Income inequality is the gap between the highest and lowest earners in a given area. It can contribute to people’s risk of poor health, and specifically mental health.
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The Pulitzer Prize-winning author is just one of many artists from Appalachia who are probing the crisis in their work, while taking pains to ensure that it doesn’t define the region and its people.
A man runs past shoes hung on the Burrard Bridge in Vancouver in remembrance of victims of illicit drug overdoses on International Overdose Awareness Day in August 2020.
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Decriminalization helps recharacterize drug addiction as a chronic health condition instead of a criminal activity, reduces the stigma associated with drug use and improves treatment options.
A supervised consumption site in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, in 2021. B.C. has decriminalized simple possession of drugs, including methamphetamines and opioids.
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More than 50 overdoses happen in bathrooms every month in British Columbia. Public bathrooms can be made safer for everyone, including people who use substances.
Many companies have sold dangerous prescription drugs.
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Making them pay is important but it’s not going to stop drugmakers from endangering public health.
OxyContin, an opioid drug heavily marketed by Purdue Pharma, is associated with billions of dollars of health-care costs in Canada related to the opioid crisis.
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The Purdue Pharma settlement is paltry compared to costs of the opioid crisis. Without major changes to pharma industry regulation, there is little reason to think a similar crisis won’t occur again.
B.C. Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Sheila Malcolmson holds a copy of exemption documents that enable British Columbia to decriminalize possession of small amounts of ‘hard’ drugs for personal use. B.C.’s bold experiment will be closely watched as a comparator with other progressive jurisdictions.
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British Columbia’s bold experiment provides an opportunity to implement more balance in Canadian drug policy, and a more principled withdrawal from the war on drugs.
Opioids can help reduce the amount of medication needed to achieve anesthesia.
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Non-opioid directives allow patients to refuse opioids in all health care settings. For surgical procedures that require anesthesia, however, this may do more harm than good.
Game jams are powerful spaces for galvanizing creativity in disenfranchised communities.
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Game making is an art form that many aren’t intimately familiar with. Unlike other creative practices, game makers must create the rules and laws that govern and shape player behaviours.
Measures to curb growing rates of opioid use are also making it difficult for people with long-term, chronic pain to get ongoing prescriptions.
Methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine distributed by the Drug User Liberation Front, a grassroots organization proving a safe supply of illicit drugs, in Vancouver, in April 2021.
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People are dying from using a toxic drug supply. Safer supply and other approaches that listen to the needs of people who use drugs are critical to saving lives and addressing the opioid crisis.
The concept of placebos – which are sometimes called “sugar pills” – has been around since the 1800s.
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Drug manufacturers often shun the use of placebos in clinical trials. But research suggests that placebos could play an important role in the treatment of depression, pain and other maladies.
Emblems of America’s epidemics.
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The number of fatal drug overdoses in the US over a 12-month period has surpassed 100,000 for the first time. Fentanyl is the main driver of the spike in deaths.
People around the world mourned loved ones on International Overdose Awareness Day on Aug. 31, 2021.
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Ending the opioid epidemic requires addressing not only treatment gaps in addiction and overdose, but also inadequate pain management.
Naloxone can prevent deaths from opioid overdose, but there is no way to reverse the effects of benzodiazepine overdose without risk.
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Fentanyl adulteration led to the replacement of heroin in the unregulated drug supply of British Columbia. Now that benzodiazepines are present in many opioids, are we headed towards a ‘new normal?’
Advocating for decriminalization carries many benefits, including reducing the need for police involvement.
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Decriminalization is an important step in addressing the overdose crisis, but it is crucial that other approaches — like regulation — are also in place.
Pandemic-driven isolation and job loss have been especially hard for people recovering from opioid addiction to bear.
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