I’ve returned to my hometown of Vancouver for a few days and am shocked and bewildered by what I’m seeing. There are marijuana shops all over the city now, many spouting the drug as some sort of miracle medical potion. Many storefronts along Granville Mall are boarded up. Then this report appeared on CBC’s The National last night:
For years the “brilliant minds” at Insite promised us that their way would solve the drug problem in the city. They sought to destroy anyone who suggested that abstinence based treatment programs were the answer.
One can only wonder what the average citizen of Vancouver thinks of all of this.
Looks like INSITE is running a ‘taking out the trash’ operation. Helping rid the city of drug addicts and tent cities. thats the upside.
Can’t say I care much …. people should know better by now.
The growing numbers of bums who beg and do drugs are appearing more and more on the Island as well.
San Fran North.
Liberalism is to blame for nearly ALL SOCIAL ILLS. That is a mystery since they are the ones who all about ‘social’.
Hire any decent dairyman and he/she will clean up this problem in a matter of months.
“That is a mystery since they are the ones who all about ‘social’.” You forgot the /sarc tag…:):). VanChinatown LIV’s may wake up when they start realizing that the “social” = commie control in any NDPee group. Nah. They are happy to be controlled and led around by the nose. BTW,does Moonbeam puff a few?
So marijuana is legal in BC? If not, why are there shops selling it?
Teach a man to fish and he will have food for a lifetime, give a man a naloxone injection
prn and you will have an addict for life.
The great liberal hope is that somebody will always be there to temporarily reverse their stupidity.
*
prime minister care bear, with his liberal majority, (aka canada’s basic dictatorship)
could make it legal tomorrow… but he’s saving it up until just before the next election
to suck all the air outta the room.
i wish all these hypocrites would just stop pretending that marijuana is some sort of
medical panacea and admit they just wanna get high.
*
Lefty hypocrisy on the sanctity of life; these addicts with very short life-expectancy are routinely resuscitated, on the other hand elderly people are encouraged to just die soon.
If these addicts were left to their own devices, the problem would be quickly resolved. You’re right, I have no sympathy for them.
This is not intended to be a joke, but this video seems to show Darwinism running at full throttle.
Natural selection – I’m all for it. The world will become a better place with more dead addicts. Fentanyl, a tool of God.
I can’t understand why drug dealers are adding fentanyl to their drugs when it kills off their clients.
“Liberalism is to blame for nearly ALL SOCIAL ILLS. That is a mystery since they are the ones who all about ‘social’.”
Hey lay off! Jenny Kwan needs another trip to Disneyland!
Its Victoria too, that is suffering from this SJW hysteria, that “government has to do something”. This is ridiculous.
The usual suspects keep screaming out “ITS A CRISIS. ITS AN EPIDEMIC”. No, this is not a crisis, nor epidemic. This is culling the herd of its dumbest members. Oh yes, we get the sob stories of “my young adult son/daughter NEVER did drugs, it was their first time, yadda, yadda, yadda”. With all the info out there, it is the height of stupidity to do drugs, its not society’s fault.
The two of us have told our two, young adult offspring, to NEVER take any pill, powder, or otherwise, under ANY circumstances. No matter what your best friend or otherwise acquaintance says, you do not know what the fck is in that, and it could be that last thing you ever do. This is something we have said for years to them, so far so good.
Now there’s plans in Victoria for THREE of these Needle sites. Ridiculous, but, this area is full of dogooders, and “government can’t do anything wrong, unless its not NDP/SJW”. The upside, is the three sites are in the City proper, so, maybe Lisa Helps can join in the fun, since these sites are so awesome.
Liz, yeah, the cops are being told to look the other way here in LaLa Land, as far as pot shops. Of course, SJW Helps and her whacked out council have now produced bylaws to regulate the “medical” shops, stupid huh? Unfortunately, our Liberal Supreme Court has muddied the waters, allowing various incremental steps in pots usage, for very questionable reasons.
The Libertarian in me says “whatever”. If the stoners want to be stoned, let them be stoned. If they want to waste their lives being stupid, out of it, accomplishing nothing, hanging out, piercing and tattooing every square inch of their skin, whatever. LOSERS. The socialist in me says to tax the bejeezus out of it, that will show the dummies that are in love with their pot.
Pandora’s box is open, pot is now out in the open. Let the stoners be stoned. It is very true that the “medical” aspect is 99% BS. Still not sure what to think of what seems to work, the kids who suffer from seizures, that are controlled by stoning them. That’s a whole other ethical discussion of getting your kids stoned, and, their claims that “nothing else worked”.
Claiming its medicine for almost anything else, headaches, neuralgia, anxiety, PTSD, cancer (!) is unsubstantiated. Remember, there was a Liberal candidate in the last election that claimed pot cures cancer. Yes, pot does cause brain damage and stupidity.
The Liberal Left LOVES ghetto druggies in their cities.
Follow the votes & money
I have no sympathy whatever for someone who is stupid enough to ignore all the warnings about drugs. If they’re so keen to take drugs, they should do so at their own risk. Why are the rest of us taxpayers bailing these failed policies out?
To me there is no such thing as a “recreational drug” or a recreational drug user”. They are addicts and should be treated accordingly.
Ive said the answer lies in education and enforcement.
If teachers would instill the same fear of drug use in kids as they do fear of Trump being elected that would be a good start.
And if the courts would treat dealers as murderers that would also go a long ways.
But as my daughter says when she hears of another druggie dying “oh well”.
Well I guess one of us has to go against the grain here on this subject.
I do believe that CBD’s in Marijuana have the potential for a number of treatments.: Anxiety, Epilepsy & Glaucoma for certain and who knows what else.? The issue is getting companies to actually do some serious research of which there is very very little to be found.
I also believe that prescription Drugs handed out willy nilly by lazy physicians are a much bigger issue than Pot use…Oxy-contin, Percacet, Anti Depressants etc.
I also take exception to those of you that use the Term “drugs” … as if the term itself is toxic. That term I will note should also INCLUDE Alcohol (A KNOWN depressant), & every prescribed opiate for “Pain”. So chill your Reefer Madness screeching and get educated some eh.?
Injections sites: hmm, Rather see the money gone to combat this garbage from ever entering into the country and at the same time treat the addicts in abstension…
As to the Progressive Pansy in Ottawa promising to legalize pot…LMAO…he will never do it. I don’t think he could sway or mitigate the immense pressure the US will put on him to move forward with that one. But as an elections ploy..an astute move. As for those of us that partake in the odd joint once in a blue moon…I could give a shit. it matters not.
Deplorable Dan >
“The Libertarian in me says “whatever”. If the stoners want to be stoned, let them be stoned.”
Agreed, except that only works if we didn’t live in a Socialist society that drops the fallout on everyone else’s lap.
It’s not only medical consequences, it’s the criminal consequences that we all end up paying for. Consequences without the Legal ability to properly defend ourselves and families from.
Outside of organized Asian gangs, Canada has yet to see seriously violent foreign drug gangs like MS-13 take hold in our cities, when we do who do we blame?
Well I guess one of us has to go against the grain here on this subject.
I do believe that CBD’s in Marijuana have the potential for a number of treatments.: Anxiety, Epilepsy & Glaucoma for certain and who knows what else.? The issue is getting companies to actually do some serious research of which there is very very little to be found.
I also believe that prescription Drugs handed out willy nilly by lazy physicians are a much bigger issue than Pot use…Oxy-contin, Percacet, Anti Depressants etc.
I also take exception to those of you that use the Term “drugs” … as if the term itself is toxic. That term I will note should also INCLUDE Alcohol (A KNOWN depressant), & every prescribed opiate for “Pain”. So chill your Reefer Madness screeching and get educated some eh.?
Injections sites: hmm, Rather see the money gone to combat this garbage from ever entering into the country and at the same time treat the addicts in abstension…
As to the Progressive Pansy in Ottawa promising to legalize pot…LMAO…he will never do it. I don’t think he could sway or mitigate the immense pressure the US will put on him to move forward with that one. But as an elections ploy..an astute move. As for those of us that partake in the odd joint once in a blue moon…I could give a shit. it matters not.
Life; A sexually transmitted terminal disease.
It is not a true addiction until withdrawal kills you.
Like my addiction to air and food.
Drugs?
Anything that changes your blood chemistry is a drug.
Even having pride in your work.
Friends and family.
Frank Zappa said it best.
Or was that George Carlin?
Don’t like life?
It’s your choice.
Our do-gooders are monsters.
Evil powerhungry creatures who seek wealth and status on the corpses of the weak,sick and stupid.
A tax on all do-gooders, banish them from your midst.
apologies for the Dbl posts….
“One can only wonder what the average citizen of Vancouver thinks of all of this.”
They wish Rob Ford was still alive, and that he’d mover there to be mayor. That’s what.
It is becoming more difficult to find an addict who does not also have a mental illness. After closing institutions the supports simply did not adequately move into community as we were promised. What we are seeing now are worsening effects of the policy decisions of yesteryear. The sad irony is that Insite was meant to be a response to the number of people showing up in the morgue. As drugs become cheaper and more readily available (like crystal meth) there is little hope of keeping up with the consequences as we are now seeing. I understand the general lack of sympathy from other commenters but I’ve also know veterans who struggled with addictions because of what they have experienced defending our country. I choose to have compassion for them no matter what circumstances they now find themselves in.
Certain people seem predisposed to getting addicted to something. I’ve never understood why people gravitate to the needle which scared the hell out of me even when I smoked the odd joint over forty years ago. The only opiate seemingly strong enough to clean up at least some of them (and it’s certainly the case with alcoholics) is religion and that’s coming from an atheist. I can’t help think that for hard core substance addicts with the worst risk and most expensive habits, pharmaceutically pure and inexpensive (legalized) morphine would be the least harmful with minimal dysfunction. For those hell bent on self-destruction, prohibition doesn’t prevent them or help them.
The ratio is >5 : 1…Those attending to each druggie. That is one job creating sucker
What’s wrong with all you … “glass is half empty” people ? I would say this epidemic is a fantastic Progressive success story. The FREE needle program has allowed the average heroin addict to live much longer, to do many more drugs, over a much longer period of time … disease-free ! No more AIDS transmissions by shared needles. No more deadly infections via shared needles. The Progs have been wildly successful in extending the lifespans and quality of life for these addicts. And so what if they have interfered with the Darwinian order of things. So, these addicts have to commit a few more crimes over their newly lengthened life spans ? so what ? Maybe if you don’t want theft and robbery to rise further, you should just pay more taxes to give these street addicts FREE heroin ? Maybe you should just relax the drug laws further ? Maybe you should make it easier for the drug cartels to smuggle their goods across the border ? Look how that has improved the number of American addicts in blue collar flyover country !
Once again proving that if you build it, they will come. A welcome matt, the moderate climate and the politically correct “victims” mentality has created the empire builders nirvana that the city now takes pride in. In better days it was considered a failure in humanity and all that implies, but now it’s a showcase in what all cities should emulate. The only thing missing is a leader called Caligula.
Judging by electoral history, the average citizen of Vancouver probably thinks all this is normal.
A couple of points:
I just published a book on Starting and Running a Marijuana Dispensary or Pot Shop (http://amzn.to/2g3Oqn4) I looked hard and could find next to no serious scientific evidence as to the medical efficacy of pot. Even the anecdotal material was pretty useless as it rarely dealt with dosage. Medical pot is, generally, a wedge issue to open the gates of legalization. And it worked.
The dispensary/pot shop movement is very strong in Vancouver and Victoria with the municipal governments on board and the police and Crowns uninterested in prosecuting offences concerning what is still an illegal drug. In other jurisdictions there is more of an appetite for prohibition.
Which way the federal government is going to jump will become clearer when the McClellan Task Force reports. This could be as soon as next week. My bet is that Canada will have legalized and heavily regulated recreational marijuana using a “top down” model and attempting to eliminate the grey market. Not, by the way, because this is good policy; rather because the multi-million dollar, publically listed, legal marijuana growing industry has been lobbying hard to put the competitive dispensaries out of business.
—
The fentanyl driven overdose epidemic is a whole other story. It is not confined to the meaner streets of the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. In my little Lake Cowichan community, two people have died in the last few months. Nor is it confined to injectable drugs – apparently fentanyl is turnng up in cocaine with fatal and near fatal consequences (http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/fentanyl-laced-coke-may-have-caused-nine-overdoses-in-20-minutes-last-night).
Fentanyl is dangerous enough, and cheap enough, that it will kill a lot of people in the next few years. Some of those people will be the down and outs of the DTES who, for some reason, people on this site seem willing to write off as losers who made “bad choices”. It is certainly a position but it is hardly a moral position or a Christian one.
However, unfortunately, the people who are “trying to help” at Insite and the pop-up injection sites, are not willing to face the fact that nothing that they are doing is more than a strategy of postponement. They are unwilling to accept that addiction left untreated will kill eventually. Getting addicts through “a day at a time” is an expensive and almost certainly doomed approach.
There is a tendency to malign “do-gooders” but, unfortunately, for the wrong reasons. The biggest error of the “do gooders” lies in the fact they believe that they should treat addicts as autonomous, adult, agents with all of the rights of functional citizens. The police, social services, the justice system all buy into this view and, frankly, it is not working.
To actually “do good” systems and legal mechanisms and funding have to be put in place to remove these people from the toxic environment in which they live their addiction, place them in involuntary care, treat the addiction and monitor the recovery – often for years at a time. Facing that nasty reality is, apparently, harder than watching addict after addict overdose and, eventually, die.
A serious program of involuntary care is one side of the equation. The other side is to prosecute dealers and suppliers who adulterate the drugs they are selling. Basically, create a new offence of “adulteration” and put in a 15 year mandatory minimum sentence. Have as part of the offence “provision of adulterating substances” with the same sentence. And, just to make the point clear, set this as a “strict liability” offence so that the defence “but I didn’t know it was fentanyl” is unavailable.
—
The marijuana ship has sailed. It is a colossal waste of time to whine about legalization although how legalization occurs in Canada might be worth paying attention to.
The question of what to do about harder, more deadly, drugs needs serious re-examination. What we are doing now is not working. It is killing people and safe injection sites are a band aid at best.
Now that ‘grass’ is legal the lineups will only get longer. The BS thrown out about it not being a gateway drug is exactly that, BS! Job security I guess.
It reminds me of the Socreds when they emphatically stated that gambling presented a problem to less than 3% of the population. The campaigned on less gambling licenses and then did a 180 to add many more. Work in a convenience store for any amount of time and watch the Lotto addicts get their tickets. In my small town of 5000 the lottery alone takes well over a million $’s per year.
What common thread joins over eating, gambling, drugs, smoking and some say religion?
*
“The ratio is >5 : 1…Those attending to each druggie. That is one job creating sucker.”
our healthcare system is in freefall… my personal record for sitting in a hospital
emergency room with a sick, fevered child in my lap is seven hours.
you want more social workers? how about a few more doctors and nurses… and
cops while we’re at it.
these junkies wanna kill themselves… don’t we have legalised euthanasia now?
if you’re blowing unwashed sociopathic strangers in dark back alleys to get your
next mystery eightball from shady vietnamese gangbangers, surely you are
better off dead.
*
The underlying cause of the problem is the laws that make drugs illegal. Making something illegal has never stopped or even significantly reduced the supply. The illegality only ensures that the substance will be supplied by criminals making exorbitant profit which gives them the resources to buy politicians to keep it illegal.
A sensible solution would be for Canada to buy opium product from Afghan farmers, refine it into morphine and give it to registered addicts for free. Use a jet gun injector and give them as much as they want. Those who were going to OD anyway will do it sooner and make space in the health care queue for people who can be healed. Most will get an opportunity to get out of a life of crime and take advantage of programs to get their lives back on track.
This will also drastically reduce the obscene profits that make drug lords rich. Of course that’s the real reason the problem will never be solved. The WoD is immensely profitable for lots of people on both sides of the law.
The effective solution is to leave cities to the lib-progs, maybe convince them to build walls, move conservative thought to small towns and small cities, then sit back and watch the urban mega-slums implode. Control the food and control the cities cancerous growth.
Dear Vancoverites, you voted for this. Congratulations. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of a$$holes. Your city is a $hithole and always was. I take Moronto or even Morontreal over your eco gulag. You refused to build highways, you fine people for watering their lawns, every taxi is a f**king hybrid, glad you have your priorities straight, keep marching forward… just watch your step and don’t step on used needles.
Natural selection at work.
Those who use unprescribed Fantanyl are simply practising unassisted suicide.
I agree, John. Do the math. A junkie steals $1,000 worth of our stuff to sell to a Fence for $100. That $100 he hands over to a dope dealer to get, in reality, maybe 10 bucks worth of dope. Cheaper to give it free. People don’t want to hook or steal. Identify the addicts. Offer them treatment.
well said steakman, also John Galt
I always like those who preach on such issues out of ignorance. Their ignorance comes out loud and clear, their bible just does not muffle the BS
And CT, the biggest “gateway” drug happens to be alcohol, not smoke. Fact, there are those who switch from alcohol to smoke and improve things around themselves. And no, I’m not encouraging over use of MJ, as I’v also seen the result of that.
“One can only wonder what the average citizen of Vancouver thinks of all of this.”
The average citizen is from China and frankly doesn’t give a damn what the whites and natives do to themselves. The quicker the city can be emptied of non-Chinese, the better.
The average Vancouverite does not think. Ever. Never has. Never will. Can’t decide if Ontario is stupider, or BC. It’s a toss up, but it means the end for all of us. The majority stupid morons in Quebec, Ontario, and BC dooms all of Canada forever. They will never stop voting for Canada to out Venezuela Venezuela.
Yeah, just what we need, MORE government spending, with the government as the dealer.
Why don’t we all get hooked?
Sorry, that’s a downward spiral of stupidity
Vancouver has become a S***hole full of Chinese and syrian immigrants enjoying coffee at Starbucks in the West End living off the government dole. I have no sympathy for druggies. As far as I’m concerned they should be put in a bootcamp and separated from the rest of society as they suck off the medical system so that others can’t get care. There is a rumour that Robinson wasn’t elected but that the voter count was rigged in his favor. Poor Vancouverites have to live with the consequences…he is rich, has a Chinese girlfriend apparently so you can imagine what is going on behind closed doors. What a mess!
I still think the Lieberals want to dumb down the population so they “think” everything” is wonderful and they vote them in again and again.
You only think the liberals want a stupid population? That is the sole purpose of government run education. Same as the sole purpose of government run health care. Same as the sole purpose of government run broadcaster. It always has been, and always will be solely about indoctrination, and ever decreasing personal liberty. Canadians traded liberty for security; we have neither and deserve neither.
A 35 year old man I know, wife, 2 kids is addicted to marijuana. He went on line and got a prescription for the stuff and thought it was OK to smoke it at work. It wasn’t. He was fired. His drug of choice is having severe impacts on his personality and outlook on life. His wife is attending a support group for spouses of addicts and is seriously considering seeking a divorce.
But its just pot you see. He can not understand that ingesting a mind altering substance alters your mind.
yah, and you inhale religion, love, politics, and other social abnormalities, and thusly they alter the mind (reality). Not all who drink are, or become, alcoholics. But some who never drinks does not become an alcoholic. So, your simplistic, singular examples, is just that.
Uh oh it looks like nme666 is off his meds again. He is looking for somewhere to spew his hatred.
I live north of Vancouver and carefully bypass down town to commute to work. I have not been down town for at least 5 years now. problems are; the council including mayor moonbeam are anti car,There are bike lanes with no users everywhere and no parking., anti oil , moonbeam opposes the pipelines to port even though it is light years out of his jurisdiction.and anti business charging 6 times the taxes of a resident in Vancouver and stiffing businesses for garbage pick up. Vancouver is slowly hollowing out and its communist commissars are too stupid to see it.All my former downtown based suppliers have retreated to distant suburbs in search of lower crime lower square foot cost and lower taxes.
Drug users must be given segregated communities with moderate structure and rules, like a work camp. they are prone to make bad decisions so segregate and teach, when they have a sober modicum of self respect regained let them come back but not until they demonstrate their value
nme, pot fcks you up. Despite the protests of heads, stoners and potheads everywhere, they are losers and unambitious dummies, thanks to the reefer.
As people, they aren’t evil, just useless as tts on a snake.
Denial is not a river in Egypt. But sure, continue trying to tell us it is harmless. All drugs affect people, its just in different ways. Most are destructive, some passively, like pot, where the stoner, zones out, into a different, altered reality than the spouse and kids. Yeah, divorce is a reality and necessary, although its rare that both parents aren’t stoners for that matter.
Stay on the subject, its dumbasses that stay stoned on pot. By the way, you’re either stoned or not stoned. If you have ONE beer, you are -not- drunk.
Easy concept.
Drug users must be given segregated communities with moderate structure and rules, like a work camp.
Good plan. Put them somewhere out in the bush like they did with the internment camps.
A 35 year old man I know, wife, 2 kids is addicted to alcohol. He…thought it was OK to drink it at work. It wasn’t. He was fired. His drug of choice is having severe impacts on his personality and outlook on life. His wife is attending a support group for spouses of alcoholics and is seriously considering seeking a divorce.
But it’s just booze you see. He can not understand that ingesting a mind altering substance alters your mind. Can you?
A 35 year old man I know, wife, 2 kids is addicted to prescription meds. He…thought it was OK to take them at work. It wasn’t. He was fired. His drug of choice is having severe impacts on his personality and outlook on life. His wife is attending a support group for spouses of addicts and is seriously considering seeking a divorce.
But it’s just prescription drugs you see. He can not understand that ingesting a mind altering substance alters your mind. Can you?
Need more examples to understand that the problem is addiction, not whatever mind altering substance they’re addicted to?
Both you and NME666 have no concept of what the very simple statement of Deplorable Dan means.
“If you have ONE beer, you are -not- drunk.”
Put down the cheetos and see if you can figure it out.