5425 replies to this topic

[Mike K.]

That area is a ground zero for public disorder, open drug use, trafficking and is home to the Ellice Street shelter, one block over from Allied Glass.

It’s a known major problem area.

[mbjj]

I've ventured downtown a couple of times lately. One Sunday I came up out of the Broughton St. parkade. The first six people I encountered were what I would describe as street people. Today I went to the Dutch Bakery. At least eight street people slumped between the Tim Hortons on Fort and the Dutch Bakery. It's just not a pleasant place to go. 

[Matt R.]

I had a run in (not literally) with one wobbly dude on a bicycle on bridge street last week, he shot across against the light from the tims or subway whatever is on gorge road now, bungied milk crate on the back and everything. He was swerving all over the place so I made sure to give lots of room when passing, but I guess he didn’t appreciate that as he caught up to me at the red light at Bay and laid his bike down in front of my car, lol. Took a photo or whatever and then started yelling at me. I just laid on the horn until he moved on.

[Mike K.]

From the province. Prescribed alternatives is the new phrase for “safe supply:”

The Province is completing the transition to new witnessed dosing requirements to address the diversion of prescribed alternatives, while maintaining access to the program for people who need it.

As of Dec. 30, 2025, all patients who have prescriptions for prescribed alternatives will be required to take their prescribed medication under the supervision of a health professional, such as a pharmacist or nurse, when the medication is dispensed at the pharmacy. This policy completes the transition, which started this year, to move patients to witnessed dosing.

“Prescribed alternatives save lives by separating people at highest risk of overdose from toxic street drugs and predatory drug dealers, and give people a chance to get into treatment,” said Josie Osborne, Minister of Health. “To ensure these medications are used as intended, we are moving to witnessed dosing for all patients, and we are supporting pharmacists and prescribers as they implement this change. We will continue to closely monitor the situation to make sure people struggling with addiction can access the care and treatment they need, while also ensuring that medications are being taken by the people they are prescribed for.”

To further ensure that the prescribed alternatives are being consumed by the intended patient, government policy and clinical guidance continue to emphasize the clinical tools prescribers should use to monitor for diversion, such as regular testing urine for drugs, for patients who qualify for an exemption to witnessed dosing.

Limited exemptions to witnessed dosing are in place for patients in exceptional circumstances. Regular clinical assessments are required as part of ongoing patient exemptions to confirm medication adherence for any doses that are not witnessed by a health professional.

Evidence shows that prescribed alternatives are helping keep people who are at the highest risk of drug poisoning alive so they can stabilize their lives and connect with care and treatment. A peer-reviewed study published in the British Medical Journal found that prescribed alternative opioid dispensations were associated with a 61% reduction in death, and a dispensation for four or more days was associated with a 91% reduction in death during the following week.

Prescriptions of hydromorphone through the Prescribed Alternatives program, which is the medication most at risk of diversion, have declined more than 50% from its peak of more than 4,500 clients in March 2023 to approximately 2,200 clients in July 2025.

The Prescribed Alternatives program helps save lives by separating people at the highest risk of overdose from toxic street drugs and predatory drug dealers. This is one part of government’s work to address the toxic-drug crisis and build a full continuum of mental-health and addictions care that works for everyone, including early intervention and prevention, treatment and recovery services, supportive and complex-care housing.

[Mike K.]

150 drug deaths in October. Province:

According to preliminary data, 150 people died in October 2025 due to unregulated drug toxicity, as reported by the BC Coroners Service.

The number of unregulated drug deaths in October equates to about 4.8 deaths per day. In 2025, deaths among those between the ages of 30 and 59 accounted for 70% of drug-toxicity deaths in the province, and 77% were male. Forty-eight per cent of deaths reported occurred in a private residence, compared with 21% outdoors.

By health authority, in 2025, the highest number of unregulated drug deaths were in the Fraser and Vancouver Coastal health authorities (448 and 408 deaths, respectively), making up 56% of all such deaths.

Fentanyl and its analogues continue to be the most common substance detected in expedited toxicological testing. Decedents who underwent expedited testing in 2025 were found to have fentanyl in their systems (69%), followed by fluorofentanyl (53%), cocaine (53%) and methamphetamine (52%). Smoking is the most common mode of consumption (65%), followed by nasal insufflation (11%), injection (10%) and oral (5%).

It is important to note that data from the report is preliminary and subject to change as additional toxicological results are received and investigations conclude.

Additional key findings in 2025 include:

in October, more than 90% of suspected unregulated drug toxicity deaths that underwent expedited toxicology testing detected a stimulant, compared to about 80% detected in October 2024;
youth (18 years and younger) suspected drug-toxicity deaths between January and October increased from 17 deaths reported in 2024 to 21 reported in 2025; and
among deaths where occupation industry is known, the two most-common industries of current or past employment are:
trades, transport and equipment operators, and
sales and service.

[Victoria Watcher]

and among deaths where occupation industry is known, the two most-common industries of current or past employment are:
trades, transport and equipment operators, and sales and service.

 

 

Lolz.  Clown world.

[Beacon]

I for one am very glad they are getting rid of the "safe supply" verbiage, whoever came up with that has the blood and weight of destroyed lives of the teens that unknowingly took "dillies" as a party drug because they were told it was safe.

[Beacon]

I've ventured downtown a couple of times lately. One Sunday I came up out of the Broughton St. parkade. The first six people I encountered were what I would describe as street people. Today I went to the Dutch Bakery. At least eight street people slumped between the Tim Hortons on Fort and the Dutch Bakery. It's just not a pleasant place to go. 

 

Fort St is no go zone now, that street is in slow death mode and that Tim Hortons is absolutely horrendous.  The last time I was there the electrical sockets were pulled out and the wires exposed from someone "hotwiring" some electricity , all while three tables had people passed out and another has someone yelling and signing unrecognizable random things.  I'll never go there again....

[Mike K.]

The scene is much the same at the Douglas and Burnside location. It was intimidating to be in there.

[LJ]

It's nice now that the Government is labelling them as "patients" now, so much less stigma than calling them the drug addicted useless eaters that they are.

[Beacon]

The scene is much the same at the Douglas and Burnside location. It was intimidating to be in there.

 

Somehow all the Tims in town became the defactco drop in center

[Victoria Watcher]

Cross-country drug bust yields 386 kg of fentanyl, thousands of arrests

 

According to a news release, the sprint lead to 8,136 arrests and charges and the seizure of:

• 386 kilograms of fentanyl.
• 270 kilograms of precursor chemicals.
• 5,989 kilograms of cocaine.
• 1,708 kilograms of methamphetamine.
• $13.46 million in cash.

The bust represents 78 per cent of reported fentanyl seized in Canada this year, according to a media briefing on Tuesday.

 

 

https://www.cbc.ca/n...print-9.7000033

 

 

 

 

Sounds like we need to blow up some boats.     

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 03 December 2025 - 08:15 AM.

[Mike K.]

A new opioid variety has been detected in Williams Lake, which was first discovered in Germany in 2021.

More info to hit the airwaves soon.

[Victoria Watcher]

The former chief coroner for British Columbia says the provincial government didn't seem influenced by evidence or expert advice on how to prevent overdoses after it ignored multiple recommendations from experts to create a safer drug supply that did not require a prescription.

 

Lisa Lapointe told a judge in a constitutional challenge by two people found guilty of possession for the purpose of trafficking after running a "compassion club" that she set off three expert panels into the overdose crisis since 2017.

 

Lawyers for Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx, the founders of DULF, or the Drug Users Liberation Front, are arguing that shutting down the club that sold tested heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine violated the Charter rights of those wanting to use the safer drugs instead of those purchased on the streets.

 

Lapointe said Wednesday that the last two panel reports in 2022 and 2023 recommended the government oversee a "non-medical" model of providing drugs without the need for a prescription, similar to what DULF was doing.

 

She told the court that recommendations from the 2017 received a detailed response from the government, though not everything was implemented, but the later two did not get the same reaction.

 

 

 

https://www.timescol...crisis-11609343

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 10 December 2025 - 10:39 PM.

[Victoria Watcher]

Two weeks after leaders of the Drug User Liberation Front were convicted of possession of illicit drugs for the purpose of trafficking, B.C. Premier David Eby reiterated his government’s implausible claim it was unaware of the group’s illegal activities during the three years it received BC Health funding.

“As soon as we learned that DULF was involved in illegal activity and receiving government funding, we directed Vancouver Coastal Health to cut off the funding to this organization,” the Premier told reporters three different times in a press conference last week.

In truth, Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx engaged in repeated, high-profile illicit drug trafficking precisely because they had the material support and complicit approval of B.C.’s senior health bureaucrats and elected BC NDP government politicians. 

More than that, DULF owes its very existence to the coaching of ambitious taxpayer-funded health administrators, and the willful blindness and political benevolence of B.C. government officials. 

 

DULF is born

In 2019, the BC NDP government funded a “safe supply” conference that fuelled the formation of DULF. Held at a high-end Pender Island resort, the conference brought together 40 drug users from across the province, along with select government-funded health researchers.

The highest profile among the group was former deputy provincial health officer and BC Centre for Disease Control executive director, Dr. Mark Tyndall, a UBC professor of medicine at school of population and public health, who has long been an fervent advocate for safe supply.

Also in attendance were Kalicum and Nyx, working for B.C.’s top health research and policy agencies, BC Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU) and BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC), respectively. According to a Time Magazine piece, this is where Kalicum and Nyx met and “bonded over their shared mission, and created DULF.”

The two-day, all-expense-paid conference on the government’s dime covered meals, hotel, flights, a safe consumption area, and even illicit drug procurement, courtesy of “peer navigators” for conference attendees who needed help sourcing substances while on the road. 

A 2024 statement to Northern Beat, the Provincial Health Services Authority, which funds BCCDC, denied people were hired to source illegal drugs for drug users at its functions, however, Dave Hamm, a director from the Vancouver Area Network Drug Users (VANDU), a partner organization to DULF, recounted otherwise to the all-party B.C. legislative health committee in 2022.

“I was hired by the BCCDC to be an ethical substance peer navigator, meaning I was hired by them at 20 bucks an hour to go out and get good, clean, safe drugs for people that were attending their conference,” Hamm testified to the committee, chaired by now Attorney General Niki Sharma. Sharma was parliamentary secretary to then Attorney General David Eby at the time.  

 

 

https://northernbeat...ing-it-enabled/

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 11 December 2025 - 02:25 AM.

[Beacon]

I think Eby really meant to say, once it became "publicly" known DULF was involved in illegal activity they broke all ties and threw them under the bus.

 

“As soon as we learned that DULF was involved in illegal activity and receiving government funding, we directed Vancouver Coastal Health to cut off the funding to this organization,” the Premier told reporters three different times in a press conference last week

[max.bravo]

I would’ve thought the goal of “Drug User Liberation Front” would be getting people free from addiction, not getting people free drugs.

[LJ]

A biotech company in the US has invented a vaccine against fentanyl, which should last for about a year. It is also effective against other opioids. They are doing human testing trials now.

 

So instead of incarcerating them or giving them free drugs, we will give them a vaccine each year, sounds good to me.

 

How long before some moron comes out with a legal challenge saying you can't force people to get a vaccine against their will?

[Victoria Watcher]

‘New wave of nurses’ integrating harm reduction into health care in B.C.

Read more at: https://vicnews.com/...th-care-in-b-c/





Brutal. Another cohort brainwashed. Harm reduction is the entirely wrong way.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 13 December 2025 - 02:19 PM.

[Victoria Watcher]