REALLLLLY BIG EVENT

Hello Everyone

 

Well it's coming up to be "that time of the year again" when we have our annual Odd Squad fundraiser on Thursday, June 7th, at the Vancouver Convention Centre West as per the Evite I received just today from "home office". It has been 15 years since we started Odd Squad. What an adventure it has been!

 

Sorry to contact you with this blanket notice, but I am leading an early charge for Odd Squad in inviting everyone who is on my mailing list who is either:  a friend, a previous donor, someone whose life Odd Squad has affected in a positive way, or whom I believe could be influential in assisting us in this gala. This is quite a list!  

 

As I was entering the addresses for this mass e-mail out, I realized how so many of you contributed so much to Odd Squad in the past. We owe a lot to you already. You are individual and corporate sponsors, money and auction item donors, previous gala attendees, great corporate citizens offering in-kind services, financial and business mentors and advisors, musicians, technical personnel, writers, teachers, treatment specialists, volunteers of all sorts (for our film projects, fundraisers, outreach work, etc.), moral supporters, and many more!

 

This year's fundraiser will be very special and particularly exciting as we will be highlighting our successes over the past decade and a half. It will be a visual presentation not to be missed.

 

I do want you to help us to continue the very important work we are undertaking in helping youth make positive choices in their lives through our video production work, drug and gang presentations, and outreach programs via 'On Track' and the 'Junior Hockey Mentoring Program'. I am humbled by your collective support. We could not achieved the amazing things that we have accomplished without you and for that I thank you.

 

I will be following up with many of you to see if you can donate an auction item (or can arrange for an auction item to be donated), to see if you would care to donate financially to our cause, and to see if you would care to attend our gala. It will be sold out months in advance so please show your interest now or you will be left in the parking lot!

 

If all that you can do is to forward this information on to others who may have an interest in supporting us, then please do that.

 

Who knew that we would have come this far?

 

Thanks again for your unwavering support of Odd Squad as we pass this impressive milestone.

 

 

Al Arsenault

Founding Member/ Producer/ Director

Odd Squad Productions Society

oddsquadder@gmail.com

THE SPREADING CONTAGION of Bad Policy

The following article on possible new "safe" injection sites in Montreal appeared in Monday's Globe and Mail and was sent to me by our national Vice-President, Gwen Landolt.


After the piece, I have added a few comments of my own.

March 4, 2012

Montreal divided on location of safe-injection sites

By INGRID PERITZ
From Monday's Globe and Mail

A proven downtown needle exchange is a logical first choice, but mayor wants program to be at health-care establishments

With its glass walls and breezily painted street front, Cactus Montréal looks more like a community gym than what it is - a needle exchange that stands at the heart of a dispute over the future of Montreal's supervised drug-injection plans.

When the Supreme Court opened the door last fall to safe-injection clinics in Canada, health officials in Montreal expected to move quickly and follow the lead of Vancouver's Insite. Canada's second-largest city seemed like a natural location for such a service, with its high number of intravenous drug users and reputation for tolerant social attitudes.

But now health officials have sailed into political headwinds.

The Montreal health authority wants to set up a string of three sites across the city in locations that would include front-line community clinics such as Cactus, a long-established centre in downtown Montreal that already offer free needles to drugs users.

City hall is onside about spreading the sites out to avoid concentrating them in one place - but that is where agreement ends. Voicing concerns for public safety, Mayor Gérald Tremblay is saying no to Cactus, insisting that safe-injection services be run out of official health locales such as hospitals.

The mayor says the gritty pocket of downtown where Cactus is located is already overloaded with homelessness, mental-health problems and drug dealing.

"The neighbourhood already has too high a concentration of people in crisis," Mr. Tremblay said at a public meeting last month.

The stand has opened a breach in an already volatile issue. Health officials say it makes sense to put the new site where drugs users are (authorities also favour a mobile unit). A survey of intravenous drug users by health authorities last year found that only 37 per cent would use an injection site in a hospital, compared with 96 per cent in front-line locations like Cactus. The group's credentials, meanwhile, are indisputable: Opened 23 years ago, it was the first needle-exchange program in North America and currently gets 35,000 visits each year.

"There are community groups like Cactus that have proven themselves for over 20 years," said Carol Morissette of the Montreal Public Health Department, who is handling the supervised-injection file. "If the objective is to reach the greatest numbers possible, community groups are at the top of the list for providing services. They have the expertise ... we can't just set them aside."

Users support that view. Alexandra de Kiewit, who speaks for an advocacy group for drug users, says addicts avoid hospitals and other formal health-care settings.

"They get looked at funny, and judged," she said. At places like Cactus, she said, "they feel they have a relationship of trust."

Meanwhile, the mayor is facing pressure from residents and merchants downtown. Cactus is located on a commercial strip of Ste. Catherine St. E. that's got its share of panhandlers, sex workers and hard-drug users. But new condos are rising just two blocks away, part of city hall's efforts to lure families to central Montreal; and the city's vaunted entertainment district, Quartier des spectacles, is taking form only a few blocks west.

"We're worried about the honey pot effect," said Gaëtan Paquet, who speaks for a coalition of downtown residents who oppose the choice of Cactus. "People will come from Boston and Vancouver and say, 'Hey, let's go for a trip and shoot up.' "

The disagreement underscores the challenges facing Canadian cities as they try to follow in Vancouver's footsteps. The stakes are high, however. Louis Letellier de St-Just, the president of Cactus, says Montreal's handling of the issue is being watched not only in Canada "but around the globe."

"This is a concern in all the Western world," he said. "Quebec is considered progressive. All eyes are turned toward it."

Montreal will take its plans for approval to Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc, who has insisted that the proposal's prime criteria remains "social acceptability." An aide said in an interview that the minister wants to see all the players agree on a scheme.

In the heady aftermath of last September's Supreme Court decision, which ordered the federal government to let Insite keep operating and ruled that it had saved lives, Cactus officials said they hoped to open a supervised injection site in Montreal by spring. Now the most optimistic scenario is the fall.

"It's a marathon," Dr. Morissette said, "that we still hope to win."


And so we see what it has all come down to.


We no longer debate the lunacy of dreadfully bad public policy. We just argue about where best to put the poisoned pen. Downtown or the hospital? As if these were worthy considerations or anything more than diversions.


Of course, the addicts don't want to have to go to the hospital, and there are two good reasons.


1. Addicts, like all children frozen in time, want what they want when and where they want it which is here and now. Why should the poor souls have to travel to get their free needles and clean rooms in which to shoot heroin paid for by property crime? Gosh, that's terribly inconvenient.

2. A Hospital??? Please, some muddle-headed doctor, nurse, social worker or other do-gooder might try to talk me into going into treatment and getting clean. Puleeeese!


Authorities are also in favour of a mobile needle and shooting gallery option.


Nice.

Do we have mobile units for osteoporosis or cancer?


Not that I've noticed.


In a country with an aging and aged population, those offerings might make some sense; but here we are preparing to spend tax dollars on mobile clinics for people who never pay taxes and survive by stealing, pimping and prostituting.


What is so appalling and discouraging is the fervent passion of doctors and others in favor of these destructive enabling policies.


How could so many people be so wrong so often?


David Berner
Executive Director,
DRUG PREVENTION NETWORK of  CANADA

Awareness Week

The following article is taken directly from today's Vancouver Sun. Children of the Street is a DPNC member organization and we congratulate Diane and her team on this initiative and their continuing great prevention work.

Campaign aims to protect children from exploitation

By Gerry Bellett, Vancouver SunMarch 5, 2012 5:54 AM

The 14th Annual Stop the Sexual Exploitation of Children and Youth Awareness Week takes place March 5 to 11.

Fuchsia-coloured ribbons will be distributed by the Coquitlam-based Children of the Street Society, which is sponsoring the awareness week in conjunction with the provincial government.

"The week recognizes the importance of supporting communities in developing prevention, education, enforcement and intervention strategies to address the sexual exploitation of children and youth," said Diane Sowden, executive director of the Children of the Street Society.

Fuchsia is the colour chosen for the ribbons as it is a combination of red, symbolizing red-light districts, and purple, the provincial colour for violence prevention.

The society offers prevention and education workshops for youth and adults, which are available through schools, community groups, parent advisory councils, and professional associations.

In 2011, the society conducted more than 600 workshops involving over 30,000 participants across B.C.
People wishing to donate to the non-profit society can do so through

www.childrenofthestreet.com/donate.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

DPNC IN PARLIAMENT

We have positioned ourselves at DPNC as the voice for Prevention & Treatment in the community, in the media and in Parliament. 

Two weeks ago,  I met with B.C. Premier Christy Clark's right-hand man, Mike McDonald, about our shared concerns.

On Wednesday, our Vice-President, Gwen Landolt, made a short, powerful and excellent presentation to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee in Ottawa.

We are proud to share that presentation here with you.

February 15, 2012

Presented to: 

Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs

By:

DRUG PREVENTION NETWORK OF CANADA

4438 West 10^th Avenue, Suite 178

Vancouver, BC V6R 4R8

(604) 731-2425

Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs

Re:  Bill C-10

Amendments to Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA)

Part 2, Clauses 32-33, 39-48, and 50-51

Illicit drug use imposes tremendous economic and social costs on society in the form of health care, enforcement, loss of productivity in the workplace and at home, disability and death of addicts.

According to Antonio Mario Costa, Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), however, legal controls on drug use have been highly successful.[i] This is contrary to some claims, based solely on ideology, that prohibition does not work.  The latter is an incorrect assumption.   

One has only to analyze the results of prohibition in the US between 1920 and 1933.  Alcohol consumption declined dramatically during prohibition, noted by the large decrease in cirrhosis deaths (29.5 per 100,000 in 1911 and 10.7 in 1929).  Admissions to State mental hospitals for alcoholic psychosis declined from 10.1 per 100,000 in 1919 to 4.7 in 1928.  Arrests for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct declined by 50%.[ii] 

For the population as a whole, the best estimates are that consumption of alcohol declined by 30% to 50%.  That is, prohibition did not end alcohol use, but it did succeed by reducing by one-third the consumption of a product that had wide historical and popular sanction.[iii]  In contrast, the use of marijuana, heroin and other controlled drugs have never been a widely accepted activity in the US or in Canada.

Parliament’s Role to Determine Appropriate Sentences

It is Parliament’s role to advise courts and judges across the country, so that offenders are led to understand the severity of the offences they commit.  This objective can be achieved, inter alia, by mandatory minimum sentences.  Unfortunately, the application of judicial discretion in sentencing does not always achieve this objective.  It is detrimental to the interests of the Canadian public to rely solely on judicial discretion in sentencing, as it can lead to a loss of confidence and faith in the criminal justice system.  This is due to the fact that, regretfully, judicial discretion does not necessarily mean the application of common sense by judges when sentencing. In fact, judges, when sentencing, have frequently failed to balance the objectives of denunciation and general deterrence, with their desire for rehabilitation of the offender.  This has led, in all too many instances, to a chaotic sentencing regime for offences, especially in regard to marijuana grow ops and marijuana possession. That is, operators of grow-ops all too frequently are given minimum fines, and this “slap on the wrist” approach is regarded by the offenders as merely the cost of doing business, and in no way serves as a deterrent. According to The Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report (2009) on the illicit drug situation in Canada, domestically produced marijuana continues to provide a source of considerable profit for Canadian based organized crime.[iv]

Similarly, possession of cannabis is regarded by some liberal judges, for personal ideological reasons, to be merely a minor offence.  Consequently, in exercising their “discretion”, they have mostly handed down sentences of probation only.[v]  

According to the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (July 2007), Canada has the highest proportion of marijuana users in the industrialized world, reaching 16.8% of those between 15 and 64 years of age.  Cannabis offences rose 13% in Canada between 2009-2010.[vi]  The lenient sentencing (probation only) for cannabis possession has led to a public perception that marijuana use does not cause harm.  Well-informed individuals should understand, however, that marijuana is not a harmless drug.  In fact, there are many, many studies indicating the contrary.  Please refer to our website http://dpnoc.ca/, under the heading, Drug Facts, Marijuana and http://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/marijuanainfo for studies on harm caused by marijuana use.

Drug Courts

There are, at present, only six drug courts in Canada.  This is in contrast to literally thousands of such drug courts in the USA.

Drug courts provide non-violent drug users with the option of obtaining treatment in lieu of conviction.  That is, these courts provide a window of opportunity for the addict to obtain treatment, which the addict may not otherwise consider. It is significant that, whether the treatment is undertaken voluntarily, or by way of a court order, the rate of success remains the same. 

It is significant that in the USA, 75% of drug court graduates remain arrest-free at least two years after leaving the program.[vii]; [viii]  The National Crime Prevention Centre also reports that there is a significant decrease in drug use and drug related crimes for those who complete the court designated program[ix].  However, it is troubling that apparently only 14% of the participants of court-supervised treatment in Canada actually complete such programs.[x]   Therefore, strategies are urgently required to encourage participants to complete treatment programs, as well as to greatly increase the number of drug courts established across this country in order to assist drug addicts.

---

[i] The Observer September 5, 2010 (UK)

[ii] US Drug Enforcement Administration Speaking Out Against Drug Legalization online at www.dea.gov, page 9.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Report on the Illicit Drug Situation in Canada- 2009.

[v] Dauvergne, “Trends in police-reported drug offences in Canada,” Juristat, Vol. 29, No 2, May 2009.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Roman et al, the Urban Institute and Caliber, “Recidivism Rates for Drug Court Graduates: Nationally Based Estimate-Final Report,” Washington D.C., 2003.

[viii] Department of Justice, Backgrounder (2 June 2005).

[ix] Public Safety Canada, National Crime Prevention Centre, Building the Evidence – Evaluation Summaries, “Drug Treatment Court of Vancouver (DTCV),” 2008-ES-18.

[x] Ibid.

Give us OXY-GEN instead

So much of this report is disturbing, not the least of which is the addiction of entire Aboriginal communities and the peculiar self-defeating response of their so-called leaders.

 

Oxy is an epidemic in Canada today and it continues to fly very much under all official radars.

 

Read the story below and weep - better yet, email your Member of Parliament.

OxyContin will soon be pulled from Canadian pharmacies

February 17, 2012
Megan Ogilvie

People forced off the powerful painkiller could replace it with heroin, crack cocaine and other dangerous drugs, doctors warn.

Steve Russell/Toronto Star

 

The narcotic painkiller OxyContin will soon be pulled from pharmacy shelves across the country, and addiction experts warn the move will spark a public health crisis in Northern Ontario where thousands of people in remote communities face involuntary and potentially dangerous withdrawal from the addictive drug.

Purdue Pharma, the company that manufacturers OxyContin, is set to replace the controversial medication with a new formulation of the drug called OxyNEO at the end of February. The new drug is formulated in such a way that it is more difficult to crush, and therefore less likely to be abused through injecting or snorting.

Among the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, or NAN, which represents 49 First Nation communities in Northern Ontario, at least half of residents are addicted to OxyContin, said Grand Chief Stan Beardy.

“In some communities, it’s as high as 70 to 80 per cent of people addicted to OxyContin, including kids as young as 9 years old to people as old 65,” Beardy said. 

“We are very concerned that if they cease manufacturing OxyContin and if there is no replacement or treatment or detox centres for these people, there is going to be a major catastrophe.”

He said health care in the communities is limited to nursing stations with visiting doctors coming to treat residents two or three days each month — not enough care to deal with the thousands of people who will be forced into withdrawal.

Benedikt Fischer, director of the Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addictions at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University, agrees the situation in Northern Ontario is dire.

“We are literally watching a public health catastrophe unfolding in slow motion,” he said, adding that the crisis is comparable to the spread of HIV among injection drug users in the 1980s and the overdose epidemic that hit Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in the 1990s.

People forced off the powerful painkiller could replace it with heroin, crack cocaine and other dangerous drugs, and they will be more likely to inject drugs, increasing the spread of infectious diseases, said Fischer, who estimates 10,000 of the 45,000 NAN residents are addicted. And, he added, communities will likely see a spike in overdoses, a greater risk of miscarriage in pregnant women and a proliferation of crime.

On Thursday, Health Canada confirmed that as of Feb. 15 OxyContin had been pulled from the Non-Insured Health Benefits Program, which provides drug coverage for more than 800,000 registered First Nations and recognized Inuit.

However, a spokesperson for the agency said most of those addicted to OxyContin are not receiving the drug through government-funded legal prescriptions. Fewer than 100 NAN members get the drug paid for by the department, said Health Canada spokesperson Leslie Meerburg.
The Ontario Ministry of Health has not yet said how it will fund OxyNEO, nor is it clear how much OxyContin is stockpiled in the province.

“There is little concern of withdrawal for clients switching therapy from OxyContin to OxyNeo when taken as prescribed by a physician,” she said. “However, it is possible that some clients who obtained OxyContin through other sources may go into withdrawal when OxyContin is removed from the Canadian market and they are unable to find another source of supply.

“This is a concern for any individual who obtains and uses OxyContin outside of appropriate medical indications.”

Grand Chief Beardy acknowledged the vast majority of OxyContin abused by NAN residents is sold on the black market, with individual pills selling for between $300 and $600.

The potent painkiller has helped fuel an epidemic of opioid addiction in Canada. In Ontario, the rate of deaths involving narcotic painkillers went from 13.7 per million in 1991 to 27.2 per million in 2004.

On Feb. 6, the Cat Lake First Nation declared a state of emergency because 70 per cent of residents were addicted to OxyContin.

Beardy said he and others have called on the federal and provincial governments for help, but have received little response.

“We were asking for detox centres, treatment centres, frontline health professionals, including doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists,” he said.

Fischer said an emergency program needs to be put in place. Ideally, the rapid launch of prevention and treatment interventions should include, among other things, needle exchange programs to prevent the spread of infectious disease and providing addicts with substitution drugs, such as methadone or suboxone.

“We need to find ways to get these treatments to these communities as widely and effectively as possible,” he said.

Health Canada said the NIHB program covers methadone and suboxone, but recognizes that access to the drugs is a “significant issue” for those in remote locations.

“In such instances, the NIHB Program reviews requests from health providers on a case-by-case basis and will provide coverage for suboxone to help ensure First Nations clients have access to this drug without leaving their community,” Meerburg said.

WORST DRUG STORY EVER

Today, the Vancouver Sun is chock-full of stories about the shortfall of funding for senior's health and housing concerns.

In recent weeks, similar stories have been presented about overcrowded ER facilities in our largest regional hospitals.

We continue to have the worst record in the country in dealing with child poverty.

AND YET...

And yet, only the fearless Mark Hasiuk of the Vancouver Courier has written in plain English the obscenity of funding that continues to flown into a rogue group whose basic platform is this:

"We are drug addicts and we like to be drug addicts and we have the right to be drug addicts and you the taxpayer should pay us to be drug addicts."

This group never explains how its "members" get the money to shoot heroin or use other illegal substances.

But hey - when the Provincial government is giving you $250,000/year and the City of Vancouver is giving you $20,000/year, why worry?

Please read Mark's article below and then email your MLA and demand that this money be returned and that this kind of funding is never repeated.

Vancouver pro-drug lobby doesn’t deserve taxpayer dollars
VANDU gets $250,000 from province, $20,000 from city hall

By Mark Hasiuk, Vancouver CourierFebruary 13, 2012

Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

That’s how much Vancouver Coastal Health, your public health authority, gave VANDU, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, last year. This year, according to VCH officials, VANDU will receive another $250,000 from taxpayers, continuing a provincial funding scheme established in 1999.

Most Vancouverites don’t know VANDU. Headquartered in a brick building at 380 East Hastings in the Downtown Eastside, it’s a non-profit hangout conforming to neighbourhood drug culture. Folks gather outside on the sidewalk and inside the lobby. Traffic seems to have increased since December when VANDU began distributing free crack pipes to addicts, part of a VCH crack pipe giveaway. But mainly, thanks to longtime leader Ann Livingston, VANDU exists for activism.

Wherever police move against drugs, VANDU is there. Whenever Insite stages a street-level show of support, VANDU, which according to the city’s website offers cash “stipends” for "VANDU work," shows up. Livingston and company crash city hall, chiding council for police sins like the ticketing of illegal street vendors. Last week, following a four-year legal battle, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal dismissed a complaint from VANDU and the Pivot Legal Society who claimed the Downtown Ambassadors, a private security firm, discriminated against the homeless. Not even the tribunal, which relies on frivolous cases and flimsy evidence, could justify VANDU’s complaints.

Under the radar, VANDU provides “public speakers” and “research and consultation” to anyone interested in the VANDU point of view. Before booking a VANDU expert, you must call for a “free consultation.” Any additional fees are unknown. Livingston did not return calls for this column. But in 2009, she told the Courier that VANDU employs three paid staff members who help organize group meetings and “counselling” sessions at 380 East Hastings.

Of course, counselling is subjective, depending largely on the goal. According to VANDU’s “manifesto for a Drug User Liberation Movement” available on its website, folks have the “right to obtain, prepare, and ingest drugs, and to be intoxicated on drugs.” It continues: “We might take drugs to deal with psychological trauma or physical pain, or for pleasure or fun… our drug use is a response to our experiences of poverty, inequality, colonization, forced migration, workplace injury and inadequate access to pain relief.”

This is the VANDU gospel. Enablement on steroids. Victimization, stamped and validated. Music to the ears of the addict who organizes life around shunned responsibility. Every school of addiction treatment recognizes past trauma and the desire to self-medicate. That’s what addiction is. While sober minds can debate drug policy and decriminalization, the realities of addiction remain constant. Addicts want more. In response, VANDU celebrates drug abuse. Its 1,089-word manifesto excludes the words “addiction” and “addict,” calling drug abusers “oppressed people.”

Here’s why. According to the VANDU website, only “a person who has formerly, or is presently using illicit drugs” can become a voting member of the organization. To be clear. Addicts are people. Our friends, our family, our brothers and sisters. They deserve love and respect among, what Christ called, the “weary and burdened.” But until they recover, addicts place their addictions first. Any edict born from a group of addicts, under the influence of radical ideologues, will promote more enablement, more denial. Yet in a neighbourhood steeped in addiction, where treatment and prevention remains an afterthought, our provincial government funds this madness.

Why? Where’s the benefit? VANDU’s message helps fuel drug culture in the Downtown Eastside and a never-ending bill of housing, welfare, medical, policing and court costs.

But that’s not all. In addition to cash from Victoria, VANDU received $20,000 from city hall last year and will receive another $20,000 in 2012. Moreover, since 2006, VANDU headquarters has operated without a development permit. Back in 2009, Livingston said she was “negotiating” with the city. Apparently, negotiations have stalled.

VANDU is a cancer in a neighbourhood struggling to breathe. Its public funding is obscene. No government, at any level, has received a mandate from voters to prop up a pro-dope lobby.

mhasiuk@vancourier.com

Twitter: @MarkHasiuk

© Copyright (c) Vancouver Courier

INVITE FROM PACIFICA

Dear Referral Agents, Care Providers & like minded Community Members

Our house is open to you on Wednesday, February 15^th from 12-1:30pm. 1755 E. 11^th Avenue, Vancouver (between Commercial and Victoria, 2 blocks from the Broadway Skytrain station).

We are all focused on a common goal and you’d agree that leaving our offices once in a while and seeing what happens on the other side of the fence, putting a face to a name, sharing some ideas and sampling some of our kitchen’s delicacy’s might be an ok way to break up an afternoon.

Pacifica is a short but important path along the continuum of care and your involvement is crucial in bringing forth the meagre 10% of addicts that are eventually admitted here. We appreciate what you do and this is our way of thanking you and satisfying any curiosities you may have.

We would appreciate your RSVP’s as would our kitchen, back to this address. Our staff look forward to seeing you on Feb.15.

We hope to see you here!