harm reduction
Complaint lodged over local officer's gag order
By Louise Dickson, Times ColonistThe B.C. Civil Liberties Association has filed a complaint with the Victoria Police Board after Chief Jamie Graham ordered one of his officers not to speak at a local drug forum.
Const. David Bratzer, who does public speaking on behalf of the U.S.-based non-profit organization Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, known as LEAP, was asked to join a panel of speakers at a City of Victoria harm-reduction forum last evening, attended by about 120 people.
Battling prison disease
By Judith Lavoie, Times Colonist
Drugs find their way into prisons, despite all efforts to plug supply lines. And for many inmates, the most dangerous part of life inside is sharing jury-rigged needles.
Lack of knowledge, misery and addictions combine in a sometimes lethal mix, but Canadian prisons do not permit distribution of clean needles -- meaning health risks soar for an already at-risk population.
Harm-reduction advocates say need-exchange efforts have lost ground
A tearful Bernie Pauly acknowledged Victoria’s street community, including some who have died, as she described Victoria’s stalled harm-reduction efforts to a packed community forum Wednesday night.
Pauly, an assistant nursing professor and a research fellow at the University of Victoria’s Centre for Addictions Research, said Victoria’s harm-reduction plan had vision but has lost ground — and its fixed needle exchange.
“In 2002, I thought we were poised for change,” said Pauly. “In 2004, we had the four pillars of harm reduction — prevention, treatment, housing and enforcement.”
BCCLA complaint wants police free speech policy defined
An allegation that a Victoria Police Department police officer has been ordered not to discuss harm reduction at an upcoming drug policy conference has caused the BCCLA to file a policy complaint with the Victoria Police Board. The complaint asks the Board to define an off-duty speech policy for officers in line with Charter free speech values.“Police officers from Vancouver speak regularly on drug policy, often contradicting official VPD policy,” said Jason Gratl, Vice-President of the BCCLA. “We’re not sure why Victoria’s policy would be different. Both departments are governed by the same Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
Failure to aid drug users drives HIV spread: study
By Kate Kelland, Reuters
LONDON (Reuters) - More than 90 percent of the world's 16 million injecting drug users are offered no help to avoid contracting AIDS, and governments that ignore them risk a spiraling public health crisis, drugs experts said on Monday.
A "critical health problem" is growing in places like Russia, China, Malaysia and Thailand, they said, where drug users are a neglected population in the fight against AIDS and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes it.
Painkiller seized in Winnipeg drug bust
By Chris Kitching, QMI AgencyWINNIPEG -- At a time when addiction and black-market sales are on the rise in Winnipeg, city police officers have made one of their largest seizures of OxyContin, a highly addictive opiate.
Saturday’s bust reflects a growing problem of OxyContin abuse in local homes, especially in one age group, a support worker says.
“It seems to be the younger generation who’s addicted to OxyContin,” said Laurie Magee, manager of Addictions Foundation of Manitoba’s methadone program, which has a lengthy waiting list of people seeking treatment.
Magee said the most dominant group tends to be middle-class high school and university students.
First free heroin clinic opens in Denmark
AFPCOPENHAGEN – After years of contention, Denmark on Monday opened its first clinic equipped to distribute free heroin under medical supervision to people heavily addicted to the drug.
The Scandinavian country joins a number of countries like Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany to allow prescriptions for medicinal heroin, or diamorphine, to be written out to a small group of addicts so hooked on the substance that more traditional substitutes like methadone have no effect.
The clinic is set to serve only 120 of some 300 hard-core heroin addicts, or only about one percent of all drug addicts in the country.
Drug Abuse Prevention; Why do the American media avoid discussing research findings?
For Futurehealth: Lewis Mehl-Madrona - WriterThis week on American television, as part of its coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games, particularly on the CNN Network each morning at the gym were I exercise, the morning news was astir with discussions of Insite, a Vancouver-based project that provides addicts with a safe site to inject, including clean needles. The American TV was awash with criticisms of this policy, the primary one being that it promoted drug abuse and caused people to abuse drugs even more than they otherwise would. What amazed me was the complete lack of attention to data in the American media. Substantial research has been conducted on Insite and on harm reduction models. It is known that programs like Insite reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS and of hepatitis C and reduce drug overdose. No evidence exists to support its spreading drug abuse.
Give Inmates Clean Needles
Constructive pragmatism will do much more for inmate health than knee jerk conservatism.
Neil Boyd, The Mark
A recent report from the Canadian HIV/AIDS network has called for the implementation of needle exchange programs in Canadian prisons. The report notes that rates of HIV and Hepatitis C infection are about 20 times higher in our jails than in the general population. Further, jail appears to be a breeding ground for illegal drug use, especially for intravenous drugs.
This isn’t news – we’ve known this to be true of federal institutions in Canada for more than a generation. And this report provides ample testimony from former inmates regarding the drug use that they and other prisoners engaged in. With a sporadic supply of needles, sharing equipment becomes commonplace.
Treatment drive in British Columbia produces modest declines in diagnoses and viral loads
Gus Cairns, AidsMap NewsAn expansion in the numbers of people with HIV in the Canadian province of British Columbia diagnosed and on treatment has started to produce modest reductions in HIV diagnoses and in the average viral load in the community, the 17th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) heard today.
The trends seen were similar to those reported from San Francisco in a similar presentation the previous day – see this report.
However Dr Julio Montaner of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, the prime mover behind this strategy, told the conference that the ‘second wave’ of increased HAART (highly active antiretroviral treatment) coverage actually started prior to the adoption of this strategy, which in itself does not appear to have further increased access.
