[Public_Domain]

[Curtman]

Thanos Thanos:

Users of other things like crack, coke, heroin, or meth are in a different category though, where some kind of punishment is needed due to the massive amount of death and destruction that accompany these kinds of drugs.

Errrrrrmmmm... What massive amounts of death and destruction?

$1:

“Alcohol is much more related to disease than we realized in the past,” she said. “We’re seeing an unprecedented growth in harm related to alcohol abuse.”
...
“The LCBO has a monopoly on alcohol, so why do they need to advertise?” asks Johnston. “It’s alarming.”

Giesbrecht says the lack of attention to the problem of alcohol runs contrary to statistics: Alcohol accounted for 8 per cent of all deaths (under 70 years old) and 7 per cent of all hospital stays in 2002, and between 1996 and 2010, total consumption increased by 13 per cent.
...
A separate CAMH study published in the journal Addiction this month says “Canadians drink more than 50 per cent above the global average.”

Kevin Shield, lead author of the Addiction study, said in a press release that “alcohol consumption has been found to cause more than 200 different diseases and injuries.”

“These include not only well-known outcomes of drinking such as liver cirrhosis or traffic accidents, but also several types of cancer, such as female breast cancer,” said Shield.

The epidemic rise in female drinking is the topic of the first roundtable discussion featuring top alcohol experts who are meeting March 8 — International Women’s Day — at One Yonge St. in Toronto.

When it comes to illegal drugs, it's more likely that the prohibition is more dangerous.

$1:

The heroin was looking different than past product. It had a more grainy kind of consistency and some of them were reacting quite badly to it."

MacDonald said officers started asking questions when the provincial health officer issued a warning in May about 23 deaths related to the opioid fentanyl, which was being sold to heroin users. The warning said fentanyl presented a significantly higher risk of overdose and was the cause of an epidemic of deaths in Chicago in 2006 in which 342 people died.

$1:

The provincial coroner’s office is investigating the two deaths while the Peterborough health unit is trying to determine if the people who fell ill ingested the same batch as those who died.

Officials haven’t been able to find any tainted cocaine but say those who have become sick are showing signs of infection that could be caused by the veterinary drug Levemisole.

Regional coroner Roger Skinner said the practice of cutting cocaine with Levemisole is widespread in North America because the two substances look and behave similarly.

“It looks and behaves like cocaine, but you don’t have to have as much cocaine in it, so there’s benefit to the producers,” said Skinner. “There’s some evidence that it might also on its own create some sense of euphoria.”

etc...

We've seen legal injection sites have drastic positive effects at reducing death, but our government attacks them. Every once in a while you hear about a province trying to do something to reduce alcohol abuse, but never ever ever ever ever from this federal government.



Why?

Stephen Harper Doesn't Drink Alcohol, Except When He Does

$1:

At an event last week at which he cracked jokes about Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau's plan to legalize pot, the prime minister said "I don’t drink alcohol, but I have lots of friends who do," according to The National Post.

Mr. Prime Minister, your pants are on fire!

[DrCaleb]

And why would you give Molson Canadian to someone you wanted to continue to like you?

[Unsound]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

And why would you give Molson Canadian to someone you wanted to continue to like you?

I'm willing to take that as proof that he actually doesn't drink. He'd know better if he did.

[Curtman]

Canadian researchers find illegal drugs more plentiful despite police seizures

$1:

Illegal drugs like cocaine, cannabis and heroin have generally become cheaper, purer and more potent than ever, despite a global increase in drug seizures over the past two decades, according to a new study led by Canadian researchers.

The findings, published Monday in the medical journal BMJ Open, provide the “first global snapshot” of progress made by the four decade-long war on drugs, said senior author Dr. Evan Wood, a University of British Columbia professor and Canadian research chair in inner city medicine.

And the picture that emerges, he said, is one of total failure.

“By every metric, the war on drugs — which is estimated to have cost North Americans over the last 40 years over a trillion dollars — has really been hugely ineffective,” says Wood, who is also the founder of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy. “Drugs are more freely and easily available in our society than they’ve ever been.”

Woods said that drug-bust press conferences — with their predictable stacks of drugs, cash and guns — are often used to reassure the public that progress is being made in the war on drugs. However, he and his co-researchers wanted to test this message by actually measuring the impact of drug seizures around the world.

Using data collected by seven government drug surveillance systems, the researchers looked for trends in drug prices and purity — both of which are proxy indicators for measuring drug supply, which is virtually impossible to get accurate data on. (The logic is that the greater the supply, the cheaper the price and the more pure the drug, since sellers are less motivated to dilute their product and increase yields.)

What they found was that between 1990 and 2007 (the last year for which data is publically available), the average purity of heroin and cocaine in the United States increased by 60 per cent and 11 per cent, respectively; cannabis, meanwhile, became 161 per cent more potent. Over the same time period, these drugs also became cheaper, with average heroin and cocaine prices dropping by 81 and 80 per cent, respectively, and cannabis 86 per cent cheaper than it was two decades ago. (All prices have been adjusted for inflation and purity.)

Meanwhile, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has been busier than ever, seizing 720,000 kilograms of cannabis in 2010 — up 465 per cent from the 130,000 kilograms it seized in 1990. The amount of heroin taken into DEA custody also increased by 29 per cent, although the amount of cocaine seized decreased by 49 per cent.

Data from European countries and Australia showed similar trends, with drugs generally also becoming cheaper and more potent as seizures increased. Canadian data was omitted from the study, however, because Canada only started collecting the relevant data in 2008, according to lead author Dan Werb.

While the available data was often patchy, and the statistical significance of the findings varied across regions and drug categories, the overall picture was clear, Werb said.

“There just did not seem to be any correlation between seizures and drug supply,” said Dan Werb, a research co-ordinator with the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy and affiliate scientist with St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.

Werb said the current strategy of stopping the supply of drugs is like looking for a needle in a haystack. The entire annual supply of drugs trafficked into the U.S. from Mexico can fit into just 60 trucks, he said — and 5.5 million trucks drive through the largest border crossing every year.

Both Werb and Wood said their study reinforces the argument that policymakers need to recast the drug issue as a matter of public health rather than law enforcement — and that progress should be measured not by the kilograms of drugs seized, but with indicators like fatal overdoses and disease transmission amongst drug users.

“These are actually measures that will likely have a greater impact on community health and safety,” Werb said. “For all the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent on reducing the supply of drugs, there really are no answers (there).”