Fentanyl crisis in Calgary: Vice documentary

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by Itse

Forgot to mention that you could still get alcohol from bars, but only with food

Welcome to present day Utah.

[sun]

Just watched it, pretty tragic stuff.

[bax]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

Rubbish, they all share the same characteristic, there no safe use of any of them, it makes no difference to purity, in fact the purer the smack the more people die.

The only way to reduce deaths from any of them is reduce overall use, legalization is, frankly, likely to increase use.

Haven't read any of the thread after this comment, but I would just like to point out that this is rubbish.

With legalization would come a slight increase in usage amongst minor drugs, however death and overdose would most definitely go down. By a lot.

This is evidenced in countries that have legalization and safe injection sites such as Switzerland and Portugal.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by bax

With legalization would come a slight increase in usage amongst minor drugs, however death and overdose would most definitely go down. By a lot.

This is evidenced in countries that have legalization and safe injection sites such as Switzerland and Portugal.

How are two countries where drugs aren't legal examples of the benefits of legalisation?

In fact, when Switzerland tried legalisation they had to change it back fairly soon after, as the problem got out of control.

People REALLY need to know what legalisation is to make this conversation work. It's not the same as decriminalisation at all.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by bax

Haven't read any of the thread after this comment, but I would just like to point out that this is rubbish.

With legalization would come a slight increase in usage amongst minor drugs, however death and overdose would most definitely go down. By a lot.

This is evidenced in countries that have legalization and safe injection sites such as Switzerland and Portugal.

It's not legalized in either of the countries you mentioned

[bax]

That's my bad, I accidentally wrote legalization instead of decriminalization. Brain fart!

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by bax

Haven't read any of the thread after this comment, but I would just like to point out that this is rubbish.

With legalization would come a slight increase in usage amongst minor drugs, however death and overdose would most definitely go down. By a lot.

This is evidenced in countries that have legalization and safe injection sites such as Switzerland and Portugal.

There is a absoloutly nothing like the downtown east side in Portugal or Switzerland, their addicts come from utterly different backgrounds have a massive social service network to fall back on.
this is a social and cultural issue, Portugese addicts didn't grow up in residential schools with a massive history of physical and sexual abuse or on some dreadful res with equally high incidence of FASD and addiction.
Right now I'm looking after my fourth native kid who has no living parents, all due to overdoses or crimes of violence, I did the same work back in the UK and we never saw anything like this.
The levels of PTSD on kids coming out of theses backgrounds is only found in the third world, Afghanistan etc.

[bax]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

There is a absoloutly nothing like the downtown east side in Portugal or Switzerland, their addicts come from utterly different backgrounds have a massive social service network to fall back on.
this is a social and cultural issue, Portugese addicts didn't grow up in residential schools with a massive history of physical and sexual abuse or on some dreadful res with equally high incidence of FASD and addiction.
Right now I'm looking after my fourth native kid who has no living parents, all due to overdoses or crimes of violence, I did the same work back in the UK and we never saw anything like this.
The levels of PTSD on kids coming out of theses backgrounds is only found in the third world, Afghanistan etc.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. I think two of the major causes of addiction are isolation and trauma.

I don't know what the perfect answer is because the problem is so complex on social, political, and legal levels.

All I know is that our system in place now punishes addicts and basically pushes them into further trauma and isolation, effectively furthering addiction.

[hockey.modern]

@CanBorder Canada Border

#BREAKING: CBSA in #YVR intercepts 1 kg of #carfentanil from #China bound for #YYC

[calumniate]

Yeah wow, speak of the devil:
http://calgaryherald.com/news/crime/...ute-to-calgary

[calgaryblood]

Sad part is that will literally do nothing to the actual drug dealing of Fentanyl.
Such a small amount can make millions of pills. They only have to sneak in one small package and they're set for a while.

[rubecube]

Nm

[GreenLantern2814]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

Welcome to present day Utah.

Actually?

[Reaper]

Originally Posted by Itse

Forgot to mention that you could still get alcohol from bars, but only with food, and only beer unless you were a nightclub. (Which needed to have acceptable entertainment such as live music. And none of that suspicious rock'n'roll.) And there was a ton of other rules, like only waiters could move alcohol from one table to another. Anything to stop people from socializing. Single ladies in bars were of course not allowed.

(Obviously this lead into all kinds of tricks, like the more dodgy bars having that one sad sandwich that would circle the tables all night without anyone touching it. The law said nothing about people actually needing to eat the food.)

Also worth mentioning that over time the government controlled alcohol shops started to relax bit by bit, until they've become pretty much the exact opposite. They now have excellent selections and a really highly trained and friendly staff. In fact they've become so nice that it's a major reason why the government is still allowed to hold on to the very lucrative (partial) alcohol monopoly. After all, since the government has the monopoly, those same quality selections with highly-trained staffs are now available all over the country, something which would never otherwise be the case in a country as small as ours.

(Beer and equivalent "mild drinks" are available at grocery stores and kiosks.)

Well, that and the fact that the provincial union for liquor stores in Ontario is a very powerful political lobby.

[Buster]

Excellent thread, gents. I watched the doc, and read the whole thing in one shot.

Some knowledgeable people in this thread. I think Street Pharmacist et al have pushed me farther off my libertarian "legalize it" approach.

For those folks that advocate a "mixed legal" system, where distribution is criminal, and possession is decriminalized, the question I am curious about is how to effectively distribute our resources.

How would you chop up $100 between health resources, education, enforcement, prison resources, etc.

In theory there should be an ideal mixture which minimizes drug usage, death, or whatever outcome.

It seems to me that enforcement and prison is disproportionately expensive relative to other remedies like education and treatment, although that's more just a guess. Although I would be surprised if our current allocation made a lot of sense.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by Buster

Excellent thread, gents. I watched the doc, and read the whole thing in one shot.

Some knowledgeable people in this thread. I think Street Pharmacist et al have pushed me farther off my libertarian "legalize it" approach.

For those folks that advocate a "mixed legal" system, where distribution is criminal, and possession is decriminalized, the question I am curious about is how to effectively distribute our resources.

How would you chop up $100 between health resources, education, enforcement, prison resources, etc.

In theory there should be an ideal mixture which minimizes drug usage, death, or whatever outcome.

It seems to me that enforcement and prison is disproportionately expensive relative to other remedies like education and treatment, although that's more just a guess. Although I would be surprised if our current allocation made a lot of sense.

I'm morally a libertarian, I think everyone should have the right to kill themselves anyway they want in principle.

That said as the foster dad of severely addicted teens I can tell you the effects of the defacto legalization of weed in Vancouver have been to enable my already messed up kids to have much cheaper easier access to far stronger dope.
I agree with legalization of weed but it clearly will involve a massive increase in access and therefore use in all ages. It's hard to see how this wouldn't apply to all and any drugs.

[Thor]

I am surprised at how far we've come with attitudes about decriminalization in just the last 5 years. Even on CP where we seem to be more reasonable here in our discussions the attitude has changed a lot in the last 5 years in older threads about drugs.

Would love to see a poll seeing how many people would support it for all drugs.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Reaper

Well, that and the fact that the provincial union for liquor stores in Ontario is a very powerful political lobby.

Wouldn't know about that, I was going on about Finland. (Didn't want to leave people with the impression that it's still like that.)

[Itse]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

I'm morally a libertarian, I think everyone should have the right to kill themselves anyway they want in principle.

That said as the foster dad of severely addicted teens I can tell you the effects of the defacto legalization of weed in Vancouver have been to enable my already messed up kids to have much cheaper easier access to far stronger dope.

I'm talking as someone who's kid was hospitalized because of weed she accidentally ate in a chocolate cake (enough to be quite dangerous), and who has seen a dear friends live almost get destroyed by weed. (And a friendship more or less destroyed. Not unrelated incidents.) Unsurprisingly weed really disgusts me now.

I agree with legalization of weed but it clearly will involve a massive increase in access and therefore use in all ages. It's hard to see how this wouldn't apply to all and any drugs.

Here's the disconnect for me. I've been observing societys reactions to weed from very close in the last couple of years, and I haven't seen any reactions that I felt served a real purpose. Nothing that would have prevented what happened, and nothing that would prevent it from happening in the future. Nothing that helped anyone, beyond the immediate hospital care of my child. (Which was fantastic and I'm so grateful for the professionalism of the hospital staff and the quality of care that I can't even put it to words.)

In short, my first hand experiences support the rather convincing statistical claims that the current drug policies are just not working. There needs to be a fundamental change in thinking for any actual movement forward.

While decriminalization is I think the right way forward, even more important would be that we stop approaching drugs as primarily a crime issue.

Drug policies should primarily be up to the Department of Health (or equivalent in each country), not the Justice Department.

[Thor]

I've seen what alcohol can do in far too many friends, family, relatives to have the same feeling about that. But I would not suggest we need a change in laws, I think we have to accept that the risks of substances is that some get hurt, cars and alcohol are huge killers every year worldwide, and we accept that as part of life.

I don't know about you, but if someone said alcohol consumption would decrease and marijuana went up I would rather have that than anything else, since alcohol is such a big killer and significant problem to families, society.