Protesters carrying signs saying "Injustice is fatal!" laid dozens of white carnations next to a coffin on the steps of Montreal City Hall Tuesday, each representing a life lost to a drugoverdose. A coalition of community groups, crisis workers, activists and drug users held a demonstration demanding the government repeal drug laws that marginalize drug users. They also held a moment of silence - joining several vigils held simultaneously across Canada. The opioid crisis claimed nearly 3,000 lives in 2016, and the estimated death toll last year is pegged at 4,000 people. [continues 426 words]
No one forced Junior Hernandez to swallow the fentanyl, his grieving partner says, but did he understand it could kill him? Part Four in a series of profiles about the escalating opioid crisis in Quebec. Before his partner Junior Hernandez died of a fentanyl-related overdose, Christophe Cote says he didn't know much about the drug. Just before dawn, Junior Hernandez and his sky-is-the-limit friends spilled out of a downtown bar. They were heading to a friend's place to continue the revelry - drinking, doing coke and ecstasy. Once the drugs ran out, they called a dealer, hopping a taxi to his place. There, they found a stash of tiny, unfamiliar pills called fentanyl. The party ended hours later with Hernandez, 35, lying on a cold slab in a Montreal morgue. Hernandez didn't see the end coming. Neither did his friends. [continues 1346 words]
Part One in a series of profiles about the escalating opioid crisis in Quebec. Martin Pare's fascination with syringes started as a child at a racetrack. He saw a veterinarian stick a needle in a horse's neck. What's he doing? the boy asked his father. It's to make the horse run faster, his father replied. After the horse won his race, the boy furtively took the needle and empty vial from the garbage. At home, he filled his syringe with water and began injecting his toy stuffed animals. [continues 1658 words]
With just enough methadone to last the trip home to Montreal, Melodie was in a panic that she'd missed her flight. She was in Paris, and her supply of prescription methadone, a medicine that helps lower cravings and withdrawal symptoms caused by opiate use, was about to run out. Without it, she worried about a relapse, going into the street in desperation, and doing something dangerous for a fix. But an online search brought her to a Parisian mobile health clinic. And they welcomed her. They gave her the methadone that she needed to stay sober. There was no bureaucracy, no delay, and no prescription signed by someone in authority - just instant help. [continues 538 words]
Montreal researchers have found a new role for cannabinoids. The active ingredient in marijuana - which is also naturally present in the human body - seems to improve night vision in vertebrates. The study by a multidisciplinary team including researchers from the Montreal Neurological Institute looked at changes in tadpole retinas after exposure to cannabinoids. "We didn't believe what we were seeing - exactly the opposite of what we expected," said neurologist Ed Ruthazer, of the Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University, and the paper's senior author. [continues 409 words]
Canadian study explored local scene and its link to high-risk behaviour "There was so much crack in the neighbourhood that users and outreach workers nicknamed the area Rochelaga." When anthropologist Nelson Arruda explored an east-end Montreal neighbourhood, he expected to find shooting galleries - dark, clandestine places where people inject drugs - and sex slaves addicted to the next high. What he found in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve were crack houses - located every three blocks, and concentrated on a stretch spanning 20 streets - - governed according to strict rules that included a ban on injecting and prostitutes who on the surface operated independently. [continues 1294 words]
Coderre Vows to Push Ahead Without Ottawa's Approval It will save lives, and that's been proven at 90 different (drug injection) sites around the world. Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre would like to see supervised injection sites introduced in the city by this fall, whether the federal government grants the required exemption to the groups involved in the project or not. "What are we waiting for? People are dying," Coderre said Thursday at a news conference. Montreal gave the safe-injection project the green light two years ago in 2013 - approval for three sites and a mobile unit where serious drug addicts can legally and safely inject themselves. The goal is to reduce death from overdose and HIV and other infections from dirty needles, Coderre said. [continues 644 words]
Pot seems to ease pain, but for which conditions and at what dose? A study led by Mark Ware aims to fill that gap Curled on the floor retching, Tzvetanka Chiderova yelled for her mother to get the water pipe. Within minutes, the Montreal web-designer stopped gagging. The waves of nausea disappeared, she said. "It was instantaneous," said Chiderova, who turned to marijuana for medicinal purposes as a last resort while being treated for stomach cancer. Without it, she says, she could not have continued with life-saving chemotherapy. [continues 813 words]
Montreal family physician Michael Dworkind first saw enormous benefits of marijuana in patients with human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immune deficiency syndrome. They were suffering from nausea, weight loss, inflammation, moodiness, insomnia and a host of aches. "I could see the devastation," recalled Dworkind, who specializes in palliative care at the Jewish General Hospital, yet some suddenly got their appetite back and improved their overall health. "'Well, doctor,' they said, 'I had a toke,' " Dworkind said. Turns out that what worked with HIV/AIDs also improved the lives of seriously ill cancer patients. [continues 783 words]
Opening First Medical Marijuana Clinic Was Premature, Barrette Says Rules imposed by Ottawa last spring put physicians in a rough position of operating in the dark when it comes to prescribing marijuana, Quebec Health Minister Gaetan Barrette said after Montreal's first medical marijuana clinic opened its doors to patients Tuesday. There could be accidents, Barrette told reporters, since marijuana did not go though the usual drug approval process: "We're experimenting. What is happening today is total experimentation." Doctors are unsure of dosages, Barrette said, but stopped short of demanding the Sante Cannabis clinic be shuttered. [continues 464 words]
As of April, Health Canada gave doctors the go-ahead to prescribe medical marijuana, but to which patient and at what dose? It was put in the hands of physicians who did not know what to prescribe "for lack of hard evidence," says Denis deBlois, Universite de Montreal professor of pharmacy and co-director of a research group on medication. Marijuana for therapeutic reasons remains controversial. Few clinical trials have evaluated its effects. Which conditions does it help? There's a strict process of evaluation of risk-to-benefit ratio before Health Canada gives its stamp of approval to a medication, but that's not the case for marijuana, said deBlois, a co-organizer of a one-day symposium on medical marijuana that takes place Friday and brings together experts in pain management, addiction, and drug monitoring. [continues 402 words]
As part of a health research project, nursing professor-turned filmmaker Barbara Moffat was interviewing teens who smoked cigarettes. But they were more interested in talking about pot. "They said, 'Why don't you ask us about marijuana? It's much easier to get,'" Moffat recalled Thursday from her Vancouver office at the University of British Columbia. Bolstered by a five-year federal government grant to study youth and cannabis in three major areas, Vancouver, Vancouver Island, and the Kootenay region of B.C., Moffat's team turned their research results into a film. Cycles will be making its Quebec debut (with French subtitles) at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Friday. [continues 416 words]
Marijuana Found to Slow Recovery Drug abuse really does have a negative impact on youth with psychiatric disorders, and at least one illicit drug, marijuana, should be raising alarms bells, researchers warn after presenting preliminary results Friday from a two-year Montreal study. A hands-on team, created by the Centre hospitalier de l'Universite de Montreal 15 years ago to help troubled youth with psychosis, held a conference at Notre-Dame Hospital to present treatment innovations. Psychosis is described as a loss of contact with reality. Symptoms include visual and auditory hallucinations, confusion, delirium, bizarre thoughts and these are often accompanied by anxiety and panic attacks. [continues 1021 words]
The first thing patients get in the vestibule of a hidden Montreal medical marijuana centre is a wail-tagging welcome from a rescue border collie called Maybe. The inner sanctum - kitchen with stainless steel appliances and banner featuring a dove carrying a marijuana leaf - has a faint odour of pot. The baking menu on this day includes pumpkin honey cannabis cake using marijuana-infused olive oil. Welcome to a reincarnation of the Montreal compassion club, which has rejected "compassion" in favour of "dispensary" because patients have a right to medication, says Adam Greenblatt, head of the Montreal Medical Cannabis Access Society. [continues 591 words]
A Survivor of Incest and Abuse, Francois Found Relief in Marijuana. His Doctor and Psychiatrist Agree He Needs It. but He's Caught in A Grey Area and Can't Get It Legally It was a Thursday afternoon, June 3, 2010, and Francois was about to knock on the door of the Montreal marijuana compassion club when he saw a sign that made his heart race. Closed. By police. So he ran straight to the mountain to his old scoring grounds in search of a pot dealer. As he got closer, he heard someone whistle - a warning. [continues 1497 words]
Medical marijuana study by McGill University is the first of its kind to prove the pain-relieving benefits of cannabis Chris's pain relief lies in half a cookie made with marijuana, eaten every two hours, plus one or two puffs off a joint on the hour and the occasional pot lollipop. Chris started using legal marijuana, furnished by Health Canada, to dampen constant pain and improve sleep and mood, after a violent car accident shattered the bones in his face. [continues 743 words]
MONTREAL -- Giving heroin to hardcore drug addicts at a Montreal clinic did not sully the surrounding neighbourhood with undesirables, used syringes, graffiti, drug trafficking or petty crime, a study suggests. Research by Serge Brochu of the University of Montreal's School of Criminology on the impact of a pilot drug-treatment program on area residents and merchants found no link between medical heroin and crime. The preliminary results of a groundbreaking study conducted in Vancouver called NAOMI (North American Opiate Medication Initiative) had already found that giving "untreatable" addicts their daily fix helped stabilize their lives and improve their health. [continues 214 words]
High Incidence. Drug Use Complicates Psychiatric Treatment, Conference Told The mix of mental illness and drug addiction is an explosive cocktail, Mont-real researchers said yesterday. An estimated 33 to 50 per cent patients treated for serious psychiatric disorders also suffer from drug and alcohol addiction problems, Universite de Montreal researcher Stephane Potvin said at a conference at Louis-H. Lafontaine Hospital. Research shows that the mentally ill become dependent more quickly and they tend to abuse drugs more easily, Potvin said after presented his findings at the three-day conference. [continues 327 words]
MONTREAL -- Seeking seriously motivated pot users -- in a lot of pain. Montreal's McGill University is heading a year-long, Canadawide study on the safety of cannabis used for medical purposes. Recreational potheads need not apply. Seven pain clinics across the country are now enrolling patients for this study, considered a first of its kind, lead investigator Mark Ware of the McGill University Health Centre, said Wednesday. "We obviously can't take in every cannabis user that's got a little bit of back pain. It has to be people who are critically in a lot of pain and whose other therapies are failing them," Ware said. "Physicians know who these people are." [continues 344 words]
McGill lAunches Nationwide Study Seeking seriously motivated pot users - in a lot of pain. McGill University is heading a yearlong, Canada-wide study on the safety of cannabis used for medical purposes. Recreational potheads need not apply. Seven participating pain clinics across the country are enrolling patients for this study, considered the first of its kind, lead investigator Mark Ware of the McGill University Health Centre said yesterday. "We obviously can't take in every cannabis user that's got a little bit of back pain. It has to be people who are critically in a lot of pain and whose other therapies are failing them," Ware said. "Physicians know who these people are." [continues 371 words]
