Health committee  Sure. I mentioned it in my talk, but I think one of the big issues is the rise of phenyl-2-propanone meth. I said that earlier in my introduction. When they were making crystal meth.... There are two enantiomers, two types. They're like handedness. The l-methamphetamine is a na

Health committee  I want to take my opinion out of this and I just want to look at what the government has produced. There is a document called “Youth Unregulated Drug Toxicity Deaths in British Columbia”. What they looked at were the years 2017-2022. What they found was that, if you looked at the

Health committee  I would tell them that any sort of opioid is addictive, and that with something like hydromorphone, if you become tolerant, you might actually move on to more dangerous things like fentanyl—to be careful around any sort of opioid use.

Health committee  I have not been in Portugal.

Health committee  One thing that's important is that I don't think we should rule out any intervention outright, but we need to apply the precautionary principle in the development of such protocols. What does that mean? There is an author, Nassim Taleb, who produced a paper in 2010. What he said

Health committee  I think we definitely need to have a 360° view in these things. We need to look at the upsides and downsides, not just for the treatment population, but when you're looking at the supply of addictive drugs you have to look at the population writ large. In the nineties, when phys

Health committee  Sure. There's a lot to unpack, and I'll start with the last point you were mentioning. When you look at schizophrenia, one of the most robust statistics that we have on it is that about 1% of the population will have schizophrenia. In British Columbia, where there are about 5 m

Health committee  I work in addictions and I also work in forensics. I do both. There are education campaigns to help people understand the toxicity of the drugs out there, but there are other programs available. For instance, in Iceland they had a program where they gave vouchers to families to

Health committee  I think it's taking all the information in, and comparing what happened with Portugal. Again, in Portugal it wasn't public drug use that was allowed; it was that either you would face legal sanctions or you would go into treatment. Seeing what's happened in Oregon as well, and al

Health committee  Sure. Thanks for the question. Something that would worry me is that what is provided will not be able to compete with the illicit market. The illicit market is often described as a "poison" drug supply. From the data available, it seems the market is supplying the demand of the

Health committee  Sure. One thing that we should look at is the supply of opioids in a population. If you look at the countries that had the highest overdose rates in 2020, the number one country was the United States of America. I think it was around 271 deaths per million population. This is als

Health committee  I'll start with decriminalization. If you look at decriminalization, there are different models for it. It's important to distinguish the two. For instance, you had a model like Oregon's, which was very similar to what they did in Vancouver, where they allowed public drug use. Wh

Health committee  For anti-psychotic medication, you will find that if someone has a substance-induced psychosis and they have an anti-psychotic medication on board, the anti-psychotic medication won't prevent their from becoming psychotic. Earlier in my talk I spoke about a kindling effect that

Health committee  Regarding cannabis use in Canada, we've seen in an increase in cannabis use disorder. We've also seen an increase in ER visits for psychosis related to cannabis. Legalization of cannabis hasn't decreased that. However, a balance needs to be struck. Has that downside been outweig

Health committee  That is a large question. Psychosis is a symptom and a loss of touch with reality. These could be fixed false-beliefs, which are delusions, or it could be hallucinations, which are false sensory perceptions, or you could have disorganized thought. Whether someone has an intrins