Mainline Needle Exchange, an organization that helps people who live with drug addictions in mainland Nova Scotia, can’t keep up with the demand, something the provincial government is trying hard to ignore. Lives are at stake. The Nova Scotia Advocate went to Mainline’s open house to find out more.

This week’s featured video is Cottonland, a 2006 documentary about recovering addict Eddie Buchanan and the damage the prescription painkiller oxycontin is doing to his friends and neighbors in Glace Bay, Cape Breton. It’s also about the shutting down of the coal mines. And it’s about a bunch of exceptional people, loving parents, funny, with big hearts. They’re also thieves who do or did terrible things.

Some excellent points were made at a well-attended press conference organized by low income people in the North End on the topic of poverty and the municipal election. It fell a bit on deaf ears, though, as just one reporter and one municipal candidate made an appearance.