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The drug war must end: The right to life, liberty and security of the person during the COVID-19 pandemic for people who use drugs
Since the start of the opioid epidemic in 2016, the Downtown Eastside community of Vancouver, Canada, has lost many pioneering leaders, activists and visionaries to the war on drugs. The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), the Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society (WAHRS), and the Brit...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7887560/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33596901 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12954-021-00474-8 |
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author | Maynard, Russ Jozaghi, Ehsan |
author_facet | Maynard, Russ Jozaghi, Ehsan |
collection | PubMed |
description | Since the start of the opioid epidemic in 2016, the Downtown Eastside community of Vancouver, Canada, has lost many pioneering leaders, activists and visionaries to the war on drugs. The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), the Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society (WAHRS), and the British Columbia Association People on Opiate Maintenance (BCAPOM) are truly concerned about the increasing overdose deaths that have continued since 2016 and have been exacerbated by the novel coronavirus (SARS-COVID-19) despite many unique and timely harm reduction announcements by the British Columbia (B.C.) government. Some of these unique interventions in B.C., although in many cases only mere announcements with limited scope, are based on the philosophy of safe supply to illegal street drugs. Despite all the efforts during the pandemic, overdose deaths have spiked by over 100% compared to the previous year. Therefore, we urge the Canadian federal government, specifically the Honorable Patty Hajdu, the federal Minister of Health, to decriminalize simple possession immediately by granting exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The Canadian federal government has a moral obligation under Sect. 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to protect the basic human rights of marginalized Canadians. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7887560 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-78875602021-02-17 The drug war must end: The right to life, liberty and security of the person during the COVID-19 pandemic for people who use drugs Maynard, Russ Jozaghi, Ehsan Harm Reduct J Commentary Since the start of the opioid epidemic in 2016, the Downtown Eastside community of Vancouver, Canada, has lost many pioneering leaders, activists and visionaries to the war on drugs. The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), the Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society (WAHRS), and the British Columbia Association People on Opiate Maintenance (BCAPOM) are truly concerned about the increasing overdose deaths that have continued since 2016 and have been exacerbated by the novel coronavirus (SARS-COVID-19) despite many unique and timely harm reduction announcements by the British Columbia (B.C.) government. Some of these unique interventions in B.C., although in many cases only mere announcements with limited scope, are based on the philosophy of safe supply to illegal street drugs. Despite all the efforts during the pandemic, overdose deaths have spiked by over 100% compared to the previous year. Therefore, we urge the Canadian federal government, specifically the Honorable Patty Hajdu, the federal Minister of Health, to decriminalize simple possession immediately by granting exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The Canadian federal government has a moral obligation under Sect. 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to protect the basic human rights of marginalized Canadians. BioMed Central 2021-02-17 /pmc/articles/PMC7887560/ /pubmed/33596901 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12954-021-00474-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Commentary Maynard, Russ Jozaghi, Ehsan The drug war must end: The right to life, liberty and security of the person during the COVID-19 pandemic for people who use drugs |
title | The drug war must end: The right to life, liberty and security of the person during the COVID-19 pandemic for people who use drugs |
title_full | The drug war must end: The right to life, liberty and security of the person during the COVID-19 pandemic for people who use drugs |
title_fullStr | The drug war must end: The right to life, liberty and security of the person during the COVID-19 pandemic for people who use drugs |
title_full_unstemmed | The drug war must end: The right to life, liberty and security of the person during the COVID-19 pandemic for people who use drugs |
title_short | The drug war must end: The right to life, liberty and security of the person during the COVID-19 pandemic for people who use drugs |
title_sort | drug war must end: the right to life, liberty and security of the person during the covid-19 pandemic for people who use drugs |
topic | Commentary |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7887560/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33596901 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12954-021-00474-8 |
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