Amazing grace: Vancouver's supervised injection facility granted six-month lease on life

Not all screens are created equal: examination of surface features and other physical properties of commonly used screen materials for smoking drugs

BACKGROUND

Brass screens are considered an essential part of the safer drug smoking/inhalation supplies and are widely distributed by harm reduction programs in Canada. However, the use of commercially available steel wools as screens for smoking crack cocaine remains a common practice among people who smoke drugs in Canada. Use of these steel wool materials is associated with different adverse effects on health. This study aims to determine what changes folding and heating have on several filter materials, including brass screens and commercially available steel wool products, and examine the implications of these changes on health of people who smoke drugs.

METHODS

This study investigated the microscopic differences, studied by optical and scanning electron microscopy, between four screen and four steel wool filter materials used in a simulated drug consumption process. New materials were manipulated, compacted into its own Pyrex® straight stem using a push stick and then heated with a butane lighter simulating a common method in preparing drugs for consumption. The materials were studied in the as-received (new), as-pressed (compressed and inserted into the stem tube but without heating) and as-heated (compressed and inserted into the stem tube and heated with a butane lighter) conditions.

RESULTS

The steel wool materials with the smallest wire thicknesses were found to be the easiest to prepare for pipe use, but degrade significantly during shaping and heating, making them wholly unsuitable as a safe filter material. In contrast the brass and stainless steel screen materials remain mostly unchanged by the simulated drug consumption process. After the stainless steel pellet screen, the Brass Impact 2.0 screen material had the best characteristics of the materials tested due to its mesh wire diameter, pitch, alloy choice and its pre-strained state.

CONCLUSION

Commonly used steel wool alternatives degrade during the handling and stem insertion, and heating the screens in the stem. Debris is generated by wool deformation on insertion and after heating that easily separates from the screen and can be inhaled during drug consumption. The brass and stainless steel screen materials are safer to use as they remain mostly stable during the simulated drug consumption process.

An appeal to humanity: legal victory in favour of North America's only supervised injection facility: Insite

Canada's federal government has once again failed to shut North America's only authorized supervised injection facility: Insite. A majority ruling issued by the BC Court of Appeal on 15 January 2010 upheld an earlier British Columbia Supreme Court ruling in 2008 that protected the rights of injection drug users (IDUs) to access Insite as a health facility as per the Charter of Rights and Freedoms component of the Constitution of Canada. The majority decision from Honourable Madam Justices Rowles, Huddart and Smith also established a jurisdictional victory safeguarding Insite as most appropriately run under the authority of the province of British Columbia rather than the federal Government of Canada. The Federal Government has appealed the case to the Supreme Court of Canada. A hearing date has been set for 12 May 2011. The appeal will be a legal one but even more so, it will be an appeal to humanity.

Fighting addiction's death row: British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Ian Pitfield shows a measure of legal courage

The art in law, like medicine, is in its humanity. Nowhere is the humanity in law more poignant than in BC Supreme Court Justice Ian Pitfield's recent judgment in the legal case aimed at protecting North America's only supervised injection facility (SIF) as a healthcare program: PHS Community Services Society versus the Attorney General of Canada. In order to protect the SIF from politicization, the PHS Community Services Society, the community organization that established and operates the program, along with two people living with addiction and three lawyers working for free, pro bono publico, took the federal government of Canada to court. The courtroom struggle that ensued was akin to a battle between David and Goliath. The judge in the case, Justice Pitfield, ruled in favour of the PHS and gave the Government of Canada one year to bring the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA) into compliance with the country's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. If parliament fails to do so, then the CDSA will evaporate from enforceability and law in June of 2009. Despite the fact that there are roughly twelve million intravenous drug addiction users in the world today, politics andprejudice oards harm reduction are still a barrier to the widespread application of the "best medicine" available for serious addicts. Nowhere is this clearer than in the opposition by conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his faithful servant, federal health minister Tony Clement, towards Vancouver's SIF ("Insite"). The continued angry politicization of addiction will only lead to the tragic loss of life, as addicts are condemned to death from infectious diseases (HIV & hepatitis) and preventable overdoses. In light of the established facts in science, medicine and now law, political opposition to life-saving population health programs (including SIFs) to address the effects of addiction is a kind of implicit capital punishment for the addicted. This commentary examines the socio-political context of the legal case and the major figures that contributed to it. It reviews Justice Pitfield's ruling, a judgment that has brought Canada one step closer to putting a stop to addiction's death row where intravenous drug users are needlessly, for political and ideological reasons alone, forced to face increased risks of death due to AIDS, hepatitis and overdose.