Weekend Video: Doug Knockwood – Indian Residential School
A short video where Doug Knockwood talks about his father’s determination to get him and and his brother Ralph out of Residential School.
Addiction
Op ed: Naloxone — While policy makers talk Nova Scotians continue to die
Amy Graves of the Get Prescription Drugs off the Street Society takes issue with the Province’s announcement that naloxone will not be available at no cost from pharmacies September 1st after all. “After almost 7 years of advocating for action on the opioid crisis positive changes have occurred, but far too slow and far too few. The clock keeps ticking and we need more action not more planning.
As policymakers talk Nova Scotians continue to die.”
Weekend video: HANDUP Halifax — ”They see somebody who is a piece of shit”
Check out this excellent six-minute video documentary introducing seven Nova Scotians addicted to opioids, as they explain how stigma and prejudice puts their lives at risk.
Provinces not ready as Fentanyl arrives in the Maritimes
New contributor Cathy Boyce, who lives in New Brunswick, takes a look at the fentanyl crisis on the East Coast and considers the totally inadequate response of the Maritime provinces.
Weekend video: Women of substance
This weekend we present Women of Substance, a documentary about women and addiction shot by director Nance Ackerman. As everything by Ackerman this short film is full of warmth and telling little details. “Everybody has the ability to stand up and say I am a person, I am not that addiction.”
Op-ed: 70 overdose deaths this year in Nova Scotia. And it’s only October.
600 people have died of drug overdoses in Nova Scotia in the last 10 years, and we only know this because of a leaked email. Imagine the uproar if these deaths didn’t affect drug addicts but nice middle class people. Instead we have two levels of governments cutting subsidies to organizations that are trying to keep such deaths to a minimum.
News brief. Ally Centre in Sydney may well be forced to close
Last week we reported that Mainline Needle Exchange in Halifax is facing a budget crunch, this week the news is that its Cape Breton counterpart may well close its doors early next year because the federal government is no longer funding the organization. Time for the province to step up to the plate.
Mainline Needle Exchange cuts back services in face of budget crunch
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.
Weekend video: Cottonland
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.