(how to) end the war on drugs, bravery, drugs, Harm Reduction, SafeSupply, vs harm

Georgia Pharmacy

Image

777 West Georgia Street Vancouver (1933)

image of window display from Vancouver Archives.

FEW LAYMAN know the meaning of “B.P.” on the label of a medicinal product. Yet it’s no secret. It stamps that product as conforming to the standards of quality specified in the “British Pharmacopoeia”

This book of standards for the protection of the public has been maintained since 1864 by physicians and pharmacists. Hence the standards of the “B.P.” have come to represent the law of the land.

It is a remarkable tribute to the great work that physicians and pharmacists have carried on for over three score years – a work designed to make available to the public medicinal products of standard uniform quality.

THE PHARMACIST must not only know well the standards of the “B.P.” but he must be skilled in the compounding and care of the hundreds of medicinal products he handles. Your Doctor relies on him when sickness comes. He is trained in College and by experience to be accurate, and to judge and appreciate high quality. His professional services and the sacrifices he is often called upon to make in the public welfare entitle him to a large measure of the good will of the community he serves.

⇣ this is how to do things with the past

it doesnt have to be this way

it is really easy to forget or not constantly remember that there is nothing inevitable or natural about the ways we all live now, in the present. it doesnt have to be this way.

bravery, drugs, DTES, Harm Reduction, poverty, SafeSupply, vs harm

LETS GET BUNKED

got benzoed?

That down? Its a point of processed synthetic chemicals, designed not for you (not anymore, not this) but for maximum profit. you have no idea what it is.

capture of “darkweb” sale board

so you come out of it and not know where you are or how you got there and already feel sick again. Thats the benzo. Its not an opiate. but you were down for hours and you cant even move or remember anything

so now everybody is paying more and more for less actual down, plus that level of psychiatric medication, which you should get for free but instead you might die and no one has any money and no one cares anymore because everyone is chasing it all day all night

and you have no idea what it is

safe supply is knowing.

bravery, decrim, drugs, vs harm

Real Emergencies

Remember that fuss about the report that was released at the end of April by the Provincial Health Officer: “Stopping the Harm: decriminalizing people who use drugs”? Apparently not really.

As I tried to say on the radio it’s not about decriminalizing substances-  it’s about decriminalizing people.

That means ending the ongoing exclusion of people who use drugs – but mostly low-income, racialized, mentally divergent people who use drugs – from the legal and civil norms conventional in mainstream society. It’s not  about whether or not you’re charged with possession or trafficking or whatever.

It’s about the process of becoming criminal and how people who use drugs think of themselves as being outside of the the law : it punishes us, it does not protect us. But this report asserts that the law belongs to us too because we are also citizens and that’s the point of decriminalizing people.

now this is a public health intervention

What the report says is that policing and ongoing criminalization is preventing people from accessing health services, from accessing all kinds of Public Services, keeping us in poverty, making people vulnerable to overdose and endangering lives. Criminalization is undermining all of the health related activities that have been authorized through the initial intervention back in December 2016.

And it’s not just another report by experts that goes into the air and things may be happening or maybe not. The report and its author, the Provincial Health Officer is authorized and empowered through the Public health act and this report has a particular force because of this state of emergency. It is not just another report.

As the Provincial Health Officer of BC, I recommend that the Province of BC urgently move to decriminalize people who possess controlled substances for personal use. This is a fundamental underpinning and necessary next step for the continued provincial response to the overdose crisis in BC.

“Stopping the Harm” is addressed to the government of British Columbia. from a senior officer appointed by government to the people’s elected representatives. This is a high-level intervention, not to an individual minister but to the executive of the government of the province, to the premier and the cabinet, and four ministers.

Consider the precedent. let’s go back and think about the last time we were at day 1114 of a public health emergency oh wait.

This is how to deal with an emergency. This is the most extreme intervention that provincial law allows. It has never been done before.

We need the government to consider these recommendations. It will be painful. This is a terrible situation to face directly. We can help them by being honest and brave, but they must do the same. We gotta talk, and this recommendation must be considered by the people elected to do so.

Silence is death. The legislature, the cabinet table – these are the places where this discussion must happen now. Let’s all take it seriously — as seriously as we possibly can, and in the terms suggested by this report (among others): as a political issue. 

very local media at the end of the drug wars

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