THC: The Commercial Experiment and the HUMAN CONSQUENCES

This Marijuana Mayhem being unleashed by #addiction for profit Big Tobacco 2.0 will have only one legacy – personal, familial and community carnage…. But Hey! as long as the #cannabisindustry gets its \’pound of flesh\’ at your children\’s expense.

#preventdontpromote #DemandReduction.

We want to introduce you to a new global Initiative for drug prevention – ONE VOICE ONE MESSAGE – a united international voice for drug prevention for grassroots people from around the world proclaiming that all people have the right to grow up and live in a drug free environment and promote a drug free lifestyle. Please sign the petition “Our Voice, Our Future\” and talk with your neighbors friends, community leaders and service clubs and encourage them to sign on. You can find the petition at www.ovom.info which is based on the concept  of “no use of illegal drugs and no illegal use of legal drugs. OVOM will provide a platform for people from around the world to share information and to speak up together on drug policy issues and concerns. The OVOM Coordinating Team is comprised of some long time colleagues from around the world who share mutual goals of drug prevention. OVOM hopes to collect at least 20,000 signatures in the next two months.

Please join us in supporting this important global drug prevention initiative!!
                                                                                           Carla Lowe – AALM

One Voice One Message

OVOM is a platform that shares and influences with One Voice and One Message for a Drug Free — lifestyle and is religiously and politically independent. This platform was  launched on 26th of June 2022 the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

OVOM’s Coordination Team Members are located across all continents OVOM only accepts donations in-kind OVOM doesn’t have a formal membership. Rather it invites concerned citizens to support us by spreading our information and signing petitions. OVOM’s first petition will be ready on 26th June to align with the United Nations International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

OVOM invites NGOs and organizations to support OVOM and add their logo on our website.

For more information contact us or check the supporting NGOs on this website, www.ovom.info 

Did reefer drive the Highland Park parade ‘killer’ Robert Crimo to madness?

by Miranda Devine New York Post, July 6, 2022.

You don’t need to be a psychiatrist to know that the Highland Park shooter is sick in the head.

His evil act is unfathomable, but he does fit a familiar pattern of mass killers: alienated young male stoners who appear to be in the grip of a distinctively American madness.

Those who knew the 21-year-old suspect, Robert Crimo III, say he habitually smoked cannabis, a habit he appeared to share with young mass shooters, including at Uvalde, Dayton, Parkland and Aurora.

Obviously weed didn’t make them commit their evil acts, but it may have scrambled their brains enough for empathy to take a holiday.

As the country rushes headlong into the embrace of Big Weed, we need to heed the warning signs, not least in the scientific literature that increasingly shows that cannabis triggers psychosis, and in the emergency rooms where mentally ill kids are the living proof of its harms.

The higher the potency of THC, the worse it is, especially for the developing adolescent brain.

But virulent attacks always greet any hint of opposition to wholesale drug legalization. Youth mental illness is a crisis in this country and yet we are not allowed to discuss a scientifically verified trigger.

So, let’s report what clues we have about Crimo’s state of mind, talking about “red flags.”

He was reported to police in April 2019, when he was 18, after he threatened to take his own life, Highland Park police said. That incident was dealt with as a “mental health” matter.

Five months later, family members again contacted police to say Crimo “was going to kill everyone.” Multiple knives were confiscated from his home.

In 2015, when Crimo was 14, she reportedly was charged with domestic battery over “a physical dispute that had occurred while driving” at 3:37 a.m. near the family home, in the affluent Chicago suburb of Highland Park, according to a police report posted on the website Patch.

When Crimo was young, his parents were “a problem,” his former coach Jeremy Cahnmann told Fox News Digital. “There wasn’t a lot of love in that family.”

At some point, his father moved out of the family home into a house two miles away in Highwood, while Crimo stayed with his mother and the Highland Park house fell into disrepair. “It looks like it should be condemned,” a neighbor told Fox.

Former friends describe the unemployed rapper by this time as smoking weed habitually.

Nick Pacileo, 22, used adjectives such as “timid” and “quiet” to describe the boy he used to skateboard with from eighth through 10th grade.

But when Crimo turned 18, his personality changed, Pacileo told NBC News, and he became depressed over a girl.

“Instead of therapy, he turned to drugs …

“He definitely thought there was a border in the mind that needed to be broken through the mind. Very third-eye type of stuff that kind of goes along with the psychedelic rap and drugs.”

Another former friend, Bennett Brizes, described the Crimo he knew from age 14 to 17 as “an isolated stoner who completely lost touch with reality.”

Brizes, a college student in LA who said he used to “make music” with Crimo, posted a series of tweets and photos after the Fourth of July massacre describing his former friend as “lost.”

He also posted a screenshot of a Feb. 2, 2021, message he said was from Crimo: “Oi my mind is everywhere nowadays.”

Cannabis doesn’t explain everything about Crimo and other mass shooters, but it deserves at least some debate amid the endless partisan bickering over gun laws – which already are among the country’s strictest in Chicago, the murder capital of America.

The AR-15 allegedly used by Crimo is banned in the city, and Illinois has a red-flag law designed to stop people like him from buying guns after his disturbing contacts with police.

But you need more than a new law on the books. You need to enforce it, and that’s something Democrats have made increasingly difficult.

In any case, gun control is not the silver bullet. Something has gone wrong with America’s youth.

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an urgent warning in December about the “devastating” youth mental health crisis, which has been exacerbated by COVID lockdowns.

We can’t address the crisis without considering the effect of teens’ cannabis use and the increased potency of the products they consume.

The New York Times last month warned of the high potency of cannabis products in the newly deregulated legal market and the potentially harmful effects to young brains: “Psychosis, Addiction, Chronic Vomiting: As Weed Becomes More Potent, Teens Are Getting Sick.”

THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, 20 years ago was at about 4% potency, but today’s Big Weed products are close to 100%.

We have known for at least 15 years that cannabis use can increase the risk of psychosis in susceptible people by about 40%, according to the medical journal Lancet.

A study last year of 204,000 people ages 10 to 24 in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s pediatrics publication found that cannabis use and abuse is associated with depression, bipolar disorder and increased risk of suicide.

The one thing we should not have done was make it easier for young people to access such a potentially harmful drug. But that is the political climate heading to the midterms in November.

For complete story https://nypost.com/2022/07/06/did-reefer-drive-highland-park-parade-shooter-robert-crimo-to-madness/

Also see

• Who could doubt this killer had a dope habit?

• Smoking cannabis DOES make people more violent: Project confirms for the first time that using the drug is the cause of crimes

• Cannabis & Violence An Understated & Disturbing Reality

• Cannabis & #Violence

• A Review of Cases of Marijuana and Violence — Research March 2020)  

• Persistency of cannabis Use Predicts Violence following acute Psychiatric Discharge

• Attackers Smoked Cannabis

Team @ Don\’t Legalize Drugs

Harm Reduction has Captured the US! (And the cost to everyone is mounting)

Harm reduction promises reasonableness. Rather than trying to eradicate drug use, the public-health framework, which has been embraced by the White House and cities across America, works to reduce risks by prioritising the safety of individuals over curing social ills. The point is to “meet people where they are”, according to advocates, not to change them. Its appeal is that it is humane and takes the opposite approach of the failed war on drugs. But that’s only part of the story.

Look through the harm-reduction telescope and you glimpse the grand project of the therapeutic society that animates modern progressivism. At one end the individual is seen in minimalist terms, powerless to control their own desires, a victim of systemic forces far beyond their ability to resist. Look through the other end, and you find a maximalist view of the state in which a vast apparatus of administrators surveil and treat citizen-patients based on vague definitions of “wellness” and “harm”.

The essential alchemy of progressivism is performed by converting drug addiction from a vice afflicting individuals, which they have the power to change, into the basis of an identity group with a claim to government services. The collective grievances relating to the social and economic policies that might have pushed hundreds of thousands of people into drug dependency are first privatised through addiction and then bureaucratised so they can be managed by a class of appointed supervisors. In turn, the power of the bureaucracy is redirected from enforcing behavioural norms to overseeing the consequences of their dismantling.

Instead of fostering the behaviour necessary to give someone a genuine sense of self-worth – a project that may well be beyond the power of anyone but the individual and their maker – harm reduction converts the bare physicality of “safety” into the cheap currency of empowerment. The message presumes that addicts would not and should not feel shame for their dependency absent external judgements. It minimises the ravages attendant to drug addiction – such as criminality, homelessness, despair and decay – by framing them as the consequences of “unsafe” practices, without any connection to the spiritual poverty of dependency. In the religious and humanistic view, shame is the voice of the individual’s conscience. Others may seek to shame us, but true shame arises only when the individual has transgressed against their own innate sense of decency. But the conscience has no place in the maximalist world view of the harm reductionists, except as a relic of the retrograde morality that prevents addicts from experiencing empowerment.

For complete Essay go to UNHERD 

Fentanyl Use Is Empowering?

By Kevin Sabet, June 29, 2022

New York City’s Health Department delivers a deadly message.

The New York City Health Department’s “Let’s Talk Fentanyl” campaign made headlines for placing posters that promoted illegal drug use: “Don’t be ashamed you are using, be empowered that you are using safely.” Amid an unprecedented overdose crisis, public-health officials should acknowledge the impossibility of “using safely.” Treatment with the goal of full recovery is the way to prevent overdoses.

The posters’ message is right in one respect: Users shouldn’t be shamed for having a substance-use disorder. Negative perceptions of addiction too often discourage people from seeking help and result in preventable deaths. But asserting that drugs empower users desensitizes the public to the real harms of drug use. Lower risk perceptions will result in more casual experimentation. The desensitization and normalization of drug use will inevitably result in more overdoses.

For complete article Fentanyl Use Is Empowering? – WSJ

Also

Fentanyl Use Is Empowering_ – WSJ

Permission Models Kill

\’Opinion One\’: Medical cannabis: Allow GPs to prescribe as part of national trial, review urges    (BMJ 2022; 377 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.o1567 Published 27 June 2022)

GPs should be allowed to prescribe medical cannabis as part of a national trial, recommends a review of policy in the legal cannabinoid sector.1

The review by Christopher Hodges, emeritus professor of justice systems at the Centre for Socio-legal Studies at the University of Oxford, calls for a new regulatory framework for the sector to “turbocharge UK cannabinoid innovation.”

He said, “It is no longer wise or sustainable for the government to continue to take a distanced, disinterested, or laissez faire attitude to the sector as a whole, as it has done since the cannabis sector’s inception.”

The report, commissioned by the Centre for Medicinal Cannabis and the Association for the Cannabinoid Industry, says that in the area of consumer cannabinoids and CBD there has been too little regulation and that tighter rules are needed to safeguard the consumer and build up public trust. But in the area of medical cannabis it argues that regulations are too onerous and restrictive in some areas and too lax or entirely absent in others.

The review makes 20 recommendations, including calling on the government to set up a single steward authority to govern and guide the entire sector, at arm’s length from ministers.

It also calls for the creation of a national patient registry for all cannabis based medicines prescribed in the UK so that real world evidence can be built up. It also calls for a single formulary to provide doctors with an up-to-date list of cannabis based medicines.

A survey of 1500 people given in the report found that two thirds believe GPs should be allowed to prescribe medical cannabis. And 63% of respondents would be supportive if a family member was taking medicinal cannabis to dealt with a health condition, with only 8% saying they would be somewhat or very opposed to it.

\’Opinion Two\”: Why that is a Bad Idea! A Professor Responds.

I note the recent article by a legal academic on streamlining cannabis regulation and making the proposed new body “independent of ministers.”  Unsurprisingly this report was paid for by the cannabis industry almost certainly including with dollars from notorious USA philanthropists, and was written by a legal academic.

The report failed to mention recent major studies linking cannabis with 44 congenital anomalies in USA ¹ including limblessness ².  Just like thalidomide.

The report failed to mention recent major studies linking cannabis with 89 congenital anomalies in Europe ³.  The signal for limblessness in Europe is even stronger than that in USA ⁴.

The report failed to mention recent major studies linking cannabis with many cancers in USA ^5-7.

The report failed to mention recent major studies linking cannabis with many cancers in Europe ³.

The report failed to mention that cannabis is the primary driver of the exponentially rising autism epidemic in USA ⁸.

Not mentioned was the 30% rise in cellular aging just documented by the most modern epigenomic age estimators available ⁹.  Cannabis has a heavy epigenetic footprint — which means it is endangering at least the next four generations ^10-12.

It has been shown that 59% of the human genome is directly involved in cannabis genotoxicity ¹³.  Exponential effects are not only seen routinely in the laboratory but have now been observed epidemiologically in patterns of population ill health ¹⁴.  Probably all cannabinoids are involved including cannabidiol and Δ8THC ^{1 5-7 15-17}.

Alone, each of these lines of evidence is a deal breaker.

Together these three strands of evidence — cannabinoid teratogenicity, cannabinoid carcinogenicity and cannabinoid accelerated aging – are rock solid proof of highly clinically significant cannabinoid-induced genotoxicity far exceeding that from tobacco and alcohol combined ^{1 3}.

This evidence has now been formally presented to the Home Affairs Select Committee on Drug Abuse.  At the time of writing their report is awaited.

San Francisco Bay has been called “the most invaded marine system on the planet” ¹⁸.  The California Water Board acknowledges and attempts to regulate the quality of water effluent from cannabis farms ¹⁹.  This clearly points to major contamination of the water table and marine ecology and environment by weed growers.  Unsurprisingly northern California is host to not only tens of thousands of cannabis farms but is also a hot spot for autism and gastroschisis ²⁰.

In the same way large cannabis farms in France obviously contaminate the French water table and are probably used as cattle feed.  In these areas cows are born without legs and the rate of human babies born without limbs is 60 times above background ^21-23.  A similar thing appears to be operating in Melbourne, Australia which leads the world in both amelia (no limbs) and phocomelia (flipper limbs) and has long been surrounded by cannabis farms ^{24 25}.

Public health is too important to entrust it to commercial growers of weed.  Ignorance is too costly to endanger public health.

Not since 1957 has a known genotoxin been marketed for profit.  That drug was thalidomide.  Thalidomide is the reason we have the modern drug regulatory system.  Those who will not learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them.  The UK made that dreadful mistake 65 years ago with thalidomide.  It need not do so again.

The cannabis industry must be held to account internationally in the same way that Distillers was held to account globally for thalidomide.  Except the fallout from weed is so much worse.  Thalidomide caused 33 birth defects — cannabis 89.  Thalidomide affected the exposed generation.  Cannabis epigenotoxicity is at least multigenerational.  And cannabis is obviously dynamite for brain development in adolescents, infants and babies in utero.  Genotoxicity is not an acceptable or exportable public health program.

United Kingdom can and should lead the way and sound the trumpet clarion-like across Europe the epidemiology of whose multiple devastating and profoundly indicting congenital anomaly epidemics is presently being increasingly exposed for all the world to see in high ranking medical journals ⁸.

Professor A.S. Reece

References

1. Reece AS, Hulse GK. Geotemporospatial and causal inference epidemiological analysis of US survey and overview of cannabis, cannabidiol and cannabinoid genotoxicity in relation to congenital anomalies 2001—2015. BMC Pediatrics 2022;22(1):47-124. doi: 10.1186/s12887-021-02996-3
2. Reece AS, Hulse GK. Epidemiological association of cannabinoid- and drug- exposures and sociodemographic factors with limb reduction defects across USA 1989—2016: A geotemporospatial study. Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology 2022;41:100480-90. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sste.2022.100480
3. Reece A.S., Hulse G.K. Cannabinoid- and Substance- Relationships of European Congenital Anomaly Patterns: A Space-Time Panel Regression and Causal Inferential Study. Environmental Epigenetics 2022;8(1):1-40.
4. Reece A.S., Hulse G.K. Congenital Limb Anomalies in Europe as Epidemiological Patterns of Cannabis- and Substance- Exposures: Geospatiotemporal and Causal Inferential Study. Manuscript Submitted 2022
5. Reece A.S., Hulse G.K. Geotemporospatial and Causal Inferential Epidemiological Overview and Survey of USA Cannabis, Cannabidiol and Cannabinoid Genotoxicity Expressed in Cancer Incidence 2003—2017: Part 1 — Continuous Bivariate Analysis. Archives of Public Health 2022;80:99-133. doi: doi.org/10.1186/s13690-022-00811-8
6. Reece A.S., Hulse G.K. Geotemporospatial and Causal Inferential Epidemiological Overview and Survey of USA Cannabis, Cannabidiol and Cannabinoid Genotoxicity Expressed in Cancer Incidence 2003—2017: Part 2 — Categorical Bivariate Analysis and Attributable Fractions. Archives of Public Health 2022;80:100-35. doi: doi.org/10.1186/s13690-022-00812-7
7. Reece A.S., Hulse G.K. Geotemporospatial and Causal Inferential Epidemiological Overview and Survey of USA Cannabis, Cannabidiol and Cannabinoid Genotoxicity Expressed in Cancer Incidence 2003—2017: Part 3 —  Spatiotemporal, Multivariable and Causal Inferential Pathfinding and Exploratory Analyses of Prostate and Ovarian Cancers. Archives of Public Health 2022;80:100-36. doi: doi.org/10.1186/s13690-022-00813-6
8. Reece A.S., Hulse G.K. Impact of Converging Sociocultural and Substance-Related Trends on US Autism Rates: Combined Geospatiotemporal and Causal Inferential Analysis. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinial Neuroscience 2022;19(13):7726-52.
9. Allen JP, Danoff JS, Costello MA, et al. Lifetime marijuana use and epigenetic age acceleration: A 17-year prospective examination. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 2022;233:109363. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2022.109363
10. Murphy SK, Itchon-Ramos N, Visco Z, et al. Cannabinoid exposure and altered DNA methylation in rat and human sperm. Epigenetics 2018;13(12):1208-21. doi: 10.1080/15592294.2018.1554521 [published Online First: 20181218]
11. Szutorisz H, DiNieri JA, Sweet E, et al. Parental THC exposure leads to compulsive heroin-seeking and altered striatal synaptic plasticity in the subsequent generation. Neuropsychopharmacology 2014;39(6):1315-23. doi: 10.1038/npp.2013.352
12. Watson CT, Szutorisz H, Garg P, et al. Genome-Wide DNA Methylation Profiling Reveals Epigenetic Changes in the Rat Nucleus Accumbens Associated With Cross-Generational Effects of Adolescent THC Exposure. Neuropsychopharmacology 2015;40(13):2993-3005. doi: 10.1038/npp.2015.155
13. Reece A.S., Hulse G.K. Epidemiological Overview of Multidimensional Chromosomal and Genome Toxicity of Cannabis Exposure in Congenital Anomalies and Cancer Development Scientific Reports 2021;11(1):13892-912. doi: 10.10389/s41598-021-93411-5
14. Society for Prevention Research. Roundtable on \”Is Cannabis Legalization Increasing Birth Defects and Cancers?\” USA: Society for Prevention Research; 2022 [Available from: https://deakin.zoom.us/rec/share/XkFRt18GM5zh-XOOYKIb264J_twM1nHW_WuS908ESq3O0C34EFFzPA66r0VV2VIU.mcaSoNiICWMnU4pi accessed June 28th 2022 2022.
15. Reece A.S., Hulse G.K. Congenital Anomaly Epidemiological Correlates of Δ8THC Across USA 2003-2016:  Panel Regression and Causal Inferential Study. Environmental Epigenetics 2022;In Press
16. Reece AS, Hulse GK. Epidemiology of Δ8THC-Related Carcinogenesis in USA: A Panel Regression and Causal Inferential Study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 2022;19(13):7726-52.
17. Nahas GG, Morishima A, Desoize B. Effects of cannabinoids on macromolecular synthesis and replication of cultured lymphocytes. Federation proceedings 1977;36(5):1748-52. [published Online First: 1977/04/01]
18. Smithsonian, MarineGEO, Tannenbaum Marine Observatories Network. San Francisco Bay, California, Tiburon, California, USA: Smithsonian; 2022 [Available from: https://marinegeo.si.edu/san-francisco-bay-california accessed June 28th 2022 2022.
19. State of California. California Water Boards:  State Water Resources Control Board:  Water Boards Cannabis Cultivation 2022 [Available from: https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/cannabis/ accessed June 28th 2022 2022.
20. Reece AS, Hulse GK. Gastroschisis and Autism-Dual Canaries in the Californian Coalmine. JAMA Surg 2019;154(4):366-67. doi: 10.1001/jamasurg.2018.4694 [published Online First: 2019/02/07]
21. Agence France-Presse in Paris. France to investigate cause of upper limb defects in babies. The Guardian 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/21/france-to-investigate-cause-of-upper-limb-defects-in-babies (accessed 3rd November 2018).
22. Gant J. Scientists are baffled by spatter of babies born without hands or arms in France, as investigation fails to discover a cause. Daily Mail 2019; Sunday 14th July https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7242059/Scientists-baffled-babies-born-without-hands-arms-France-probe-fails-discover-cause.html (accessed 14th July 2019).
23. Willsher K. Baby arm defects prompt nationwide investigation in France. Guardian 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/31/baby-arm-defects-prompt-nationwide-investigation-france (accessed 3rd November 2018).
24. Bermejo-Sanchez E, Cuevas L, Amar E, et al. Amelia: a multi-center descriptive epidemiologic study in a large dataset from the International Clearinghouse for Birth Defects Surveillance and Research, and overview of the literature. Am J Med Genet C Semin Med Genet 2011;157C(4):288-304. doi: 10.1002/ajmg.c.30319 [published Online First: 2011/10/18]
25. Bermejo-Sanchez E, Cuevas L, Amar E, et al. Phocomelia: a worldwide descriptive epidemiologic study in a large series of cases from the International Clearinghouse for Birth Defects Surveillance and Research, and overview of the literature. Am J Med Genet C Semin Med Genet 2011;157C(4):305-20. doi: 10.1002/ajmg.c.30320 [published Online First: 2011/10/18]

Rethinking Canada’s misguided ideological approach to the opioid epidemic: Jeremy Eckert Devine for Inside Policy

Decriminalization should be one part of a centralized and comprehensive national drug strategy aimed at freeing the drug user from addiction.

On May 31, 2022, Federal Minister of Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Health, Dr. Carolyn Bennett, announced that British Columbia will decriminalize the possession of “hard” drugs, including cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and fentanyl. Drug users found in possession of less than a cumulative 2.5 grams of substances will be released without an arrest or criminal charges and will maintain possession of their substances.

The announcement was viewed as a victory for progressive drug policy reformers who have long argued that drug addiction should be addressed as a matter of public health rather than of criminal justice. Yet these developments should be of concern to Canadians. Decriminalization, as currently proposed, is proceeding in an ideologically narrow manner that risks worsening the nation’s opioid crisis.

Critical flaws are revealed in Canada’s approach to decriminalization when compared with Portugal — a nation which decriminalized drug use in 2001 in response to its own opioid epidemic. In Portugal, drug use remains illegal.

Portugal’s approach is compassionate yet realistic. While rightly identifying that the drug user needs treatment, not jail, the system acknowledges that, when dealing with the wickedly coercive power of drug addiction, sometimes, as said by Dr. Goulão, an element of “muscle” is needed to get the individual well.

Decriminalization was one part of a centralized and comprehensive national drug strategy. It was successful because Portugal ultimately maintained a prohibitive system that explicitly recognizes the personal and social harms of drug use.

This is in stark contrast to “decriminalization” as it is unfolding in British Columbia.

The federal government is decriminalizing drug use in BC not as part of a comprehensive strategy to address drug use, but to meet the demands of an ideologically driven agenda crafted by vocal anti-prohibition drug user activist groups.

The Canadian Association of People who use Drugs (CAPUD) and the Vancouver Association Network of Drug Users (VANDU) both appear to deny that drug use is intrinsically harmful. Rather, they imply it is the barriers created by prohibition that makes drug use dangerous.

This idea is broadly articulated by Jordan Westfall, co-founder of CAPUD, when he states, “I’m not recovering from drug addiction; I’m recovering from bad drug policy.” Another CAPUD member, Ashley Smoke states, “The drug use itself is not necessarily the issue … The social structure of our society is to blame for problematic drug use.”

However, it is far from self-evident that drug-related harm is largely the result of “social structure.”

Fundamentally, this is a belief that stems from a utopian vision of safe and harm-free drug use in the setting of addiction. It ignores both the intrinsic vicious mechanics of addiction (which by its nature features gradual tolerance and uncontrollable escalation of use) as well as many drug users and their families’ sincere desire to be free of addiction.

Following this faulty logic, these parties have agitated for drug policy reforms that, unlike Portugal, only “dismantle” structural barriers against drug use while making no serious attempt at treating addiction.

To this end, the Canadian government has focused almost unilaterally on implementing increasingly extreme “harm reduction” measures, which some view as a corrective to the prohibitionist status quo. Most alarming of all, the federal government appears to be pinning its hopes on the experimental and dangerous practice of “safe supply” in which highly potent medical grade opioids are distributed directly to those with a severe opioid addiction.

First articulated in 2017 in the BC Overdose Action Exchange II Meeting, a document that was written in partnership with VANDU, CAPUD, and other activist organizations, safe supply has been embraced by the federal government and appears to be their primary strategy to address the opioid epidemic.

Commenting on safe supply, Dr. Bennett believes we can “regulate” the active drug user. During the recent announcement regarding decriminalization in BC, she explained her reasoning: “We want to make sure that there is a regulated supply of drugs, regulated production, regulated distribution, and regulated consumption, and that’s how we’re going to save the lives.”

Yet, Dr. Bennett’s idea that we can “regulate” the drug user in the setting of severe opioid addiction is unproven and highly questionable. The increasing popularity of safe supply reflects the extent to which Canada’s response to the epidemic has been subservient to antiprohibition drug ideology.

This is even more apparent when scrutinizing how the government trials and evaluates these proposed interventions.

Often, activist-researchers are granted generous funding to evaluate their own proposed policy changes. The results are invariably positive and are then taken as clear-cut “evidence” that their intervention is successful and should continue.

However, there is no convincing evidence that the government’s strategy thus far has been successful. Despite the creation of nearly 40 supervised injection sites and the increasing availability of safe supply, opioid overdose deaths have continued to rise. In British Columbia, over 2200 individuals died in 2021 alone — the province’s worst year on record.

Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart has said that “[decriminalization] marks a fundamental rethinking of drug policy that favors healthcare over handcuffs.” This is only true if decriminalization is a step towards freeing the drug user from addiction. The mental handcuffs of addiction are as crippling as physical ones. It is time to rethink Canada’s misguided ideological approach to the opioid epidemic.

Jeremy Devine is a psychiatry resident at McMaster University.

For complete article https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/rethinking-canadas-misguided-ideological-approach-to-the-opioid-epidemic-jeremy-eckert-devine-for-inside-policy/

Oregon\’s drug decriminalization effort a \’tragedy\’

Dan Springer Thu, June 16, 2022

The streets of downtown Portland, Oregon, resemble an open-air drug market.

Heroin, meth and fentanyl use is rampant and often visible on city streets. Portland police officers drive by homeless addicts buying and using.

The signs of drug addiction are actually increasing throughout the state, according to law enforcement sources. Oregon ranks second-highest among U.S. states for substance abuse with nearly one in five adults addicted.

In November 2020, voters overwhelmingly passed Measure 110. The Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act secured 58% of the votes and decriminalized possession of small amounts of hard drugs such as heroin, meth, cocaine and fentanyl.

The new law made possession of those substances no more than a Class E violation, the equivalent of a traffic ticket punishable by a maximum $100 fine. But the fine is dismissed when someone who is fined calls a help hotline, Lines for Life, and completes a health assessment. The idea is to connect drug abusers with services and treatment instead of putting them behind bars.

Sixteen months into this first-in-the-nation experiment, the numbers paint a bleak picture. Drug overdose deaths hit an all-time high in 2021 with 1069, a 41% increase from 2020. And very few people are getting into treatment. According to The Lund Report, after one year, just 136 people had entered treatment, less than 1% of those helped by Measure 110. But the actual number may be even lower.

David Murray is a senior fellow in the Hudson Institute who advised drug czars in two different presidential administrations.

\”It is predictable, was predicted and now, unfortunately, is coming to pass in front of our eyes,\” said Murray, \”It is a tragedy and a self-inflicted wound.\”

The Oregon Judicial Department reports that, through the end of May, police throughout the state had written 2,576 tickets for drug possession since Measure 110 was enacted. Seventy-five percent of the tickets resulted in convictions, the vast majority because the offender never showed up in court.

For complete article Oregon\’s drug decriminalization effort a \’tragedy\’