YEAH! INT'L RECOGNITION FOR RECOVERY DAY 2012!

The following was sent to AnnMarie McCullough, the publicist and marketing director for The Orchard Recovery Centre. AnnMarie was also one of the four original creators of Recovery Day 2012, a Canadian first. She is now the Chair of the planning committee for Recovery Day 2013, which will be a national event this year with similar rallies and marches in a dozen cities across the land.

Join us on Georgia Street in front of the Art Gallery on Sunday September 8th for music, dancing, gratitude shares and reading of the Mayor's Proclamation once again naming this date officially as RECOVERY DAY in Vancouver.

 

Dear Ms. McCullough,

Congratulations! The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is pleased to announce that your event was selected by a panel of judges as the winner in the Rally and Walk/Run Events category of SAMHSA’s Recovery Month Annual Event Award Program. Your event was recognized as exceeding expectations and as a reflection of your commitment to expand the breadth and reach of National Recovery Month in 2012.

As the winner in this category, your organization is invited to send a representative to accept the award at the 2013 Recovery Month luncheon. The luncheon will be held at the J.W. Marriot in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, September 4, from 12 to 2 pm.

Again, congratulations and thank you for your amazing efforts to promote the messages that behavioral health is essential to overall health, prevention works, treatment is effective, and people can and do recover!

Sincerely,

Scott Rieder on behalf of the Recovery Month Awards team

Account Executive | Vanguard Communications

RECOVERY HAS MANY PATHS AND MANY COLORS

 

The glamour, fun, excitement of Pride, minus the hangover

 

Clean, Sober and Proud party a new option at a celebration where 'everything has a beer tent at the end of it'

 

By Jessica Barrett, Vancouver SunJuly 27, 2013

 

 

Photograph by: Nick Procaylo, PNG, Vancouver Sun

 

Guiseppe Ganci doesn't remember much of the Pride celebrations of his youth - despite the fact that he's participated nearly every year since the age of 16.

Pride is nothing if not a big party, and for much of Ganci's life, that meant getting blackout loaded.
"It simply was, you know, what am I going to do to party this weekend," he recalls.

So when he quit drinking and using drugs, Ganci felt like he no longer fit in at the biggest event of the queer year.

"Over time, as I started to get into recovery in my 30s, I was having a real difficult time (figuring out) how to celebrate Pride because everything has a beer tent at the end of it."

That prompted Ganci to introduce a Clean, Sober and Proud parade float five years ago, along with a team from the Last Door Recovery Society, where he's director of community development. The move proved popular with the recovery community, but once the parade was over, there was no place for those avoiding drugs and alcohol to continue the party.

But this year, the first Clean, Sober and Proud party will offer all the glitz, glamour and fun of Pride minus the hangover.

The event includes all the necessary ingredients for a bumpin' dance party, from DJs to bands to drag queens - and all performers are part of the recovery community.

According to Ganci, the event is the first sober evening event to be officially supported by any Pride society in North America. While many Pride parades offer safe drug-and alcohol-free spaces during the day for those feeling triggered or overwhelmed by the often debauched festivities, Ganci said it's equally important to have a place where the sober community can let loose.

"Just because you don't drink doesn't mean your life is boring," he said. "You know, we're
not patients, we're just people who want to have fun."

Offering a place to party is hugely important for the gay recovery community, said Matthew Taylor, a performer at the event.

As a program manager with the Health Initiative for Men, a non-profit dedicated to promoting mental, physical and sexual health for gay men, Taylor said the prominent club and bar culture within the LGBTQ community means substance abuse is a reality for many people as they come to terms with their sexuality and sense of self.

"My own experience was that I was looking for validation and I was looking for acceptance in
my life," says Taylor, who is seven years sober.

"In the gay community I think it's even more pronounced just because (we're) looking to belong, looking to fit in and a lot of our community centres around entertainment and bars and dancing and clubs and the nightlife. And that's neither good or bad, it just is."

Taylor said people who do choose to mark Pride, or other elements of gay culture, by indulging in drugs or alcohol shouldn't be judged. But those who decide that's not a healthy option deserve somewhere else to go.

"It's so important to tell people, 'Hey, it's OK, you have a choice.' "

Introducing a sober party at Pride is an overdue addition to the annual affair that furthers its mandate of inclusion, said Vancouver Pride Society president Ray Lam.

"It's obviously really necessary," said Lam, acknowledging the majority of Pride parties take place in or around bars or nightclubs.

He said the Pride Society decided against adding a beer garden last month to its East Side Pride events - which kick off the run-up to Pride - to ensure at least one outdoor festival remained alcohol-free. The Pride Society is also contributing financially to the Clean, Sober and Proud party to ensure ticket prices aren't a barrier to entry.

For Ganci, who admits he felt like "a loser" at his first sober Pride, going alcoholfree has allowed him to see all the shades present in Pride's rainbow.

"Pride's about unity, Pride's about activism, Pride's about love, Pride's about education, Pride's about celebrating everything that there is about life, but it's hard to know that when your main goal is to drink and use drugs."

The Last Door Society's Clean, Sober and Proud party takes place Sunday, Aug. 4, at the Vancouver International Film Festival Vancity Theatre. Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door available at Cleansoberandproud.com.

Jbarrett@vancouversun.com Twitter.com/vancityjess

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

CLEAN AND SOBER - WITHOUT ANY FUSS

• The photo shows seven men standing outside Union Gospel Mission in Vancouver's Downtown East Side.

   Why are they all so happy and full of smiles? Let me be the first to tell you; on Monday July 22nd they attended the in-house AA meeting to celebrate sobriety and the taking of both a one year and a two year cake. 

  Now here is where things get really interesting, not only are they Alumni of the Mission but they are also resident's of Servant House also known as the Servant's Of Hope Society, located in East Vancouver. 

  This year marks a milestone for the society in that after nine years of operation the house has not only met a complete minimum of one year but a grand total of "Thirty Years of Sobriety" In your Freaking face Harmies.

  That's right I said it, no more food lines, free Crack Pipes, free Methadone, free Needles, no more Robbing, Stealing; no more visits to the health services, no more court cases, none of it in fact. They are all steadily employed and Pay Taxes,ironically to a system that supports the very thing they have all escaped from. 

   
  Abstinence works! here is a shining example; hard work and support based services have made all the difference. Today they do not walk alone but together supporting each other as well as many who need to see and hear that recovery works. 

  Sean Heaney has been quietly running a small residential centre on the east side of town for years. He is one of the several folks who without much fanfare has been doing great recovery work for years. Let's give him our individual and collective thanks and help out wherever and whenever we can.

HARM PROMOTION

Al Arsenault is a Founding Member of Odd Squad Productions Society which makes educational videos for youth about drugs and he is a 27-year veteran with the Vancouver Police Department. Al recently retired from V.P.D. in May 2006 having walked the beat in Vancouver’s notoriously drug-infested Downtown Eastside for many years. Al possesses a B.Sc. Degree in Geography and Geology from

McMaster University (1977) and a B.Ed. Degree in Geography and Physical Education from Queen’s University (1978). He is also a member of the International Task Force on Strategic Drug Policy.

Although I wouldn’t say that Monteith died directly because of INSITE, I would say he met his demise because of the ideology that promotes the idea that poisons can be ingested in a supposedly ‘safe’ manner.  It’s poison regardless if a nurse is watching or not!  This pro-drug stance Vancouver has taken promotes harm, as the drugs taken by Monteith (and yes being sold on the very doorstep of the SIS), were done so with an illusion of a reduced likelihood of harm or even death.   Just ask the beat cops (and even some of the SIS staff who are fearful of speaking) about the dealers working in front of the SIS. 

But who wants to speak up when people like Ms. Corbella, who merely offer opposing views, are threatened?

There is all this talk about curtailing drug-related diseases and overdose deaths through needle exchanges and drug injection sites as a harm reduction measure.  Abstinence is the ultimate harm reduction measure: harm reduction without a treatment modality attached to it is a wasted effort.  The SIS studies are highly suspect as pointed out by Berner’s Op Ed article below. These ‘studies' are scientism at its best as the researchers are all big advocates of the site who have been getting millions of dollars to promote the Harm Reduction message.  Doesn’t anyone who funds these guys and The Lancet who publishes their studies see this obvious bias? 

Coerced treatment is just as effective as voluntary treatment, but that would mean that we would have to be judgmental about their drug usage (not who they are as people)...and such judgments attack the core of this growth factor of the junkie industry. It is false compassion indeed. Addicts need the cure, not the poison; the secret to beating addiction is hard work through decent treatment. Drug addiction is all about the loss of human potential and to give them boxes of needles in lieu of treatment is shameful. The rich get treatment and the poor get Harm Reduction.

What is really needed are solid drug prevention measures and decent long-term treatment…and it’s hard work to be sure, but these efforts would far better resolve all of these problems. What addicts WANT are free needles, lots of drugs, and a place to shoot up because they are “not ready to quit”. What they NEED is treatment. Bleeding hearts (and legalizers) pander to the lowest common denominator and facilitate drug use to make them feel compassionate (and further their cause). The Vancouver experience has been a dismal failure with hundreds dead and very high rates of disease- and look at the amputees hobbling around down there now! Coerced treatment works as well as voluntary treatment and I see no government-sponsored treatment centers as sweet and sexy as our drug injection site. It’s hard to find treatment in the shadow of Harm Reduction (watch part 5/7 of this video clip- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE_Bz6rpia4 (@ 7 minute mark) for some real ‘insight’ into this mess).

“Adams said the staff screen clients and are ‘very astute as to who is a first-time user and who is not.’ ”

Watch this ‘Streets of Plenty’ clip to show what an utter lie this statement is.  Addicts are so drug-addled as to be unable to see that there is hope for salvaging their human potential- what is the excuse for the blindness shown by those in the 'junkie industry' (besides making a living off the backs of these poor unfortunates so desperately needing help)?

We owe it to addicts to be judgmental, not about WHO they are as people rather, about HOW their drug-related behaviour is costing themselves, their families and society at large. To do anything else lacks compassion and moral fiber.

Al Arsenault

Board Member,

Drug Prevention Network of Canada

al.arsenault@shaw.ca

Little evidence harm reduction reduces harm - VANCOUVER SUN OP-ED

 By David Berner,

Vancouver SunJuly 19, 2013 5:04 AM

 A report by the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS on harm reduction programs and Insite released last month is not science; it's public relations.

 Authors Drs. Julio Montaner, Thomas Kerr and Evan Wood have produced nearly two dozen papers on the use of Insite. They boast of good results in connecting addicts to treatment but convincing evidence is lacking.

 The current campaign reports significant reductions in drug overdoses, yet the Government of British Columbia Selected Vital Statistics and Health Status Indicators show that the number of deaths from drug overdose in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside has increased each year (with one exception) since the site opened in 2003. In addition, the federal government's Advisory Committee on Drug Injection Sites report only five per cent of drug addicts use the injection site, three per cent were referred for treatment and there was no indication the crime rate has decreased, as well as no indication of a decrease in AIDS and hepatitis C since the injection site was opened.

 Claims of success for Insite made in The Lancet, the British medical journal, in 2011 were challenged in a 15-page, heavily-documented response penned by addictions specialists from Australia, the U.S. and Canada, and by a former VPD officer who worked the DTES for years.

 In A Critical Evaluation of the Effects of Safe Injection Facilities for The Institute on Global Drug Policy, Dr. Garth Davies, SFU associate professor wrote: "The methodological and analytic approaches used in these studies are compromised by an array of deficiencies, including a lack of baseline data, insufficient conceptual and operational clarity, inadequate evaluation criteria, absent statistical controls, dearth of longitudinal designs, and inattention to intrasite variation. None of the impacts attributed to SIFs can be unambiguously verified."

The doctors evaluating Insite are the same people who created Insite and who have been awarded more than $18 million of taxpayers' money for their initiatives in recent years. Dr. Colin Mangham, on our Board of Directors, has been a researcher in this field since 1979.

"The proposal for Insite was written by the same people who are evaluating it - a clear conflict of interest. Any serious evaluation must be independent. All external critiques or reviews of the Insite evaluations, there are four of them - found profound overstatements and evidence of interpretation bias. All of the evidence - on public disorder, overdose deaths, entry into treatment, containment of serum borne viruses, and so on - is weak or non-existent and certainly does not support the claims of success. There is every appearance of the setting of an agenda before Insite ever started, then a pursuit of that agenda, bending or overstating results wherever necessary."

 Our President, Chuck Doucette, asks to see an independent and unbiased cost/benefit analysis.

 "The four pillar approach only works when each pillar is properly funded. Prevention reduces the flow of people into addiction. Treatment reduces the number of addicts including those living in the DTES. Policing keeps a lid on the open drug dealing and the affects of the associated problems on the community. Only after these three pillars are properly funded can we afford to spend money on Harm Reduction initiatives that do not encourage abstinence. Putting HR first is like running up debt on your credit card and never paying more than your minimum payments."

 No one would object to free needles, crack pipe kits, methadone, heroin and places to shoot up if only they were the side show and not the main event, if only they ever led to real health.

Harm reduction and Insite are palliative.

They both spring from a deeply cynical and arrogant world view: You are an addict and you are hopeless. We will keep you "comfortable" while you continue to die.

 This is a curious position considering the millions of men and women who admit they are addicts and choose every day not to pick up their poison. I know many such clean and sober citizens.

 We owe one another a chance at dignity. To offer less is not only costly, it is monstrous.

 David Berner is the executive director of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada.

The Fight Continues

What this story does not include is the fact that Pivot Legal Society drove Vancouver addicts and Vancouver needle exchange workers to Abbotsford in the expectation of being arrested and making headlines. I was told this over dinner recently by a former Pivot employee.

 

Abbotsford defends city bylaw restricting harm-reduction services after drug users sue

 

 

By James Keller, The Canadian PressJuly 13, 2013

 

 

Abbotsford is defending an eightyear-old bylaw that has prevented health officials from offering harmreduction services to drug users, suggesting the provision doesn't, in fact, ban programs such as clean-needle distribution.

A group of three drug users filed a lawsuit against the City of Abbotsford in May, alleging the bylaw violates their constitutional rights because it prevents them from accessing services that could prevent overdoses and diseases such as hepatitis.

The City of Abbotsford has filed a statement of defence in B.C. Supreme Court, suggesting the bylaw doesn't prevent the local health authority from offering services to drug users, while also noting several community groups already distribute clean needles in the community.

"The bylaw does not restrict (the Fraser Health Authority) from using land within the boundaries of (Abbotsford) for all activities that are directed to addressing adverse medical outcomes associated with the consumption of illicit drugs," says the response to civil claim, filed on July 2.

"Harm reduction measures, including needle exchange, are and have been provided by agencies other than the (health authority) within the territorial jurisdiction of (Abbotsford)," the document continues.
Community groups have been quietly contravening the bylaw for years, passing out clean needles, crack pipes and other supplies, without any attempts by the city to stop them, though Fraser Health has repeatedly insisted it cannot launch a needle-distribution program with the bylaw still in place. The statement of defence appears to suggest the bylaw may not represent a blanket ban on harm-reduction services - an assertion that would be at odds with the city's own public statements about the bylaw.
When the bylaw was passed in 2005, councillors at the time made it clear they were changing the city's zoning rules to prevent harm-reduction services like those offered in Vancouver from appearing in their community.

The change was introduced amid the debate over the controversial supervised-injection site opened in Vancouver two years earlier, though the Abbotsford bylaw includes all forms of harm reduction.
The city launched a review of the bylaw in 2010, at the request of Fraser
Health, and several staff reports and reviews prepared as part of that review clearly state the purpose of the bylaw is the "prohibition of needle exchanges, mobile dispensing vans, safe injection sites and other similar uses" in all zones of the city.

In its response, the city denies the bylaw violates the rights of drug users, but says even if it does, such a violation would be justifiable. "The provisions of the bylaw relating to harm-reduction use are directed to promoting the orderly, efficient and reasonable use of land within the defendant's boundaries," the document says.

The lawsuit was launched by Douglas Smith, Nadia Issel and Diana Knowles, who all live in Abbotsford and use injection drugs. The B.C./Yukon Association of Drug War Survivors is also a plaintiff.

Their lawyer, Scott Bernstein of Pivot Legal Society, said he'll be asking the city to clarify its arguments, though he said he was surprised the city appears to be downplaying the scope of the bylaw. At the very least, he says the city's court submission is vague. "Why is the bylaw there in the first place?" he said Friday. "If it's not actually doing what it says, then what's the point? Is it just to harass people who use drugs or to scare off organizations?"

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

 

THE GOOD NEWS

Ontario rejects Toronto’s call for supervised drug injection site

Board of health’s landmark request meets prompt refusal, despite Supreme Court ruling allowing such facilities where public safety isn’t at risk.

JEFF VINNICK / FOR THE TORONTO STAR

Vancouver's Insite safe-injection site has been allowed to stay open because of a Supreme Court ruling that found such sites should be allowed where they do not pose a threat to public safety. The federal Conservatives are attempting to make it harder to open such sites, including one proposed by Toronto's board of health.

By: Daniel Dale City Hall, Published on Wed Jul 10 2013

 

Toronto’s board of health voted 6-2 Wednesday to ask the provincial government to open a supervised injection facility for the city’s drug users — a landmark proposal promptly dismissed by the province.

“Given that the federal government’s approval would be a prerequisite, at this point we have no plans to move forward with supervised injection sites,” Samantha Grant, press secretary for Health Minister Deb Matthews, said in an email later in the day.

The Conservative federal government is opposed to such facilities aimed at harm reduction, which allow addicts to inject illegal drugs using clean equipment under the supervision of nurses. Both Police Chief Bill Blair and Mayor Rob Ford are also opposed.

Dr. David McKeown, the city’s chief medical officer, is strongly in favour. The board heard Wednesday — from a unanimous parade of doctors, harm reduction workers, academic experts and drug users themselves — that the facilities prevent deadly overdoses, reduce health-care costs, and help connect addicts with services they need to improve their lives.

“I’m just really tired of watching people die,” said Dennis Long, executive director of Breakaway Addiction Services.

McKeown said Toronto is the first health board in Ontario to endorse a supervised injection facility.

The board’s proposal asks the province to fund at least one supervised injection facility, on a trial basis, within an existing provincially funded clinic that already offers services to drug users. Provincial approval, however, is not actually required for a facility to open.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that the federal government must allow a Vancouver facility to continue operating. Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, writing for the 9-0 court, said Insite “has been proven to save lives with no discernible negative impact on the public safety and health objectives of Canada.”

The court told the government to authorize new injection sites wherever “there is little or no evidence that it will have a negative impact on public safety.” But the government responded with legislation, not yet passed, that would make it even more difficult for applicants to obtain the required exemptions from drug laws.

Councillor Raymond Cho and citizen member Suman Roy were opposed to the motion. Councillors Gord Perks, Joe Mihevc, Kristyn Wong-Tam and Sarah Doucette were in favour.