Canada to decriminalize hard drugs in pilot study

[Ca++]

Needles are free in the UK. Though you may have to travel into a city and have an anonymous account. Essentially you sit a brief interview, where you are offered help if you want it. Just so they know they tried. Then you get a card to show at the counter for them. Same with condoms.

 

[moose eater]

Wow addicts in the UK must reuse needles? WTF Here in Canada you can get free needles anywhere and I mean anywhere!

Health Services - Canada.ca

Discover how CSC Health Services strives to improve offender health and contribute to the safety of Canadians.

www.csc-scc.gc.ca

Since June 2018, the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) has been rolling out a Prison Needle Exchange Program (PNEP) in federal institutions across the country to help prevent the sharing of needles among inmates and the spread of infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and HCV.

Needle Exchange Programs (NEPs) FAQs | Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction

This publication has been archived on the CCSA website and was current when it was published. It is available for reference or research purposes. Addresses some issues and questions about needle exchange programs (NEPs) in Canada, a harm reduction measure for injection drug users. These...

www.ccsa.ca

Anyone can get free needles in Canada.

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/974606#:~:text=Vancouver%20Safe%20Supply%20Program%20Aims%20to%20Reduce%20Overdose%20Deaths,-Carolyn%20Crist&text=The%20Safer%20Alternatives%20for%20Emergency,according%20to%20a%20new%20report.&text=The%20program%20has%20been%20operating,British%20Columbia%2C%20since%20April%202021.

Similar safe supply programs are being implemented or considered in other places across Canada. Since 2019, Health Canada has funded 18 safe supply pilot programs.

"When we look at the number of overdose deaths, it should be zero. These are preventable deaths," author Christy Sutherland, MD, medical director at the PHS Community Services Society in Vancouver, which operates the SAFER program, told Medscape Medical News.

And this is what pisses me off that prohibition causes the toxic drug supply that kills most illicit drug users while NARCS use these deaths to justify prohibition. Catch 22.

If your reading ability equalled your apparent desire to do battle and be correct, you'd have noted that the Liverpool Project was in the early 1980's.

The addicts involved in the program, like in all locations, SOMETIMES (and some more frequently) reuse needles, despite otherwise having ACCESS to new disposable syringes.

The cleaning of syringes, and proper teaching of such, helps to keep addicts alive when they don't have a clean needle or access to one (there's not a needle exchange like the one my family member runs at their methadone program on every street corner, but considering your level of expertise in this area of study, you already knew that).

Having legal access doesn't equate to always having a syringe, or a clinic nearby, unless one possesses a teleporter device, in which case, yeah, that likely reduces those circumstances in which a person might find themselves needing to reuse a needle.

"Should be no overdose deaths." >>>> PIPE DREAM.

There should be no traffic accidents, no divorces, no miscarriages, no war, and no assholes.... but there are, and likely always will be... as long as humans exist.. Maybe in a more realistic framework, minimizing those occurrences is the goal? Hence,.... "HARM REDUCTION".

 

[St. Phatty]

"Should be no overdose deaths." >>>> PIPE DREAM.

It wasn't a pipe dream 100 years ago.

It's social changes (disintegrating economy) and drug tech changes (how did habitual users of Cocaine & Opiates consume their weapon of choice - 100 years ago ?) and more social changes ...

e.g. friend's nephew was a rec. opiate user.

Lost his main connect, switched to Imodium AD.

Didn't know Loperamide could cause his breathing to stop.

So he suffocated & died VERY constipated. I think he took a whole bottle, 25 x 2 milligrams.

 

[Rider420]

Its not a perfect world nor are there any absolutes. But fewer people would die if all drugs were legal and quality controlled.

BTW 2200 die from overdosing on alcohol each year in the states. Is that a good argument for its prohibition? Lets have a look at how many people died during its last prohibition.

Up to 50,000 people may have died from the repurposed industrial alcohol nationwide and thousands of others were stricken by crippling paralysis.

The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition.

It was Christmas Eve 1926, the streets aglitter with snow and lights, when the man afraid of Santa Claus stumbled into the emergency room at New York...

slate.com

It only gets worse by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people. Although mostly forgotten today, the “chemist's war of Prohibition” remains one of the strangest and most deadly decisions in American law-enforcement history.

So who is putting toxic substances into illicit drugs? History repeats! The DEA has admitted that they poisoned the well in other nations by adding toxins to precursors.

The operation was still a success even if the patient dies right?

So why did prohibition end?

The increase of the illegal production and sale of liquor (known as “bootlegging”), the proliferation of speakeasies (illegal drinking spots) and the accompanying rise in gang violence and other crimes led to waning support for Prohibition by the end of the 1920s.

 

[Somatek]

It wasn't a pipe dream 100 years ago.

It's social changes (disintegrating economy) and drug tech changes (how did habitual users of Cocaine & Opiates consume their weapon of choice - 100 years ago ?) and more social changes ...

e.g. friend's nephew was a rec. opiate user.

Lost his main connect, switched to Imodium AD.

Didn't know Loperamide could cause his breathing to stop.

So he suffocated & died VERY constipated. I think he took a whole bottle, 25 x 2 milligrams.

Yes it was. 100 years ago laudanum addictions/overdoses where the issue instead of heroin/opium. Distilled alcohol and the problems it caused created the temperance movement, which only later evolved to cover fermented alcohol as well as distilled as beer/wine/cider were so deeply entrenched in society. We see roughly the same addiction rate in monkeys at tropical resorts where they can get booze, roughly 30% become dysfunctional problem users. Addiction is part of the human experience, not something new but an entrenched intersectional social/economic/health issue which we've instead treated as a moral/criminal one. Recognizing that is the core of harm reduction; address the root causes of dysfunctional users and the symptoms resolve themselves.

 

[Rider420]

Addiction is part of the human experience, not something new but an entrenched intersectional social/economic/health issue which we've instead treated as a moral/criminal one. Recognizing that is the core of harm reduction; address the root causes of dysfunctional users and the symptoms resolve themselves.

FYI 90% of people in North America are addicted to caffeine and use it every day. But it won't shorten your life span "unless you OD" anymore then cannabis or heroin "unless you OD or get a toxic batch."

Yup and the best tools for addressing the root causes of dysfunctions seems to be psychedelics. But they are an illegal "hard" drug so back to catch-22.

 

[Somatek]

FYI 90% of people in North America are addicted to caffeine and use it every day. But it won't shorten your life span "unless you OD" anymore then cannabis or heroin unless you OD or get a toxic batch.

Yup and the best tools for addressing the root causes of dysfunctions seems to be psychedelics. But they are an illegal "hard" drug so back to catch-22.

That's why I generally avoid the term addict as it's unclear and overly stigamtized and use terms like non-functional, dysfunctional or problem user, etc. It's a way of focusing on whether the individual has incorporated whatever substance in a responsible way vs one where their use causes issues; the substance doesn't matter as much as the individual and their reasons for using. Whether it's coffee, crack, sex, eating, working or whatever else.

Psychedelics aren't seen as simply "hard" drugs anymore, at least in Canada as people have been granted exemptions by the minister of Health to use mushrooms for medicinal use. It really depends on who you talk to and how they divide hard/soft drugs, I'll be glad when all these arbitrary distinctions are abandoned. Mushrooms remind me of where pot was a decade ago where it's still technically illegal but the laws are essentially ignored as they're advertised everywhere. It's pretty comical they're going for more then pot at a retail level as they've always been much cheaper until the recent microdosing boom.

 

[Cuddles]

The chilling truth about Cannabis Psychosis | 60 Minutes Australia

Who knew reefer madness is real, caused by potent cannabis that results somehow in 10 and 11 year old addicts! Smoking a joint laughing my fucking ass off! You can't make this shit up its just too fucking funny. Like smoking less cannabis to get the same high is harmful too funny but it gets...

www.icmag.com

Addiction specialist claim that cannabis is a hard drug! And that heroin is a safer choice! No shit the doc says I would rather see kids doing heroin then cannabis! Don't believe me watch the video.

doctors just dissaprove of smoking - they blame it for everything - getting a cold, an earache or whatever...
if you tell them about one single thing they jump at it and blame that without asking or thinking about it any further.

 

[nono_fr]

In France, doctors work for laboratories. Since they have their diplomas, new diseases and especially new drugs have appeared and it is the laboratories that inform them, not the university.

In France, doctors deliver a lot of drugs (antidepressants) to produce serotonin rather than directing patients towards activities that naturally produce serotonin in the brain.

For drugs, it is dopamine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine#Drug_addiction_and_psychostimulants

Cocaine, substituted amphetamines (including methamphetamine), Adderall, methylphenidate (marketed as Ritalin or Concerta), and other psychostimulants exert their effects primarily or partly by increasing dopamine levels in the brain by a variety of mechanisms.[100] Cocaine and methylphenidate are dopamine transporter blockers or reuptake inhibitors;[101] they non-competitively inhibit dopamine reuptake, resulting in increased dopamine concentrations in the synaptic cleft.[102][103]: 54–58  Like cocaine, substituted amphetamines and amphetamine also increase the concentration of dopamine in the synaptic cleft, but by different mechanisms.[33][103]: 147–150 

The effects of psychostimulants include increases in heart rate, body temperature, and sweating; improvements in alertness, attention, and endurance; increases in pleasure produced by rewarding events; but at higher doses agitation, anxiety, or even loss of contact with reality.[100] Drugs in this group can have a high addiction potential, due to their activating effects on the dopamine-mediated reward system in the brain.[100] However some can also be useful, at lower doses, for treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy.[104][105] An important differentiating factor is the onset and duration of action.[100] Cocaine can take effect in seconds if it is injected or inhaled in free base form; the effects last from 5 to 90 minutes.[106] This rapid and brief action makes its effects easily perceived and consequently gives it high addiction potential.[100] Methylphenidate taken in pill form, in contrast, can take two hours to reach peak levels in the bloodstream,[104] and depending on formulation the effects can last for up to 12 hours.[107] These longer acting formulations have the benefit of reducing the potential for abuse, and improving adherence for treatment by using more convenient dosage regimens.[108]

A variety of addictive drugs produce an increase in reward-related dopamine activity.[100] Stimulants such as nicotine, cocaine and methamphetamine promote increased levels of dopamine which appear to be the primary factor in causing addiction. For other addictive drugs such as the opioid heroin, the increased levels of dopamine in the reward system may play only a minor role in addiction.[109] When people addicted to stimulants go through withdrawal, they do not experience the physical suffering associated with alcohol withdrawal or withdrawal from opiates; instead they experience craving, an intense desire for the drug characterized by irritability, restlessness, and other arousal symptoms,[110] brought about by psychological dependence.

The dopamine system plays a crucial role in several aspects of addiction. At the earliest stage, genetic differences that alter the expression of dopamine receptors in the brain can predict whether a person will find stimulants appealing or aversive.[111] Consumption of stimulants produces increases in brain dopamine levels that last from minutes to hours.[100] Finally, the chronic elevation in dopamine that comes with repetitive high-dose stimulant consumption triggers a wide-ranging set of structural changes in the brain that are responsible for the behavioral abnormalities which characterize an addiction.[112] Treatment of stimulant addiction is very difficult, because even if consumption ceases, the craving that comes with psychological withdrawal does not.[110] Even when the craving seems to be extinct, it may re-emerge when faced with stimuli that are associated with the drug, such as friends, locations and situations.[110] Association networks in the brain are greatly interlinked.[113]

 

[Cuddles]

In France, doctors work for laboratories. Since they have their diplomas, new diseases and especially new drugs have appeared and it is the laboratories that inform them, not the university.

In France, doctors deliver a lot of drugs (antidepressants) to produce serotonin rather than directing patients towards activities that naturally produce serotonin in the brain.

For drugs, it is dopamine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine#Drug_addiction_and_psychostimulants

high dopamine levels can cause psychosis/ schizophrenia - hallucinations and so on. In fact this is an argument people here use to not legalize cannabis.

oh btw, antidepressants cannot actually produce new serotonin but a supplement such as maca can!
I do wish doctors would be willing to educate themselves better.

 

[nono_fr]

This is the next chapter : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine#Psychosis_and_antipsychotic_drugs

Psychosis and antipsychotic drugs

Psychiatrists in the early 1950s discovered that a class of drugs known as typical antipsychotics (also known as major tranquilizers), were often effective at reducing the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia.[114] The introduction of the first widely used antipsychotic, chlorpromazine (Thorazine), in the 1950s, led to the release of many patients with schizophrenia from institutions in the years that followed.[114] By the 1970s researchers understood that these typical antipsychotics worked as antagonists on the D2 receptors.[114][115] This realization led to the so-called dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia, which postulates that schizophrenia is largely caused by hyperactivity of brain dopamine systems.[116] The dopamine hypothesis drew additional support from the observation that psychotic symptoms were often intensified by dopamine-enhancing stimulants such as methamphetamine, and that these drugs could also produce psychosis in healthy people if taken in large enough doses.[116] In the following decades other atypical antipsychotics that had fewer serious side effects were developed.[114] Many of these newer drugs do not act directly on dopamine receptors, but instead produce alterations in dopamine activity indirectly.[117] These drugs were also used to treat other psychoses.[114] Antipsychotic drugs have a broadly suppressive effect on most types of active behavior, and particularly reduce the delusional and agitated behavior characteristic of overt psychosis.[115]

Later observations, however, have caused the dopamine hypothesis to lose popularity, at least in its simple original form.[116] For one thing, patients with schizophrenia do not typically show measurably increased levels of brain dopamine activity.[116] Even so, many psychiatrists and neuroscientists continue to believe that schizophrenia involves some sort of dopamine system dysfunction.[114] As the "dopamine hypothesis" has evolved over time, however, the sorts of dysfunctions it postulates have tended to become increasingly subtle and complex.[114]

Psychopharmacologist Stephen M. Stahl suggested in a review of 2018 that in many cases of psychosis, including schizophrenia, three interconnected networks based on dopamine, serotonin, and glutamate – each on its own or in various combinations – contributed to an overexcitation of dopamine D2 receptors in the ventral striatum.[118]

 

[Brother Nature]

Those pesky doctors, dedicating decades of their lives to study and understand the human. How dare they, they really ought to join a weed growing website so they can get schooled on what's what. I mean we all know those years of study were really just giant billionaire parties funded by big pharma where they teach you how to grift people of their mental health by overloading them with drugs.

 

[Blue Rhino]

doctors just dissaprove of smoking - they blame it for everything - getting a cold, an earache or whatever...
if you tell them about one single thing they jump at it and blame that without asking or thinking about it any further.

Remember when BC bud first made headlines? Ol' Dubya was calling it a serious public health issue. So, the WHO sent their top drug and addiction research specialist to investigate. His findings were that A) BC bud did not constitute a serious public health issue and B) The only real health issue of smoking cannabis was the actual act of smoking. His opinion was higher THC levels would mean people would smoke less. He was promptly fired by the WHO. The US being the WHO's single largest funder at the time. Follow the money when it comes to crap like this.

 

[Rider420]

Those pesky doctors, dedicating decades of their lives to study and understand the human. How dare they, they really ought to join a weed growing website so they can get schooled on what's what. I mean we all know those years of study were really just giant billionaire parties funded by big pharma where they teach you how to grift people of their mental health by overloading them with drugs.

Sorry but doctors are told what drugs to prescribe by pharmaceutical companies who are pimping thier new patented drugs to turn a profit. While older cheaper more effective generic drugs are passed over. So people die from the side effects of these new unknown drugs that could be alive if the doctor had tried the cheaper older generic drug first.
But I guess your sure of the moral fibre of the CEO's and board members of conglomerates and corporations to put your health and well being ahead of thier jobs and profits. Are your kidding?
BTW those great doctors you put so much faith in used to prescribe tobacco in the sixties to pregnant woman to lower the babies birth weight along with prescribing Thalidomide where thousands of women that took the pills lost pregnancies or had children with severe birth defects that shortened and twisted their limbs.
Most doctors care but are told what to prescribe and they follow the line or lose thier licence.

 

[nono_fr]

In France, there is the Dépakine scandal ( antiepileptic drug ) : https://www.tellerreport.com/tech/2022-01-05-dépakine-scandal--sanofi-found-responsible-for-a-lack-of-vigilance-and-information.SyePTcqXhF.html

" We realized that my son was very hypotonic, that he did not move or babble. At the age of one, a pediatric neurologist diagnoses an overall developmental delay, and there it is all that collapses

Today, I am very angry that I was not informed. When you look back, the lab knew, you realize that there were studies in the 1980s that described neurodevelopmental disorders, so why weren't we informed? Why was there nothing in the leaflet? ", Protested Nathalie Orti.

"He must assume his responsibilities and compensate families for the damage suffered, because our children are dependent for life," she insists.

Me, that's what worries me the most;
when I am no longer there, and in addition women with epilepsy do not have a monstrous life expectancy, who will take care of it?
And that is the purpose of compensation. "

There are many forms of epilepsy, some have many seizures, others very few. Some are born with it, others develop it as a result of trauma. The weed can avoid the seizures (as much as the drugs) but it makes money less to the laboratories...

( I'm epileptic so I know this trouble )

 

[Blue Rhino]

In France, there is the Dépakine scandal ( antiepileptic drug ) : https://www.tellerreport.com/tech/2022-01-05-dépakine-scandal--sanofi-found-responsible-for-a-lack-of-vigilance-and-information.SyePTcqXhF.html





There are many forms of epilepsy, some have many seizures, others very few. Some are born with it, others develop it as a result of trauma. The weed can avoid the seizures (as much as the drugs) but it makes money less to the laboratories...

( I'm epileptic so I know this trouble )

The only thing I can see about the labs making less would be they can't slap a decade(s) long patent on hemp. But considering for example, just the CBD products that are in demand and can be legally purchased in Canada, there's money to be made from it by Big Pharma (and other legit enterprises), even if it's not legal without a prescription.

 

[Brother Nature]

Sorry but doctors are told what drugs to prescribe by pharmaceutical companies who are pimping thier new patented drugs to turn a profit. While older cheaper more effective generic drugs are passed over. So people die from the side effects of these new unknown drugs that could be alive if the doctor had tried the cheaper older generic drug first.
But I guess your sure of the moral fibre of the CEO's and board members of conglomerates and corporations to put your health and well being ahead of thier jobs and profits. Are your kidding?
BTW those great doctors you put so much faith in used to prescribe tobacco in the sixties to pregnant woman to lower the babies birth weight along with prescribing Thalidomide where thousands of women that took the pills lost pregnancies or had children with severe birth defects that shortened and twisted their limbs.
Most doctors care but are told what to prescribe and they follow the line or lose thier licence.

You have a very limited world view my bro. You do realize there is life outside of the Us of A and it's echo chamber? You're painting an entire profession with the same brush, just like some people would consider all pot smokers to be losers who live in their parents basements, not understand grammar or how to spellcheck, getting all their information off the internet, and thinking the whole world is out to get them, while never accomplishing anything of substance in their meager little lives.

 

[Rider420]

You have a very limited world view my bro. You do realize there is life outside of the Us of A and it's echo chamber? You're painting an entire profession with the same brush, just like some people would consider all pot smokers to be losers who live in their parents basements, not understand grammar or how to spellcheck, getting all their information off the internet, and thinking the whole world is out to get them, while never accomplishing anything of substance in their meager little lives.

Sorry if that went over your head but lets try again. The system is corrupt from start to end based on profit rather then people's well being. If you work or worked in the heath care profession you already know this.
Doctors spend thier lives memorizing what their told so when they diagnose a condition they prescribe what is recommended either in thier training or from the latest information both provided by pharmaceutical corporations based on thier research. And those pharmaceutical corporations are run for profit rather then the best interest of our heath.
Sorry buddy but the system in the states is corrupt there are a few good people in it but they mostly move to Canada where doctors and thier patients rather then clerks and insurance agents get to decide what is best.

 

[mean mr.mustard]

Brother don't even bother.

They'll just hide behind insults and arrogance.

With luck they will mature.

 

[Brother Nature]

They will never mature, they don't have the mental capacity. I just enjoy exposing the ignorance that little bit more, it's perversely enjoyable. Makes sense why people like Trump and their ilk get these people on board, I just could never get to the point of actually manipulating them, I'm not that much of a sociopath.