opioids

In 2021, the Vancouver-based Drug User Liberation Front approached Health Canada with a proposal.

Canada's mental health and addictions minister believes fear and stigma are driving criticism of the government's decision to support prescribing pharmaceuticals to drug users to combat the country's overdose crisis.

A recent court injunction against a law to restrict public drug use in British Columbia denies police a much-anticipated enforcement tool, says a top law enforcement official.

A study published recently in the journal Nature Communications Medicine found that temperature spikes due to climate change have led to a marked increase in the number of hospital visits for alcohol-related disorders — such as alcohol poisoning, alcohol withdrawal, and alcohol-induced sleep disorders — in New York state.

Pierre Poilievre and other prominent conservatives spent months talking up Alberta's approach to drug addiction and treatment. Now that the data has turned against them, will they put their ideological approach aside or just double down?

The co-founder of a network of mothers whose children died of drug overdoses says she wants to speak with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre about his opposition to prescribing a safer supply of opioids to those living with addiction.

A small Yukon First Nation says it's dealing with an "opioid emergency" that is terrorizing citizens and families with violence, crime, overdoses and death.

British Columbia Premier David Eby says he is "astonished" that Health Canada has granted a cannabis company the right to possess, produce, sell and distribute cocaine.

Decriminalization of people with small amounts of illegal drugs for their own use has become a reality in British Columbia, but substance users and researchers say the change is expected to make little immediate difference because of a toxic drug supply.

Eris Nyx, co-founder of the Drug User Liberation Front, said regulating the illicit supply is the answer to stopping drug toxicity deaths, which have topped 10,000 in British Columbia since the province declared a public health emergency more than six years ago.

Last month, British Columbia became the first jurisdiction in Canada to make changes to ensure drug users will not be arrested or charged for carrying up to 2.5 grams of illicit drugs as of next year.

Hundreds of thousands of high school students in Canada will be given training on how to respond to someone overdosing on opioids, including on how to inject naloxone — a drug used to reverse the effects of overdoses.

The only people who seem to oppose this long-overdue change in drug strategy are the ones who keep talking about how much they love freedom and liberty.

The federal government's decision on British Columbia's drug decriminalization threshold was based on police input, says Canada’s minister of mental health and addictions.

A former federal health minister who championed decriminalization in Canada says a three-year model approved for British Columbia may not provide ample evidence to ensure the success of a policy that should have been implemented across the country.