on the other side, it’s fine on the other side!” sing five rowdy, dancing Brits, to the tune of the Pet Shop Boys’ “Go West”. On the other side of the 14th century Oudezijds Achterburgwal canal, a cluster of partying men yodel back. It is midnight on a Friday in the heart of Amsterdam’s De Wallen district, and I am on a reconnaissance tour with Amsterdam’s Night Watch.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inDrug Legalization, Drugs

Canadian patients fighting for psilocybin access sue federal government

Eight Canadians have filed a Charter challenge against the Government of Canada and the Minister of Health regarding patient access to psilocybin and psilocybin therapy.

The plaintiffs, which include seven patients and one health-care practitioner, are arguing that the current modes of accessing psilocybin are insufficient and a violation of Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees the right to life, liberty and security of the person.

Share
by Sarcasticat••0•Posted inCanada, Drug Legalization, Drugs, Health care, Mental Health

California to fund heroin injection sites in Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Francisco

The bill would authorize cities and counties to establish “safe consumption sites” where addicts could use illegal narcotics under supervision. Those accessing the “hygienic space supervised by trained staff” could consume pre-obtained drugs. Program staff would be trained to administer an “opioid antagonist” in the event of an overdose.

Share
by Sarcasticat••0•Posted inCalifornia, Drug Legalization, Drugs

Fentanyl From the Government? A Vancouver Experiment Aims to Stop Overdoses

The place where Chris gets his fentanyl is bright and airy, all blond wood and exposed brick. The staff is friendly and knowledgeable about the potency of the pills he can crush, cook and inject.

Soft pop music played, and an attendant spritzed a bit of Covid-cautious spray on his seat before he settled into a booth on a recent afternoon with a couple of red-and-yellow pills, a tourniquet, a tiny candle and a lighter.

“The best thing about this is the guarantee: I can come in here four times a day and get it,” Chris said. He no longer spends all of his waking hours in a frantic scrabble of panhandling and “other stuff” to scrape up the cash to pay a dealer. He won’t get arrested — and he won’t overdose and die using a drug that is not what it is sold as.

This fentanyl dispensary is legal, and Canada’s public health system finances it.

Share
by Sarcasticat••0•Posted inDrug Legalization, Drugs, Vancouver

MTG: ‘America Has A Drug Problem’ With SSRIs, Psychiatric Drugs Common Among Mass Shooters

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) posited “it’s not just a coincidence” that many mass shootings are carried out by young men who take anti-depressants and other psychotropic drugs.

“Mass shootings are a sign that America has a drug problem, a serious drug problem. But no one wants to give attention to it,” the Congresswoman said. “This mass shooting issue, it really affects mostly boys.”

“Here’s what I want to talk about. I want to talk about with psychiatric medications like SSRIs, they have side effects, they do. They have side effects like thoughts, they cause thoughts, homicidal thoughts, suicidal thoughts, that is a common known side effect of SSRIs,” Congresswoman Greene said.

Share
by Sarcasticat••0•Posted inBig Pharma, Drugs, Mass-Casualty Event

Opium’s Revenge

We are losing this war.

Let me begin by painting a picture. Drugs flow across a lengthy and wide-open border, flooding into the nation, affecting millions, causing incredible misery, addiction, early death, and an epidemic of raging proportions. Aided by a government that is either unwilling or too incompetent to address the problem and stop this scourge.

It gets worse. Drug cartels and criminal elements on both sides of the border make astronomical amounts of money, while foreign business interests reap great profits off the illicit and illegal drug trade. On one side of this equation, fortunes are made, while on the other millions suffer the degradation and misery of this endless supply of drugs.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inDrugs

Synthetic opioid more powerful than fentanyl on the rise in Canada

The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction said in an alert there is a rising presence in the drug supply of potent synthetic opioids referred to as nitazenes, which are often more potent than fentanyl.

Nitazenes usually appear unexpectedly in drugs assumed to contain other types of opioids like fentanyl, oxycodone and non-medical benzodiazepines, said the centre.

Share
by Sarcasticat••0•Posted inCanada, Drugs

Senator’s Wife Secretly Gave Him Psilocybin to Alleviate Depression

Senator Larry Campbell, who struggles with depression, PTSD, and “getting old,” reveals that psilocybin microdoses helped improve his mood.

“This is the first time I’ve admitted this,” teased Senator Larry Campbell of his unexpected psilocybin experience while speaking at the opening ceremonies of the Catalyst Psychedelics Summit in Kingston, Ontario.

Share
by Sarcasticat••0•Posted inCanada, Drug Legalization, Drugs, Health care

First ever paid prescription fentanyl program launches in Vancouver

Dr. Christy Sutherland, medical director for PHS Healthcare, the organization running the program, said the goal is to meet substance users where they are at, instead of administering alternatives like Dilaudid that patients may not find helpful.

“The common feedback we had from patients was that they would prefer fentanyl, that we needed to match what they were buying from the drug dealer in order to get them away from that street supply. So we worked as a team to create a new fentanyl option for our patients and community,” she said, speaking on CBC’s On The Coast.

Share
by Sarcasticat••0•Posted inDrugs, Vancouver, WTF?