• 🇺🇸󠁿 🇧🇷 🇨🇦 🇦🇷 🇲🇽 🇹🇹 🇨🇺
    The Americas
    Drug Discussion

    Welcome Guest!
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
  • NSADD Moderators: deficiT | Jen

vancouver thread

sekio

sekio

Bluelight Crew
Joined
Sep 14, 2009
Messages
21,994
I don't see a Vancouver thread so... Vancouver Canada discussion.

Where my DTES hydromorphone program peeps at heh
 
Do you guys still have dudes walking up to people at bus stops at midnight trying to push their coke on them?

Happens to me every time I'm in Van (maybe it's the same dude) . What's with that? We don't have that kind of service here.
 
I took a walk down from downtown and through the DTES's main thoroughfare not too long ago when I was in the neighborhood. It's really quite astounding to see the different worlds a few blocks apart going from downtown to the DTES. The dealers were more subtle than the last time I was there, though. Instead of multiple guys offering me "jib and down" I just had one guy asking what I wanted. To be fair, I do look a little less sketchy than I used to so that may be why I got fewer solicitations.
 
I didn't even look that sketchy, or sketchy at all, really....which may be why I was offered cocaine. I guess I looked like I had money to burn. Never been offered jib or down in Vancouver....and I even spent one evening chilling in the street with a homeless dude from Squamish FN who was a carver in the DTES. Me and him were the only non-fucked looking dudes on the block hahaa...what a place that is.
Bought a carving of a killer whale off him. Nice guy, hope he's doing well now. I felt bad for him. He was a sober man in a sea of madness.
 
Unless you are very obviously a Drug User or you're frequenting the DMZ that is Pain & Wastings or Oppy park, people will leave you alone most of the time. It's crazy in that part of the city - you have people who are so fucked up one way or another they can hardly string a sentence together and yet somehow they sell dope? The mind boggles.

If you could be mistaken for a homeless person or you look dopesick there's a chance people will, uh, decide to advertise to you. When I was on the street and walking to the overnight shelter one day with my buddy we had a car drive past us, do a 180, and come back. Rolls the window down - "hey guys do you want a sample, we have up down and side, blah blah here's my number". Free drugs? Free drugs.
 
Yeah, I had the misfortune of staying at some sort of hostel down near the top of Main Street once. Shared room with a guy who lived there permanently. Needless to say, I slept with one eye open....was that sleep? I left in the morning. That time I couldn't find a hotel that would take a cash deposit as I didn't have a credit card. Had to sleep somewhere. haha

Man, I miss Vancouver.....not for any of the reasons mentioned here, but I'm due for a visit.
 
I work in the down town east side right beside Oppenheimer park. I am a support worker for woman aged 18-25 who live here. It’s a whole nother world down here that’s forsure!!! But they have their own community which is amazing
 
Do street walker hookers still hang out around Burrard Street nearby the Century Plaza hotel?

Are the hookers working around Burrard Street high class compared to the Eastside junkie crack whores?

Is Gastown home to most of the homeless people of Vancouver?
 
Out of interest how do cost of living expenses and rental prices for houses and apartments compare between Vancouver and a interior regional city like Kelowna?
 
I heard on As It Happens that they have a Hydromorphone maintenance program where you get your pills from a dispensing machine every week or something...it is being tested by a local doc.

Pretty good idea! Also I love the crackdown podcast you guys do very good work!
 
Boku_ said:
Out of interest how do cost of living expenses and rental prices for houses and apartments compare between Vancouver and a interior regional city like Kelowna?
Click to expand...

I'm not the expert on this, but from what I do know, I reckon Kelowna prices are approximately 70% of Vancouver prices in terms of housing. Not sure what they might be for other living expenses as I live nowhere near there and haven't visited since 2016.
 
hydroazuanacaine said:
whoa. but pills? everyone doesn't snort, shoot, or plug them due to hydromorphone's low oral bioavailability?
Click to expand...
The program is aimed at long-term, high-risk users, so I would imagine most of them are injecting the tablets. The per-milligram retail cost of the cheapest hydromorphone tablets is nearly an order of magnitude lower than that of the cheapest injectable formulations in British Columbia, which is probably the biggest reason they chose to go with tablets.
 
How good is the Canadian health care system?

It's more like the NHS in the United kingdom than the United states user pays system?
 
Boku_ said:
How good is the Canadian health care system?

It's more like the NHS in the United kingdom than the United states user pays system?
Click to expand...
It's closer to the U.K., in that most healthcare is universal-single-payer and private options are available in some provinces but used much less often. However, prescription drugs are generally not included in this system and most people pay for prescription drugs via private insurance they get through their employers.

As for quality, international rankings tend to put us below the U.K. and other wealthy European countries but above the United States.
 
Isn't Malaysia and People's republic of China ranked above The United states?
 
Boku_ said:
Isn't Malaysia and People's republic of China ranked above The United states?
Click to expand...
Seems unlikely. Here's a recent ranking of global healthcare quality funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and it puts the U.S. well above China or Malaysia. In this one Canada is higher than the U.K. though.
 
4896.jpg



Opioid vending machine opens in Vancouver

by William Turvill | The Guardian | 17 Feb 2020

MySafe scheme for addicts aims to help reduce overdose deaths in Canadian city.

A vending machine for powerful opioids has opened in Canada as part of a project to help fight the Canadian city’s overdose crisis.

The MySafe project, which resembles a cash machine, gives addicts access to a prescribed amount of medical quality hydromorphone, a drug about twice as powerful as heroin.

Dr Mark Tyndall, a professor of epidemiology at the University of British Columbia, came up with the project as part of an attempt to reduce the number of overdose deaths in the city, which reached 395 last year.

“I think ethically we need to offer people a safer source,” he said. “So basically the idea is that instead of buying unknown fentanyl from an alley, we can get people pharmaceutical-grade drugs.”

Don Durban, a social worker from Vancouver, is one of 14 opioid addicts using the MySafe vending machine. After being prescribed opioid-based painkillers in the early 2000s, the father of two developed an addiction and now feels unable to cope without a daily dose of hydromorphone.

Unlike most addicts, Durban, 66, does not have to break the law by sourcing his fix through drug dealers. Instead he is prescribed Dilaudid – the brand name for hydromorphone – and, for the past couple of weeks, has been able to collect his pills from a vending machine near his home in Eastside, a rundown neighbourhood with a large homeless community.

“This is a godsend,” he told the Guardian during one of his visits to the machine. After verifying his identity with a biometric fingerprint scan, the machine dispensed Durban with three pills for each of his four daily visits, in line with his prescription.

“It means I don’t have to go and buy iffy dope,” he said. “I have a clean supply. I don’t have to deal with other people so much. You’re treated like an adult, not some kind of demonic dope fiend. We’re just people with mental health issues.”

Vancouver already has several schemes in place to accommodate for its large community of drug addicts. A pioneer of so-called harm reduction techniques, Vancouver was the first North American city to introduce a supervised injection site – where users can administer drugs in front of medical professionals – in 2003, and there are now several in the area. There are also programmes allowing users to access prescribed Dilaudid or pharmaceutical heroin.

Tyndall believes his scheme, which he hopes to roll out in other cities, will help addicts by giving them more autonomy – allowing them to pick up supplies at their convenience without having to visit pharmacies at specific times.

However, the MySafe project and Vancouver’s other harm-reduction techniques are not universally popular.

Dr Mark Ujjainwalla, an addictions doctor who runs Recovery Ottawa in eastern Canada, says users of illegal drugs need treatment for their conditions rather than easier access to substances. He argues such schemes are in effect ushering users towards death, rather than treating curable conditions.

“If you were a patient addicted to fentanyl [and you came to me], I would say: ‘OK, I will put you in a treatment centre for one to three months, get you off the fentanyl, get you stable, get your life back together and then you’ll be fine.’ Why would I want to give you free heroin and tell you to go to a trailer and inject?"

“I’ve got people here who have changed their lives. They were in jail, prostituting, and they came to my clinic, we put them on methadone, they got their lives back, they’re working again. Isn’t that a better story?”

Ujjainwalla also fears drugs distributed from machines such as MySafe could end up on the black market.

Dr Ricky Bluthenthal, a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California, disagrees. “It’s always better for someone to use licitly produced, safe medication rather than illicitly produced or illicitly distributed substance, which often have contaminants and other things that are unhealthy for people,” he said.

Durban also believes the machine will help him back to good health. “My long-term aim is to get off of these drugs,” he said. “What I’ll do is try to get down to a minimal dose and then if it starts acting up again, I’ll see Mark and ask him to bring it up again.”

www.theguardian.com

Opioid vending machine opens in Vancouver

MySafe scheme for addicts aims to help reduce overdose deaths in Canadian city
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top