addiction

Senator Larry Campbell vows push to legalize opioids

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From The Tyee: Senator Larry Campbell Vows Push to Legalize Opioids.

The former Vancouver mayor who oversaw the installation of the city’s first open safe injection site says he intends to push for the legalization of opioids, even if it means introducing the legislation himself. (…)

Campbell is a proponent of the so-called “Four Pillars” initiative, which advocates balancing harm reduction, prevention, treatment, and enforcement to help ease Vancouver’s addiction troubles.

But although Metro Vancouver could use more safe injection sites, Campbell said Canada must go further to tackle its opioid problem as the fentanyl crisis spreads across the country.

“I’m beyond that now,” Campbell said of injection sites, which he said keep people alive but don’t address the underlying causes of addiction. “We should be actually supplying opioids to addicts within facilities.” [continue]

This makes so much sense.

Why hardly anyone dies from a drug overdose in Portugal

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From the Washington Post: Why hardly anyone dies from a drug overdose in Portugal.

Portugal decriminalized the use of all drugs in 2001. Weed, cocaine, heroin, you name it — Portugal decided to treat possession and use of small quantities of these drugs as a public health issue, not a criminal one. The drugs were still illegal, of course. But now getting caught with them meant a small fine and maybe a referral to a treatment program — not jail time and a criminal record. (…)

The prevalence of past-year and past-month drug use among young adults has fallen since 2001, according to statistics compiled by the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, which advocates on behalf of ending the war on drugs. Overall adult use is down slightly too. And new HIV cases among drug users are way down. [continue]

This is great news for Portugal, but it makes me feel so frustrated about our approach to drug use in Canada. I’d like to be in charge long enough to change a few laws, and to make narcan available to paramedics and members of the general public. I think that would save a lot of lives.