Rizzy Spoer began using drugs aged 12. Growing up in San Francisco’s Bay Area, she enjoyed experimenting with as many illicit substances as she could.
It got to a point, she said, where she was “probably going to die”.
In her experience, her story isn’t “uncommon”. Now aged 34, she has lost more than 30 friends to drugs in recent years.
More Americans than ever are dying from fentanyl overdoses as the fourth wave of the opioid epidemic crashes through every community, in every corner of the country.
It was six years ago that Kim Blake’s son Sean died from an accidental fentanyl overdose in Burlington, Vermont. He was 27 years old.
“Every time I hear of a loss to substance use, my heart breaks a little more,” Ms Blake wrote in a blog dedicated to her son in 2021.
“Another family shattered. Forever grieving the loss of dreams and celebrations.”
Philadelphia’s City Council will vote today whether to ban facilities that make it safer for addicts to inject illegal drugs, as footage of open drug use and rampant crime at the city’s Kensington neighborhood draws international concern.
The bill, expected to pass by a majority vote, aims to amend Philadelphia’s zoning code to prohibit “injection sites for narcotics” in nine of the city’s ten districts. Philadelphia’s mayor, Jim Kenney, has not yet indicated whether he would sign the bill.
In a few months, New York will celebrate the anniversary of its great experiment with drugs. It’s been almost two years since the city became the first in the United States to open two “supervised consumption sites,” facilities where people can consume controlled substances under the supervision of staff armed with overdose-reversing drugs. Two years in, how’s the experiment going?
Distressing new video shows addicts stumbling in a trance-like state along sidewalks strewn with burning trash heaps at the epicenter of Philadelphia’s “tranq” drug epidemic.
@thebizzleeffectAwareness Matters! In Order To Deal With This Epidemic We Must Learn And Have Awareness Of Whats Going On! Together We Can Fight This One Person At A Time! Never Judge,Have Compassion,Empathy Of The People Because It Could Be Any Of Us Out Here! KareAndAssist 💕💯🙌🏾🙏🏾🫂
I am a doctor, and I am a parent of teenagers, and I am watching a slow-moving tragedy unfold before my eyes in British Columbia. And I feel compelled to speak out about it.
As a doctor, I am bound by certain ethics and standards of practice. I am bound first and foremost to “do no harm.” I am also bound to provide evidence-based care to my patients. These are both virtues of the profession, guiding principles that ensure that patients are given the best available care, without being exposed to treatments that may harm them.
But sometimes, these two principles come into conflict.
Supervised consumption sites cause demonstrably severe public disorder and crime, yet the organizations that manage them are often unwilling to admit this or do anything about it. This obtuseness seems inexplicable — until you consider that these organizations advocate for initiatives that blatantly normalize criminal behaviour.
In fact, some centres have purposely hired drug users and dealers to carry out some of their programming.
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In 1894 Leo Tolstoy published “The Kingdom of God is Within You,” a culmination of decades of his thinking about theology, philosophy and anarchy. Whether one ultimately agrees with all of his conclusions, Tolstoy offers exceptionally perspicacious insights into the realities of human and societal interactions.
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A word that is constantly thrown around when discussing addiction is “compassion.” Rightfully so. This is a vital consideration when treating a disease that is increasingly terrorizing the streets of Toronto and other Canadian cities. But what does compassion entail when dealing with an addict?
Another 198 British Columbians died from toxic drugs in July, according to data released Tuesday by the B.C. Coroners Service, bringing the death toll in the first seven months of the year to 1,455.
The coroners service said the 1,455 deaths from January to July are the most ever reported in the first seven months of the year since a public health emergency over drug poisoning deaths in the province was declared in 2016.
“I am saddened to once again report that British Columbia’s toxic drug crisis shows no signs of abating,” said Chief Coroner Lisa Lapointe in a statement.
On June 29, 2022, it was announced that Purdue Pharma had settled a lawsuit, launched by British Columbia over the opioid crisis. The company agreed to a settlement with B.C. and all other provincial and territorial governments in exchange for $150 million in cash and access to “information and documents relevant to the lawsuit.”
Research by the federal government’s Privy Council Office (PCO) finds that the B.C. residents it surveyed are largely negative about the decriminalization of small amounts of certain illegal hard drugs for personal use in their province.
A PCO report, “Continuous Qualitative Data Collection of Canadians’ Views – February 2023,” asked members of the South Asian diaspora living in Metro Vancouver and Interior British Columbia their views on the opioid crisis and the prevalence of opioid addiction in their communities, as first reported by Blacklock’s reporter on Aug. 23.
Deidra Paul-Brooks has seen first hand how hard drugs have devastated her Indigenous community on Fredericton’s north side.
That’s why she supports the decision by the chief and council of Sitansisk (St. Mary’s First Nation) to declare a state of emergency earlier in the week.
Canada’s supervised consumption sites aren’t safe for surrounding communities. While they shouldn’t be abolished, significant reforms are urgently needed.
First piloted in Vancouver in 2003, these sites are designed to reduce drug-associated harms by giving visitors clean paraphernalia, such as sterilized needles, along with a safe space to consume their substances. Trained staff are able to test drugs for contaminants, reverse accidental overdoses and provide users with referrals to social services, such as housing assistance and addiction treatment.
They began appearing on the ground around the South Riverdale Community Health Centre with increasing regularity after a new safe injection site opened there in late 2017. South Riverdale is an independent centre built in 1998 in Leslieville, just east of downtown Toronto, home to about 30,000 people. It also happens to be across the street from the house where I have lived with my wife and son for 14 years.
