ontario

By: Andre Picard, Globe and Mail

 

What a cruel juxtaposition of events.

 

Last Thursday, a committee of the Ontario Legislature released a hard-hitting report on the need to fundamentally transform the province’s mental-health and addictions system.

 

Then, on Sunday, as if to underscore the urgency of implementing their recommendations, Toronto Police shot to death 25-year-old Reyal Jensen Jardine-Douglas. The shooting is still under investigation, but his “crime” seems to have been to suffer from mental illness.

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By: Alan Coxwell Stirling, The Intelligencer

 

What an extreme pleasure it was to receive yet another postage-free, feel-good message from our Hastings & Prince Edward Member of Parliament in my rural mailbox last week.

 

In his two-page note Daryl Kramp told me "Conservatives Standing Up for Canadian Consumers" is what his government has been doing up on Parliament Hill during these dog days of the summer of 2010.

 

Featured prominently was a smiling, 30- something couple heading back to their car in a mall parking lot with a couple of kids in an otherwise empty shopping cart.

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By: Heidi Ulrichsen - Sudbury Northern Life Staff

 

As a former health care administrator, Nickel Belt MPP France Gélinas said she thought she knew “how bad” things were for those with mental health and addictions issues.

 

She said her eyes were opened even further through her experiences on the provincial legislature’s Select Committee on Mental Health and Addictions.

 

The nine-member committee, made up of representatives of all three parties in the legislature, released a report Aug. 26 based on 230 presentations and 300 written submissions.

 

“The people who came to us had tried to access services,” Gélinas said.

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CBC News

 

Smoking marijuana does help relieve a certain amount of pain, a small but well-designed Canadian study has found.

 

People who suffer chronic neuropathic or nerve pain from damage or dysfunction of the nervous system have few treatment options with varying degrees of effectiveness and side-effects.

 

Neuropathic pain is caused by damage to nerves that don't repair, which can make the skin sensitive to a light touch.

 

Cannabis pills have been shown to help treat some types of pain but the effects and risks from smoked cannabis were unclear.

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After a 33-7 vote yesterday, Toronto City Council endorsed the Vienna Declaration, a document which denounces the war on drugs, The National Post reports.

The declaration favours public health responses to drug instead over enforcement.

“The war against drugs has failed. In every jurisdiction and in every community, we know that policing this issue is not enough,” said gaybourhood councillor Kyle Rae.

Last year, controversy erupted during a Toronto safe consumption site feasibility study when Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he planned to shut down a Vancouver’s safe injection site.

The Vienna Declaration aims to end all that.

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By: Zoe McKnight, National Post

 

Toronto City Council voted to endorse the Vienna Declaration on Thursday, raising a loud voice against the war on drugs.

 

“The war against drugs has failed,” said city councillor Kyle Rae, who brought the declaration to council after attending the AIDS 2010 international conference this July, where it was announced. “In every jurisdiction and in every community, we know that policing this issue is not enough.”

 

The principles of the declaration favour a public health approach to dealing with drug addicts, rather than enforcing ever-stricter drug laws, which advocates say doesn’t work, and in fact can cause greater harm.

 

“Just as clearly as we know HIV is the cause of AIDS, we know the war on drugs doesn’t achieve its stated objectives and contributes to a range of harms, including the spread of HIV,” said Dr. Evan Wood, a research physician who studies infectious disease at the University of British Columbia, and who chaired the writing committee.

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Vienna Declaration

 

26 August 2010 [Toronto, Canada] – Toronto City Council today voted to endorse the Vienna Declaration, a recently released document that highlights the failure of the global War on Drugs and calls for a transparent review of the effectiveness of current drug policies.

The City of Toronto is the first municipality to join a long list of Nobel Laureates and academic, political, law enforcement and health leaders to endorse and sign the Vienna Declaration, the official declaration of the XVIII International AIDS conference (AIDS 2010) held in Vienna, Austria from July 18-23, 2010.

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CBC News

 

A new report says a "radical transformation" of mental health and addiction care is needed in Ontario if people are to receive the help they need.

 

The all-party legislative committee that wrote the report, released Thursday, is urging the government to create an umbrella organization to co-ordinate mental health and addictions systems.

 

Having a single body called Mental Health and Addictions Ontario, responsible for designing and co-ordinating the system, will ensure that services are delivered consistently and comprehensively across the province, the report said.

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By: Adam Radwanski, Globe and Mail

 

Deb Matthews has seen the stats that show her province has the worst rate of prescription-drug addiction in the country. And she’s heard the stories: northern cities fighting a losing battle, native communities torn apart, small towns contending with thefts and break-and-enters so residents can feed their habits.

 

But Ontario’s Health Minister doesn’t need to go far afield to find motivation for the policy response she’s set to begin rolling out in the coming weeks. She just has to wander a few blocks from her constituency office.

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By: Betsy Powell, Toronto Star

 

A couch, slashed and smouldering, lay upended in the tiny backyard, while inside the home household possessions were strewn on the floor after dresser drawers were dumped, shelves cleared and closets emptied.

 

In a May pre-trial ruling, Ontario Superior Court Justice Michael Code criticized the Toronto police officers who had executed that search warrant and concluded they had caused “deliberate and unnecessary damage” to the contents of the Driftwood Ave. townhouse unit.

 

Police obtained the warrant three summers ago after a confidential informant told them a resident was selling marijuana on the premises.

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