Canada - Decriminalization should be considered to stop overdose crisis

[S.J.B.]

Decriminalization should be considered to stop overdose crisis, says Vancouver's chief doctor
Roshini Nair
CBC
January 19th, 2017

The only way to stop the fentanyl crisis is to get everyone off illicit drugs and onto legal substitutions — even if that means decriminalization — according to Vancouver Coastal Health's chief medical officer.

Yesterday, the BC Coroners Service revealed 914 people in B.C. have died from illicit drug overdoses in 2016, 215 of which were in Vancouver, making it the deadliest year for overdoses on record.

Dr. Patricia Daly, who is also vice-president of public health for VCH, said the health authority has implemented a variety of measures including longer hours for Insite, extra overdose prevention sites, widespread naloxone availability, and opening a mobile medical unit.

Although Daly praised the work of medical staff, first responders, and overdose prevention sites, she pointed out the number of deaths keep rising.

"We haven't yet taken the steps that we really need to turn things around," she said. "This is a crisis of a contamination of an illicit drugs supply."

Read the full story here.

 

[ro4eva]

Perhaps one day, when enough people have died; when enough people have come to realize that they've been fed a consistent pile of propagandist-bullshit regarding recreational drug use + corresponding laws; when enough people have recognized the futility inherent within the criminalization of "a moral failure," we'll finally find the courage to divorce ourselves from this mainstream media-fed relationship filled to the brim with agenda-driven lies, exaggerations and hypocrisy.

I pray that this day arrives sooner than expected.

 

[Felonious Monk]

^it's very possible that the changes will be more subtle, because of exactly those things that you mention. Like most Americans don't know that the Harrison Act prohibits the prescribing of narcotics to addicts (which is why the methadone clinic is somewhere you go daily instead of getting a prescription). Even without decriminalization, the ability of doctors to prescribe adequate doses of narcotics would make a big difference. Even without regulating diamorphine/heroin---I'd wager that many/most opioid users would accept IV-able morphine or sniffable oxycodone tablets instead of their current DOC.