Funding set for advanced drug-testing system The planned supervised injection site at the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre will include world-class drug-testing technology. With funding from the Canadian Institute of Health Research, the program will be able to operate a mass spectrometry machine, which can determine the chemical makeup of users' drugs, Lynne Leonard of the Ontario HIV Treatment Network announced Thursday. Drug-testing services are themselves rare, and it is even rarer for harm-reduction organizations to offer testing as technically advanced as mass spectrometry. The system at Sandy Hill will be the first of its kind in Ontario. [continues 87 words]
Pop-up injection site location to be disclosed Friday Ottawa's first pop-up supervised injection site will open Friday. The group Overdose Prevention Ottawa (OPO) will make the announcement Thursday morning but will not disclose its location ahead of operations, which are scheduled to begin Friday. "We're going to do exactly what Toronto did and not disclose our location until we set it up," said Marilou Gagnon, associate professor at the University of Ottawa School of Nursing and volunteer with OPO. [continues 135 words]
For Ottawa residents, getting a naloxone kit to help protect against overdose deaths is as easy as finding a pharmacy and going through a 30-minute information session. Across the river in Gatineau, however, the situation is much different. The Ministry of Health and Social Services in Quebec does not provide funding for naloxone kits like its Ontario counterpart. Some municipal public health units, like Sante Montreal, provide kits, but only within that specific city. For residents of cities like Gatineau, where neither the province nor the municipality provides coverage for naloxone, drug users may be left in the lurch. [continues 147 words]
June a record for number of people treated for overdoses At least 134 people were admitted to Ottawa emergency departments for suspected drug overdoses during the month of June, according to data from Ottawa Public Health, as the overdose crisis continues to deepen in Ontario. That brings the number to at least 735 emergency room visits in 2017 - a 25 per cent increase in overdoses compared with the same period in 2016. In the final week of June, 42 people were treated for overdoses, the highest number of cases since Ottawa began recording the data in late 2015. During the first week of July, the number dipped slightly to 35. [continues 212 words]
The queen of Canada's movement to legalize marijuana has not been afraid to cultivate her undeniable girl-next-door charm - or invite controversy - for the cause. And now, an escalating series of police raids that have shut down the Cannabis Culture chain Jodie Emery types eagerly on her iPhone. "This is a good one," she says. We're barely a minute into our interview at a small Ethiopian restaurant near the gay village, and she's on Twitter calling out Toronto police. It's absurd, she says, that they're spending resources raiding marijuana dispensaries with legalization just around the bend. Where the TPS is concerned, Emery can be forgiven for seeming a bit spiteful. It's just shy of three weeks since she and her husband, Marc Emery, who's riding shotgun tonight, were arrested at Pearson International Airport (on their way to a marijuana expo in Spain) and slapped with a string of marijuana-related offences - 15 for him, five for her, ranging from trafficking to possession of the proceeds of crime to conspiracy - after raids on their Cannabis Culture stores. [continues 1500 words]
Police crackdown on Cannabis Culture dispensaries clouds future of Prince of Pot The faint smell of marijuana smoke hung in the halls of Old City Hall on Friday, March 10; dozens had turned out for the bail hearing of Cannabis Culture dispensary owners Marc and Jodie Emery. Bail conditions for Cannabis Culture's Marc Emery include his not being involved in operation of the stores. The "Prince and Princess of Pot" were arrested, along with Chris Goodwin, Erin Goodwin and Britney Guerra, on Wednesday night and charged with a raft of marijuana-related offences, including trafficking and possession of the proceeds of crime. The arrests were part of Project Gator, a nationwide operation coordinated by Toronto police specifically targeting six Cannabis Culture locations in Toronto and Hamilton and Cannabis Culture's magazine offices in Vancouver, where computers were seized but no charges were laid against staff. Two Cannabis Culture stores in Ottawa were also raided, although police say those were not connected to Project Gator. [continues 617 words]
