Oshawa is going through a “opiod crisis”, but the focus has been on the deaths, needles left in open spaces, junkies, tent cities, and not on the root cause of the conditions that brought this situation into the public sphere.
At a Special City Council Meeting, Lakeridge Health presented a their findings about the opiod crisis and case for Oshawa to be one of many Municipalities to host a Consumption and treatment Site (CTS).
I felt this proposed CTS was being rushed for political means to just say something is being done. This is just hubris, and false sense of security. I wanted to do my own research to gain a better understanding of what are opiods, why the addiction, when the opiod crisis started, who is to blame for it, and how it can be solved.
A while ago, I bought a book called, “Peaceful Measures : Canada’s way out of the war on drugs“, published by University of Toronto Press. This book is giving me a new insight, a new perspective, a new understanding about drugs, addiction, government policies, and conditions that create such cultural toxicity.
This book argues that Canada’s “war on drugs” has been a costly failure and should be replaced by “peaceful” measures for addressing the harmful effects of drug use.
Chapter 4 is called “A fresh look at heroin.” There are two factors it seems pharmacological and societal to heroin/opiod addition. These conclusions are drawn from research by doctors and addicts. And it seems a lot of what the general public knows about opiods is propaganda. Marijuana has been treated the same way, “reefer madness”, and through a good fight dis-spelling that propaganda through knowledge sharing and open mindhess, Canada Gov’t has made it legal to smoke marijuana recreationally.
I’m only just getting into this book, but it is changing my views about opiods, and the so called “opiod crisis” should be approach that opiod usage isn’t just a narcotic, but has medicinal purposes, analyzing the pharmacological and societal factors which the opiod crisis has been created from, reviewing the war on drugs policy in Canada, and how to plan a framework for safer usage of opiods.
Fear is due to a lack of understanding, so public needs to be engaged and informed about opioids and not demonizing our fellow citizens as junkies, vagrants, and keeping society fractured.
Inside Oshawa 