IWhoever thought this out is a mf-ing genius.....FailFish

:facepalm:
FFS

mfw i don't live in Vancouver anymore

:awwyeah:

Haha. Hilarious how this comes at a time when we were just discussing in another thread how Out-of-bounds skiiers should/shouldn't have to pay for the costs related to their rescue.

I'm 100% more in favor of paying for saving the life of a lost outdoor enthusiast (who 99.9% of the time will not make the same mistake twice), than a drug addict (who will probably make the same mistake next week as well).

For the record the statement above does not mean I am entirely against paying for extra help dealing with this fentanyl problem, but I think people will admit there is a lot more willful ignorance by a drug user than a skiier who gets stuck out of bounds.

Drug addicts making the same mistake next week?
I'm hearing stories of these junkies getting revived from OD's 3 to 4 times a day

Okay, at that point, we don't need to increase boots on the ground, or mobile vans with life saving equipment.

For a million bucks we need to build a small warehouse with 100 padded cells in it... That's how you would save a motherfuckers life in that case.

i wouldnt have such a problem with it if they actually came out and said exactly where the money will go

in typical Vancouver fasion enable a tax with zero plan

I hope the money goes towards the gentrification of the Downtown Eastside. :rant

Spend that money and mow down all those SRO's and put up glass towers for sale at market rates for the working class, thus earning more of that delicious property tax the local gov't loves so much. Do not mix social housing with market housing. Eliminate the stolen goods exchange that masquerades as the "DTES street market", Build some high rise social housing projects near the north end of the Oak Street bridge, south of Kent Street on that unused dirt and move the drug infused ghetto to a controlled neighbourhood with CCTV cameras.

I know, my ideas will never happen.

We can just throw more money at the DTES and continue to allow the dealers to keep flooding the DTES with fentanyl and use this money so first responders get relief and the same addict can get revived for the 3rd time in a day. SeemsGood

I rather pay a bit more on a tax that I get an idea where the money is going than paying taxes that I have no idea where the surplus went (ie: all the $ the government raked in from the housing market).

i'm thanking and failing you at the same time. I agree with most of your points, but don't put that shit in marpole. it's already gregor's dumping ground. LEAVE MARPOLE ALONE.

that's b/c your head would explode from rage/anger if you found out how it was actually being spent. SwiftRage LUL

You mean in the next hour right @@

why don't we instead of spending millions dollars on bike lanes and instead use it to help fight the drug crisis...

Diluting/repackaging is the problem. No drug dealer is gonna cut one pill at a time and mix the perfect amount per pill. They will just grind it up and mix it in batches. When they repackage the pill. They really don't know how much is fent or w/e they diluted it with...

Money won't do anything to change our drug problem.

Policy and stigma change will.

When they mix it, the filler and fent isn't uniformly distributed either. So it makes the problem worse because every pill is a different dose.

Different drug, same principle.


Holy shit just watched that Vice video OP posted. Depressing af. Damn man, people with addiction struggle everyday. Even the addicts say it, OD or quit. That seems to be the only reasonable way to address this. The video says that people that want to recover have to want it themselves, you can't do the work for them. I believe that's 100% true.

The drug is going to naloxone for first responders... I know guys who administer upwards of 20 naloxone kits in a single shift now... Sometimes a person has so much in their system they need 3+ doses! Then they go to the hospital and the next day theyw're back out and Od'd on fentanyl again. It's literally a crisis at this point.

If anything this will finally push the government toward regulating drugs somehow.

but bike lanes are very important

a bit late to this thread.. but i have a bit of unique perspective on the issue. i'm a paramedic and i also work in dispatch operations with BC Ambulance Service.

there's some people in this thread who are suggesting that are suggesting that this problem will go away eventually if we just let junkies die, etc. as someone who's basically dedicated their career to saving lives (or at least try), i couldn't disagree more.

every human life is worth something, to someone, everyone has mothers, fathers, kids, siblings, family, friends who care about them. the fact is that these people made a wrong decision in life and with so many of these people we've brought back, they're telling us that they WANT to get clean, and they WANT to stop, but maybe what some of you haven't seen in real life before is that these people NEED their next fix or else they have real, physical, sometimes life threatening symptoms from withdrawal, and this withdrawal is so bad that even though they fully know their next hit could be their last with the whole fentanyl thing, they still HAVE to go for it.

what's the solution? i don't know, that's above my pay grade (though i think the problem begins at the border). what i DO know is that letting these people die is definitely not the answer.

as for the property tax increase to fight this crisis, FYI its going straight to the first responders, aka Vancouver Fire & Rescue. they are funding a 3 man full time medic truck (not naloxone/narcan, which is a dirt cheap drug), which is complete bullshit because right now what we lack is not firefighters, it's paramedics. ambulances are often in vancouver funneled from as far as mission and agassiz and even further because of how busy we are. a normal 12 hour shift in vancouver generally means you leave the station at the beginning, and you don't make it back to quarters until past the end of your shift. whereas firefighters will actually get sleep on a night shift. to put things in perspective, there are a total of 6 ambulance stations in proper vancouver, and 20 fire halls.

of course, this is getting a little too deep in the political rivalry between fire and paramedics. but the fact is, we don't NEED firefighters to attend medical emergencies. the only reason they do now is 1) maintain their massive funding because there simply aren't that many fires anymore and 2) they can often get to a scene faster than us because of how busy we are and how many ambulances we actually lack. they don't have the medical training and tools like we do, and it's in the best interest of patient care to leave medical emergencies to us.

i will admit though that firefighters are much better at PR than the ambulance service which helps them a lot.

anyway enough of a rant, just thought you guys would like more perspective on this whole situation.

Great post Shorn, 100% agreed. There needs to be more paramedics/ambulances.

Paramedics need a calendar like firefighters.

Seriosusly though, everyone gets mad at firefighters getting all the prestige and the least of the work... police also feel the same way. The lack of emergency responders here has left it that a lot of the naloxone is being administered by police officers now. That's not right, they're not trained for this sort of stuff... something has to change pretty fast. Unfortunately, "fast" is not in a government's vocabulary.

Can I ask this: If you were to lock these people up and very closely administer them drugs as you wean them off. Would this work?

There has been articles in the past which have looked at this, and it is a solution the province employs. This article describes the issue of needing additional beds:

Are there enough beds for drug treatment in B.C.? - British Columbia - CBC News

If this solution is one that works, then I would happily pay an additional .5% tax (make it province wide), and instead of just reviving these junkies and letting them lose to trip on this shit an hour later, after you revive them handcuff them to a bed and re-rehabilitate the shit out of them.

What I don't like is the idea of paying taxes which only half-assed patch up the problem, and lets be clear I think that's exactly what the government does with everything.

The reason why these people continue to do this, is we afford them way too much luxury to do so. I mean it's like the son of rich parents, they give him everything in the world regardless of how much wrong or right he does, they bail him out of trouble whenever he gets into it, and support him no matter the travesty of what he does. At some point those parents need to cut that kid off and let him learn a lesson on his own.

Probably not a good metaphor as I am not condoning letting these junkies die in the streets, but what I am implying, is just reviving them and letting them loose in the streets again just to do that shit again isn't a solution either.

So basically what you're suggesting is involuntary rehab. I think this is done in some places in the US, and I'm not sure how well it works. I mean you can broadly divide repeat overdose victims into 2 groups, the people who want to stop but can't, and the people who have some sort of mental illness and does not want to stop at all. I think that involuntary rehab would work only for the first group, since the second group would be much more likely to relapse.

Now is it morally correct? Some would say that yes, these people lost their right to freedom when they started incurring costs for society. Others would argue that basic liberties such as being free from imprisonment should be guaranteed unless you've been convicted/charged of a crime.

Now legally, police can apprehend anybody that is acting in a manner that endangers their own or other's safety under the Mental Health Act section 28 (commonly known as being sectioned). Generally this is used for forcing mentally ill patients to go to the hospital with us, but I could foresee it being used for involuntary rehab as well.

So would it work? I think it would definitely cause a decrease in general of overdoses, but morally, I'm not so sure about. It would be a better use of funds than a shiny new fire truck though.

Nine people die of drug overdoses in Vancouver last night - NEWS 1130

9 people in one night.. damn. I thought 3 from the cold was bad enough

Just saw this myself. The 3 from the cold are sad. People froze to death. That's a shitty way to go. The overdose victims? :pokerface:

Berz out.