Shocking footage has revealed the scale of Philadelphia’s untamed ‘tranq’ epidemic, which has transformed the city’s streets into a drug-infested hellhole.
The Kensington neighborhood – known as ‘ground zero’ for the city’s drug crisis – is seen littered with zombie-like addicts, with many shamelessly shooting up in broad daylight.
Gruesome scenes in the ‘City of Brotherly Love’ show droves of homeless addicts aimlessly staggering through the streets, surrounded by tents and scattered trash.
‘Flesh will rot off your body’
In February on a snowy Wednesday, I met a homeless man named David standing outside a Safeway panhandling for money. He was wearing a white hoodie with the words “Portland State University” printed on it and holding two empty beer cans and a remote control.
It is hard for us to miss the unpleasant conclusion that in key areas where questions of public health and ethics intersect, this country, whose governments are so full of ostentation in touting their good intentions and putting on the airs of the bioethical pioneer, has got almost everything wrong. Not only that, it is also secretive about its failings and childishly stubborn in clinging to policies that don’t work. Adam Zivo of this newspaper has composed an extensive analysis of the “safer supply” approach to the alleviation of drug addiction, in which, after comprehensive and diligent research for several months he presents a practically unanswerable case for his view that the safer supply approach has catastrophically failed.
“Earlier this week, I reported in great detail how Canada’s “safer supply” strategy is a failure and is making the opioid crisis worse. Unfortunately, safer supply advocates have doubled-down and are continuing to falsely claim that everything is fine.”
The leader of the Conservative party calls the federal government’s program to provide drugs addicts with a “safer supply” a complete disaster that needs to be scrapped.
During question period on Wednesday, Pierre Poilievre raised a National Post investigation into the program that found that much of the drugs handed out were being re-sold on the street — usually to fund illicit purchases of the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl.
“Safer supply” advocates want you to believe that their solutions to Canada’s addiction crisis are working. They claim that by providing drug users with free, government-funded substitutes for potentially tainted illicit substances, overdoses can be reduced and lives can be saved.
Alberta is entering election season, and an unlikely issue could prove crucial: The United Conservative Party’s plan to force chronic drug addicts into treatment, a bold but controversial measure that could have resonance for provinces across the country struggling with street violence and disorder.
The Compassionate Intervention Act — whose existence was first revealed earlier this month through an access to information request — would be Canada’s first legislation laying out a path to push an addict into treatment against their will. Although coerced treatment currently exists for criminal offenders or the severely mentally ill, this would apply specifically to chronic addicts believed to be at immediate risk to themselves or others.
Fentanyl has changed everything — except the policies we use to fight it
I stepped through a hole in the chainlink fence surrounding Portland’s O’Bryant Square and saw four people nodded out and three smoking fentanyl. The man who had supplied them was standing nearby; he gave me a nod and continued with his business.
Built in 1973, the park is mostly brick and concrete with its dominant feature a bronze fountain in the shape of Portland’s iconic rose. It was permanently closed and fenced off in 2018. The city blamed “structural issues,” but the real reason for closing the park was that it has long been a well-known place to use drugs. As a teenager in the late 1980s I used to skateboard there. As I practiced ollies, I often observed LSD and marijuana deals.
The Alberta government is considering introducing a law that would broaden the circumstances under which people with severe drug addictions could be placed into treatment without their consent.
The legislation would be the first involuntary treatment law in Canada to target addiction specifically. Some jurisdictions, including Alberta, already use mental-health law to push people into drug treatment without court orders in exceptionally severe situations. But otherwise adult drug users can refuse help.
We make it very easy for people to slowly kill themselves on our streets while they in turn wreak havoc on our quality of life.
The arguments that emptied the asylums onto our streets are made in the Globe article. Why they are seen as humane is beyond me.
WARMINGTON: Used syringes in east-end Toronto park just waiting to jab somebody
Is the story that Toronto’s so-called safe injection of hard drugs policy means addicts leave behind used syringes in city parks or is it that no one from the city seems to come to take them away?
Seven years after the province of British Columbia declared the drug epidemic a public health emergency, and just one month after the decriminalization of all drugs, overdoses continue to skyrocket.
According to the Canadian Press, B.C. tragically set three new overdose records this March, just the second month after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s federal government allowed the province to decriminalize all drugs starting February 1, 2023, in an effort to combat the crisis.
h/t XC
President Joe Biden has spent two-plus years in office ignoring the border and undermining proven efforts to stop the flow of drugs and illegal immigrants.
Today, I will hold a town hall in Salem, N.H. But I’ll start by discussing another town, just a few miles to the south. Lawrence, Mass., isn’t a place most people know. But for anyone in New England who has lost a loved one to fentanyl, there’s a good chance Lawrence played a painful role.
The border is a route in, shut it down and new ones will open. Unless you can stem demand nothing will work.
Toronto has updated its 14-month-old decriminalization request to the federal government, clarifying it wants a Health Canada exemption to cover young people as well as adults, and all drugs for personal use.
The city’s updated submission to its initial January 2022 request asks the federal agency to go further than the exemption it recently granted to British Columbia under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
So what did Rob Ford do wrong?
Does Narcan normalize overdoses?
“Iwould love to see a world in which Boy Scouts make handing out naloxone as their Eagle Scout project,” said addiction scholar Stefan Kertesz in the Washington Post. Naloxone prevents opioid overdose deaths — which is a good thing.
But soon federal regulators are expected to approve the over-the-counter sale of a nasal spray of the drug — its brand name is Narcan — and I’m thinking that the so-called harm reduction movement is about to inflict a world of pain on damaged people and degraded cities.
VANCOUVER — B.C. has decriminalized drug possession of 2.5 grams of cocaine, MDMA, meth and opioids, including heroin. Those in favour hail it as a victory against stigma, while opponents worry it will have unintended consequences. We will leave the public policy debate to others, but will ask another very pertinent question: what’s wrong with stigma?
Overdose deaths continue to rise in Vancouver, the epicenter of Canada’s addiction crisis, as barriers to drug use are demolished. After British Columbia’s decriminalization experiment came into effect, the province’s center-right Liberal Party pledged that, should they be elected, they will invest $1.5 billion into Portuguese-inspired rehabilitation-oriented treatment. This would be a significant improvement over British Columbia’s current farce. Earlier this week, the Canadian province of British Columbia decriminalized the possession of small amounts of hard drugs, such as cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl.
