Question for CEO of Interior Health

[Bsuds]

Most people would be surprised by the amount of immigrant doctors that haven't even passed the appropriate exams to be practicing in Canada, yet there they are seeing patients and writing prescriptions. (Knowledge from first hand experience

From what I have read that's just poppycock! I'm not saying one can't fit through the cracks but Foreign Dr's have a difficult time practicing in Canada without passing all the criteria.

As to Nurse Practitioners I deal with one and they may be very educated but are no where near a Doctor and mostly just follow what they are told to do. (at least the one I know)

My Doctor came from South Africa and is great.

[voice of reason]

i dont buy the liberal nonsense that it is cheaper to let these scumbags shoot up at an injection site in the long run.that is boloney.the effort of the government should be towards rehab and recovery not keeping junkies high and making it easier for them to get high.these losers get free needles and now an injection site.most of them get free or cheap methadone.what they kind of sweep under the rug is the real cost to society the massive property crime epidemic that fuels the drug trade.the street level prostitution that buys the drugs.the entire dirty filthy part of the underworld relies on these addicts stealing our stuff .on top of that the yall get a welfare check that is blown immediately on drugs .the amount of money wasted on these people is unreal.the contribute zero to society.but somehow the government hold their hand .when these low lifes go to jail they give them methadone so they dont get sick.instead of spending 6 months or a year being sober and coming out to a second chance at life they get out and are still an addict.first thing they do is go back to getting high and resume the life of theft an devastation of their own family.

[liisgo]

[/quote]

But doing this will cost us more as tax payers. Whether or not you agree with this services is fine but do you want to pay more in taxes just to "screw the junkies"?[/quote]

Wrong, that,s nothing more than a created support campaign to justify the completely failed attempt to deal with this problem.
The costs are sky rocketing. The services are sky rocking. The hospitals, emergency services are being completely drained dealing with this. Your Tax paid emergency services are being reduced every single day because of the massive growth of this.
What your not told, whats not including in their sell job to you is all the millions of dollars, services, wait times, service cuts, crime, attention to care is being diminished drastically. Most OD deaths occur at home. For every one Junkie that actually ends up being cured 100's more get evicted.
You give free drugs, a free pass from the legal system, the more this grows.
Its completely failed, we have failed us and them.

[voice of reason]

Its completely failed, we have failed us and them

this is important.the system is not doing the junkies any favours either.their best interests ant the best interests of their families would be to incarcerate and release them sober.if it is not in the tax payers best interest and not in the addicts best interest then who benefits from this and why are we doing it?

[WeatherWoman]

I am still searching for the BC stats. But here is one information on financial cost for Ontario:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/s ... -1.3344331

Opening five safe-injection sites in Ontario makes financial sense, says a medical researcher who based his study on a Vancouver clinic where drug users shoot up under supervision.

Dr. Ahmed Bayoumi of St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto said establishing facilities such as Insite in that city and in Ottawa would save money and reduce the incidence of diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C.
...
"So preventing hepatitis C becomes particularly important because it helps avert those costs that would otherwise be incurred by the health-care system," he said.

[voice of reason]

they are still going to get hep c from the 5000 other times they inject that are not at a safe injection site or from the high risk lifestyle they lead.its not like every junkie in town lines up at the safe injection site patiently waiting their turn to safely inject under supervision.it is a liberal pipedream

[JayByrd]

IHA's mandate is to keep people alive. As muddled and misguided as they often are, it's what they're trying to do.

By not allowing smoking on hospital grounds, they are trying to protect the health of people who work there or have been admitted there. They're not trying to prevent smokers from smoking.

By allowing the addicted to use in a maintained environment, they are trying to protect the health of the addicted by giving them safety and access to resources. They're not trying to prevent users from using.

They're not participating in the argument on the ROI of a live addict vs. a dead one. They're not participating in the argument of allowing someone do to something that's technically illegal. Alive person > Dead person is the only equation at play.

If you think this is a waste of time and resources, you're entitled to that opinion. You're certainly not alone.

[WeatherWoman]

they are still going to get hep c from the 5000 other times they inject that are not at a safe injection site or from the high risk lifestyle they lead.its not like every junkie in town lines up at the safe injection site patiently waiting their turn to safely inject under supervision.it is a liberal pipedream

and you know this for sure? Lets see your studies.

[GordonH]

At the rate things are going this issue is going to bankrupt the health care Ministry, something more then just dumping money into this needs to be done.

[Because_They_Lie]

The government gives free herion, even though it is illegal. Your kid gets busted with a few joints and gets a record. What a freak show!

[Seriously?]

Seriously the uninformed opinions on this thread are stunning in their ignorance. No point in trying to inform minds that are closed and unwilling to consider any other view but their own. Truly sad

[mjc0483]

The government gives free herion, even though it is illegal. Your kid gets busted with a few joints and gets a record. What a freak show!

Spot on! A 15 year old kid being a young *bleep* will get a record for having a few joints but a 50-year-old man with life experience who KNOWS better can stroll into a safe injection site and do illegal drugs far worse than weed, funded by the government. Makes so much sense! Ugh...

[WeatherWoman]

https://www.thefix.com/content/decrim-n ... ears-later

... brave step of decriminalizing possession of all drugs within its borders—from marijuana to heroin, and everything in between.

Surprisingly, most credible reports appear to show that decriminalization has been a staggering success.

Portugal eventually found itself with the lowest rates of marijuana usage in people over 15 in the EU: about 10%. Compare this to the 40% of people over 12 who regularly smoke pot in the U.S., a country with some of the most punitive drugs laws in the developed world. Drug use of all kinds has declined in Portugal: Lifetime use among seventh to ninth graders fell from 14.01% to 10.6%. Lifetime heroin use among 16-18 year olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8%. And what about those horrific HIV infection rates that prompted the move in the first place? HIV infection rates among drug users fell by an incredible 17%, while drug related deaths were reduced by more than half.

[Osoyoos_Familyof4]

I have entered this particular fray so many times on this issue that I will just keep the extraneous opinion to myself, but here is some information.

~ There is no "free heroin". There is some talk of it, but with the exception of less than a hundred addicts in the lower Mainland there is no "free heroin". The heroin that is given to less than a hundred addicts in Vancouver is a pilot project that is being trialed because there are some chronic addicts who have not proven successful despite multiple attempts at treatment. These are the chronic of the chronic who have co-morbidities and are already a huge drain on "the system".

~ Nobody in addiction treatment services see "free heroin" as the goal. It is a response to a deadly crisis because of fentanyl. It is hoped that addicts may be more successfully weaned off heroin by giving small manageable amounts of it on a declining scale at best. At worst, it is hoping to allow the worst of the worst to "maintain" and not keep going through withdrawl and the host of physical and social problems that come from unmanaged-withdrawl.

~ Safe injection sites puts a community into a place where they can with greater accuracy get a scope of the problem, who is using what, who is selling the "dangerous" stuff that is killing people etc. It also allows a worker to notice simple skin irritations because of needles that are about to explode with infection (which costs way more to treat if it becomes a serious infection) and to introduce a community healthcare nurse to treat it.

The next poster who continues THE LIE that FREE HEROIN is "a thing" is nothing more than a troll who can't disseminate fact from fiction. Some addiction service people may have the opinion that free heroin is the way to go, but there is no current agency operating under that idea, nor have any credible resources in this province anyway suggest that they intend to actually do this. Just because some activist has said they want it, doesn't mean it's going to happen. Right now it's a real nice media story that media jumps on because it's a lightening rod.

[the truth]

you just admitted that they are giving free heroin to about 100 junkies,so they are giving free heroin thank you for your honesty

100 will become 1,000 and 1,000 will becoming 10,000 etc etc give it time

giving junkies free heroin hoping to get them on the methadone program for the rest of there lives so they can be living zombies is not helping , all they are doing is changing one poison for another

the only winner here is big pharma $$$$$$$$$$$, and anyone in the health industry that gets to keep there jobs because of now having methadone clients

http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/cri ... 0ad6a40214