Shorter hours, physical distancing measures and a curfew in Quebec, combined with a more lethal drug supply due to border closures, have sent addictions services scrambling to help users across the country as opioid overdoses and the attendant death toll continue to mount.Coronavirus: Toronto police make arrest at large gathering downtown despite COVID-19 measures
Canada’s ongoing border shutdown has disrupted the flow of illicit drugs, and dealers looking to stretch their limited supplies are more apt to add potentially toxic adulterants.Benzodiazepines, or benzos, have been detected in drugs circulating in parts of several provinces. Users can be difficult to rouse and slow to respond to naloxone — the drug that reverses opioid overdoses — and more likely to overdose when fentanyl or other opioids are also in the mix.
Pared-down services have also diminished harm reduction sites’ role as de facto community spaces, cutting off a key point of social contact.Coronavirus: Feds deploy mobile health units to GTA hospitals Health authorities run alert systems for poisoned drugs across B.C., but their patchwork structure leaves lives in jeopardy, she said.‘A senicide’: Strategic missteps, logistical hurdles plague Ontario’s early vaccine rollout
“Unfortunately, people are less likely to go outside their door basically past 8 p.m.,” she said. “But we do know that people don’t necessarily stop taking drugs.”Even before the curfew, the number of EMS calls where paramedics administered naloxone to opioid users in Montreal and the suburb of Laval nearly doubled last year, reaching 270 compared to 146 in 2019, according to the Urgences-sante ambulance service.
However, nothing short of decriminalization of possession of small quantities of drugs — requested by Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart to the federal government — and more stable housing will help beat back the tide of overdoses, Muckle says.Coronavirus: The science behind the new Covid-19 mRNA vaccines
Everyone please listen to the been there done that (drugs) and survived (just barely.) They explain how they lived in a drug stupor and could not function. What saved their lives was arrest and sentencing offering a 'Hope Haven' withdrawal&restitution.
FEAR PORN!
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