Opioids kill an average of eight people every day in Canada. The federal government must officially declare this a ‘public welfare emergency’ and invest the funds critical to a humane response.
The parliamentary inquiry into establishing an injecting room in Victoria has failed to make any recommendations. This is despite finding drug use is at crisis levels in the area.
As Canada moves towards legalization of cannabis in 2018, there is growing evidence of the drug’s potential to treat opioid addiction itself, as well as the chronic pain that often drives it.
Public memorials to overdose victims might not only shift who we consider worth grieving, but also encourage us to reflect on the nature of memory and mourning, inclusion and exclusion.
Americans consume a staggering amount of the opioid painkiller hydrocodone - about 99% of the world’s supply. In October, after 10 years of debate the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) reclassified medications…
Many first responders’ – even some university police officers – are carrying a new tool in their first-aid kits. It’s naloxone, the opioid overdose antidote drug, and today it’s more widely available than…
The death of 19-year-old Georgina Bartter at a music festival on the weekend from a suspected ecstasy overdose could possibly have been avoided with a simple harm-minimisation intervention. Pill testing…
In 2012, 103,000 people around the world lost their lives to drug poisoning or overdose. As terrible as this waste of life seems, it’s important to remember that drug overdoses are not inevitably fatal…
Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death earlier this week from a suspected heroin overdose unleashed the usual media coverage of deaths related to this drug. While the actor’s actual cause of death has not yet…
It’s now almost two years since ACT chief minister and minister for health, Katy Gallagher, launched Australia’s first program to distribute naloxone to prevent heroin overdoses. Other states have followed…