Showing posts with label drug addiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drug addiction. Show all posts
[caption id="attachment_9899" align="alignnone" width="497"]
A pebble-sized bit of drugs in a fast food restaurant's bathroom.[/caption]
I found the tiny package pictured above on the floor of a public washroom in Fairview. I should've put a coin down for reference or double-checked the focus but I was in rush to give it back to the guy who'd just left the bathroom -- a homeless heroin addict -- I was correct in guessing he'd dropped it.
Many people wouldn't have noticed it -- about half the diameter of a cigarette butt -- a ridiculously tiny quarter-gram of heroin which I'm told costs $35 and has the equally ridiculous "undercover" name of "pants."
A pebble-sized bit of drugs in a fast food restaurant's bathroom.[/caption]I found the tiny package pictured above on the floor of a public washroom in Fairview. I should've put a coin down for reference or double-checked the focus but I was in rush to give it back to the guy who'd just left the bathroom -- a homeless heroin addict -- I was correct in guessing he'd dropped it.
Many people wouldn't have noticed it -- about half the diameter of a cigarette butt -- a ridiculously tiny quarter-gram of heroin which I'm told costs $35 and has the equally ridiculous "undercover" name of "pants."
The Vancouver Coastal Health authority has been testing the health benefits of giving crack cocaine users smoking kits. Between December 2011 and November 2012, 65,000 such kits were freely distributed in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, to 4,213 crack smokers, at a cost of $118,000 CDN, according to a several reports, including this Vancouver Courier item. Now they're crunching the numbers and looking at the results.
Vancouver Coastal Health is telling the media that the 13 month program met it's harm reduction goals, reducing both burns to crack smokers, and reliance on used smoking equipment -- without increasing drug activity.
Knee-jerk conservatives may blanch at what they see as another example of lefties enabling the druggie lifestyle, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. "Harm reduction" means reducing the harm drug users do to themselves, and -- this is an important point -- reducing the harm drug users do to the society at large. Reducing the sharing of drug-taking equipment, is meant to have far-reaching social benefits:
Vancouver Coastal Health is telling the media that the 13 month program met it's harm reduction goals, reducing both burns to crack smokers, and reliance on used smoking equipment -- without increasing drug activity.
Knee-jerk conservatives may blanch at what they see as another example of lefties enabling the druggie lifestyle, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. "Harm reduction" means reducing the harm drug users do to themselves, and -- this is an important point -- reducing the harm drug users do to the society at large. Reducing the sharing of drug-taking equipment, is meant to have far-reaching social benefits:
- Reducing the transmission of infectious diseases among drug users.
- Reducing the number of drug addicts who become chronic health care cases,
- Reducing the risk of drug users spreading infectious diseases to the general population.
Evan says he was born here in Vancouver, BC, in 1969, and has been homeless for 30 years -- ever since he ran away from home at age 14, and ended up in Los Angeles, where he lived for the next 15 years.Evan say he doesn't remember a time when he wasn't openly gay. He's matter-of-fact about it, same as he is about his drug use. He is, in his own words, "a rock star," meaning his drug-of-choice is crack cocaine.
Evan's visible means of support is panhandling the immediate environs of Broadway and Granville, which he does fairly continually. Here, I've obviously caught up with him on a dinner break.
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