Garth Mullins
@garthmullins
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Following
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Host @crackdownpod , band: Low Dead Space, VANDU veteran, drugstore cowboy, policy analyst, shop steward, PhD(c), blind. Be safe-Keep 6
Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil Waututh territories (Vancouver, Canada)
Joined October 2010
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🚨New
@crackdownpod
ep. At any building site in the city you’ll find 3 things: Up, down & CFOX on the radio. Men in the trades are dying from toxic drugs. But ask for help & yer shitcanned. Thing is, the industry is built on drugs.
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When they say the quiet part out loud
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A year ago, BC's now-beloved Dr Henry called for drug decriminalization. The government snubbed her plan immediately. Nobody painted a mural. The press conference was not carried live. There were no Fluevogs. It's time for her to remind them again.
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Welcome to Canada, where we get more upset about premiers raising the minimum wage than billionaires fixing the price of bread. We are a simple and timid people, easily stampeded.
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Safe supply. Heroin, coke or meth. Tested. Clean. Distributed to drug users in front of the Vancouver cop shop today by
@dulfbc
. Still illegal as hell. Sometimes it takes civil disobedience lawbreaking to get the job done.
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It's 3AM in Vancouver and I'm about to spend the next 3 hours talking to every CBC Radio morning show in Canada about decriminalization. One interview every ten minutes for three hours. Pray for me.
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I know cops & klan go hand in hand, but in my whole life as an organizer, I've never heard cops worrying so much about not injuring protesters.
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Last week BC ended the mask mandate
This week the virus is quietly spreading
Next week the beginnings of the next wave will be visible
Next month they'll claim to have been taken by surprise. Again.
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In Vancouver, police park outside of harm reduction services every day. They have done for years. Sometimes they stop & search or card people who wan to go in. Sometimes they seize drugs and money. Their very presence dissuades people from accessing services.
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A massive police crackdown is coming. That's what Vancouver voted for. Most voters are too polite to say it, or unable to see it.
The election was about fear or crime, ginned up by dark yoga money, the police union & a desire to punish.
It's not the first time.
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I’m here to tell you - this is bullshit. Keeping people poor is not a solution to the overdose crisis. Record deaths are not because of government COVID checks. They’re because government drug prohibition.
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I’m just at my methadone clinic. Six people who go here have died in the last week. One just this afternoon. He was 22.
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Candidates across BC ran on the "Oh my god, street disorder! call the cops!" platform. We've seen this before. Again and again. Voters fall for it every time. It never fixes anything.
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Safe supply civil disobedience in action. Giving out tested heroin, meth & coke.
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Cops are going ham down here. Arresting activists. Evicting tents en mass, evicting people to nowhere, not the slow, calm process the city promised
#DTES
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Thinking of drug users on evacuation. Most people are allowed to stockpile an emergency supply of prescription meds. Not us. Mostly, we have to go to a pharmacy every day for our methadone. But what if the highway to your pharmacy is washed out? Or the pharmacy is underwater?
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Today, BC gov announced they're making public drug use illegal. Public use has not increased because of decrim. People use outside for lack of alternatives. We've been calling for more OPSs, treatment & housing for 25 yrs. If we'd been listened to, there'd be no issue today.
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Chanting “Netanyahu, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide,” thousands of east van residents march down Comnercial Drive in the drizzle, calling for an end to siege of Gaza.
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Drug users aren't just who you see on the drive downtown. We are in your workplace, gym, place of worship, community centre and in your family. We are doctors, politicians, electricians, baristas, accountants, Amazon wkrs. Drug users are underground, but everywhere. You know us
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Options under consideration for mental healthcare in Canada:
✔️Re-open creepy old Riverview Mental Hospital
✔️Involuntary treatment
✔️MAiD
✔️Cops. More cops.
NOT under consideration:
❌ Cover mental health under Canadian health care system
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I know everybody is shitting on 2020. But this was the year that - during a pandemic - there was a massive, widely-supported uprising against the police, prisons and racist cop violence. I have never seen anything like it. Defund the police became a hugely popular demand.
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Many years ago, I got Stumbles from the SPCA. She was very affectionate and had one little tan toe. She was blind-friendly, giving a little chirp to let me know where she was in a room. Stumbles was the best little pal to me and L. She died in my arms last night. 💔
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Get used to multiple, life-disrupting, life-threatening, overlapping, cascading emergencies. Get used to governments doing fuck all to prevent, mitigate or respond to them, even when solutions are known. But there are people who've survived these emergencies for yrs. We can help.
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DTES & east van need trees ASAP. 🌡☀️🌳
In summer, temperatures can vary by 20℃ between Vancouver's wealthy, shady areas & its poorer, hotter hoods.
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Hire all the cops you want. They won't bring down rents, or end OD deaths.
But cops can help create a Potemkin Village - a Sim City - a shiny illusion where poverty is forcibly banished from public view. Banishment is our real history after all.
Maybe that's what some ppl want.
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Cops evicted tents from Oppenheimer Park. Then Strathcona Park. Then Crab Park. Today Hastings Street. Tents will be back tomorrow. Because there's nowhere to go. Until governments start to build public housing on a massive scale again, people will be forced to camp.
In this video you can see Vancouver Police Department officer shoving peaceful protesters. One officer in a yellow jacket smiles widely as he shoves his bike into an Indigenous woman in a wheelchair.
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Jeff, my best pal of 30+ years, a brother, has been in hospital since Tuesday. Unconscious, breathing tube, feeding tube, IV full of dope. They don't know if he'll come back to us. He's a fighter and a survivor, so I hope so. But spare a thought for him today.
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I'm going back to school. Tomorrow. Years ago I screwed it all up. Fingers crossed that in 4 years, I'll be saying "Actually, that's Doctor Mullins, officer." I never would have tried without hours support & advice from
@rs_mcneil
. Thanks, Ryan.
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@paigehulsey
@KMOV
That studio light on the stand is a sign that the kid might be involved in the dodgy business of TV news.
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Non-exhaustive list of Canadian cop tactics I've experienced at protests in my life. Cops thumping on shields as they advance. Kettleing. Tear gas. Infiltration. Injunctions. Spying. Disrupting comms. Agents provocateurs. Pepper spray. Riot batons cracking skulls. Mass arrests.
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COVID waves are not a force of nature. They are a force of policy. Shut things down, transmission decreases. Prematurely open up, transmission spikes into a wave. Waves are a choice. Will we choose a fifth wave? Leaders compromising with capital. It's policy - all the way down.
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BREAKING:
@CAPUDofficial
launching class action against Government of Canada for criminalizing drug users.
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He opened his eyes. He held my hand tight. I think he’s going to survive this.
Jeff, my best pal of 30+ years, a brother, has been in hospital since Tuesday. Unconscious, breathing tube, feeding tube, IV full of dope. They don't know if he'll come back to us. He's a fighter and a survivor, so I hope so. But spare a thought for him today.
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I got my 4th Covid shot - the bivalent one. I also got the flu shot. I’ve been getting flu shots for years. You should too. It’s basic harm reduction. We gotta look out for each other
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People in my circle have been hospitalized for omicron. Inc ICU. One person was put in a medically induced coma. Another on a ventilator. One person has died. One person has serious, maybe permanent cognitive impacts. Some still in hospital. Many are sick at home. This is REAL
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Without my permission, my quote is being weaponized in a
@sam_sullivan
@bcliberals
campaign ad against OPS. In the summer I said "I am not going to stand at an open hole digging graves with
@jjhorgan
." But I am sure as fuck not gonna vote for the BCLibs who wanna push me in.
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Hey
@bcndp
executive committee - let
@AnjaliApp
run. She supports a real safe supply policy, not just a comms strategy. She understands that we are in multiple, overlapping emergencies and need a government that acts like it.
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Apologies for any inconvenience caused by our corpses.
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Yesterday, Vancouver cops raided DULF & arrested two comrades for the heinous crime of saving lives. They won’t even let us try to save ourselves - they want us dead.
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Who decides police budgets in Vancouver? Police do. Who oversees police in Vancouver? Police do. What democratic controls are there over police in Vancouver? None.
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I never thought I'd see a crisis this bad. But I never thought I'd see this kind of bravery either. Full respect to Vancouver city councillor
@JeanSwanson_
Nothing gets me higher than the spirit of total resistance.
I got to hand out safe drugs today with VANDU And DULF. 6 deaths a day from poison drugs is way too many. 1 is too many. Safe supply now !!
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Passed...
Defending my comprehensive exam paper tomorrow. This kind of studying calls for plenty of coffee & '80s Eastern Block-style synth dystopia. A little Kraftwerk and Hansom Furs' Sound Kapital doing the trick. Thanks
@DanBoeckner
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I am a PhD candidate as of today.
Thank you for all the advice & support
@RS_McNeil
Jade Boyd
@peterwklein
Thomas Kerr
@lisa_hale
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The pandemic repeats itself, the first wave as tragedy, the second wave as farce and the third wave as a broad spectrum fuck you to the working class.
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It's hard to practice social distancing or self-isolation if you're couch surfing or in a crowded flat or got no house. But Vancouver has lots of empty homes. And during public health emergencies, states have sweeping powers.
#COVID19
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Drug users and harm reduction workers could administer the vaccine.
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This is not a circuit breaker. This is a third wave dimmer switch. Shut it all down and pay people to stay home.
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They just don't get it. Safe supply is not meant to reduce consumption. It is meant to reduce death.
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VANDU is going to stay open all night tonight. It’s gonna go down to -20 with the windchill. So if you’re freezing your ass off we’re a 380 E. Hastings.
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Mean-spirited, right-wing Vancouver city council blocked a tiny $7,500 arts grant to VANDU. Singled us out for revenge. When the art table is set up, there is calm, quiet healing. Drawing & painting our dead helps us mourn & remember. Below: Ron, Charlie, Chereece 💔RiP
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Reactionary pundits & quacks are saying 'BC tried safe supply & it don't work.' But there is no safe supply in BC. Not at all. That's just government spin. On the other hand, abstinence-based recovery has been tried. Everywhere. For decades. Go apply the same "scrutiny" to that.
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In the 1st wave of HIV, when I was a black tar heroin user in the Tenderloin, people like you made this exact same argument about needle distribution. Half the people I came up with are dead thanks to this thinking. Now you say the same about safe supply. You are the sicko.
The Canadian government is giving fentanyl to homeless drug addicts. Why? Because that's what they said they wanted
This is where San Francisco is headed with its sinister supervised drug site
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10yrs ago today was the largest mass arrest in Canadian history: G20 protests in Toronto. Police tactics, surveillance, intimidation & brutality were widely criticized. 1000 were arrested. The police chief requested a special police powers. He is now a cabinet minister.
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"Gotta open schools because mental health." Really? There's a lot of kids out there who find school alienating, oppressive and brutal. Don't stampede us all into your mandatory pep rally. Some people hate(d) hight school.
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6yrs ago today, the overdose crisis was officially declared a public health emergency.
We've marched on every April 14th since.
Many ppl who carried signs, made speeches at previous marches are gone.
Many at today's march won't be here next yr.
Hastings is crowded with ghosts
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You are an elected MP and giving out straight-up bullshit disinformation. There have been zero documented deaths from safe supply. The number you quote is how many people have died from the illicit street drugs since 2020. From policies you support. Resign.
23,863 Canadians have died from a policy that has not even been proven, as an experiment or otherwise to be effective.
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💔I have sad news. Yesterday, Greg Fresz passed. He was on
@crackdownpod
's editorial board & also on SALOME/NAOMI Assoc of Patients &
@VANDUpeople
boards. Greg was with the pod since we were just an idea, in 2018. Memorial next Wednesday. Details coming. ❤️to his brother & family
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2,224 OD deaths in BC in 2021.
@guyfelicella
offers apology to all dead & fams. "I'm sorry. You've prob never heard that before. I'm sorry that some lives seem to matter more than others." Real moment at
@bccoroners
presser. "We're not learning from our mistakes."
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Good morning BC! After nearly 6yrs of mass OD deaths, we still don't have safe supply. After nearly 2yrs of pandemic, we don't have rapid tests. But we do have a government which - in kind & calm tones - decides who lives & who dies. Happy Christmas!
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Effective decriminalization must be co-designed by the criminalized. I know, I know - it’ll feel uncomfortable to politicians and nearly intolerable to cops. But that’s how you’ll know it’s the good shit. Everything less is just buff.
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Decrim shouldn't be about getting drug-free.
It's about getting cop-free.
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"Kids on the block!" Across DTES, little ones went off to their 1st day of kindergarten / school today. The old school call "kids on the block" sounded in advance of their passage, as community members signalled to each other to stop smoking, shooting or dealing as a courtesy.
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The backlash against harm reduction is coming from the right - from the same odious political space as most anti-trans bigotry and anti-vaxx convoy BS. Our organizing must recognize this. We need to strengthen solidarity between our movements.
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Since last year, I sat on BC government's Core Planning Table, representing
@VANDUpeople
. We gave advice on BC's application to the feds for an exemption to Canada's Controlled Drugs & Substances Act. A s.56 to decriminalize small amounts of drugs for personal possession.
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MAiD (C7) looks pretty ominous if yer disabled, poor, struggle to get mental health treatment. If you live where there's few GPs, collapsing healthcare, no affordable housing & a leader talking mandatory treatment. I have personal stakes in this.
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Ovaltine Cafe on East Hastings, Vancouver. Photo by Colette French, 1984.
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We don't want police to dictate new conditions for the drug war. We want their unconditional surrender. Fall back. Vacate charges. Pawn the tanks. Release the prisoners. Stand down.
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Barbie Girl was a hit song when the Liberals started promising pharmacare.
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Be safe, Ottawa residents. I lived there when the Heritage Front was mobilizing, marching on parliament hill with swastika flags & beating the shit out of people - including me. The far right is not fucking around & this time they have institutional support.
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Journalists in Vancouver are picking sides in this city's class war.
WATCH: Cleaning the human urine off my shoes after standing in it for another interview w a business owner who’s given up. FULL STORY
@GlobalBC
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Police said of the missing man, he's "probably out partying - on a binge." This is EXACTLY what Vancouver cops said of many missing women in the 1990s, whose DNA was later found on a serial killers pig farm. Police don't keep us safe.
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Canada likes to be smug. But just got beat. Any thoughts
@jjhorgan
@JustinTrudeau
?
Oregon made history tonight by becoming the first state to decriminalize drug possession! Our c4
@DrugPolicyAct
led this campaign with
@voteYESon110
to make this visionary initiative a reality! This victory is truly transformative.
#Election2020
🙂
#OREGON
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If you fight safe injection sites, you condemn your entire city to remain an unsafe injection site.
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1 hr ago a bunch of trucks drove down Main Street with all kinds of anti-vaxx messages, honking their horns like some little jackass parade. But the DTES has one of the highest vaccination rates, thanks to drug user activism. So yer too late.
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This is pretty amazing. A large US audience gets to hear an addictions doctor (Christy Sutherland) prescribe fentanyl, question the brain disease model of addiction & defend her patients seeking euphoria. Also hear from Dean Wilson.
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Happy February. The possession of small amounts of drugs is no longer illegal in Oregon as of today.
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Poilievre at Crab Park with anti-harm reduction message, "A woke policy by Liberal and NDP governments taxpayer funded drugs to flood our streets with easy access to these poisons.” Bollocks. BC Coroners finds ppl die from unregulated street drugs, mot prescribed drugs.
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Tonight,
@Crackdown
editorial board lost another member. And the DTES community lost an incredible fighter, comrade and solid guy. RiP Dave Murray. 💔 Some of the best of us are already home.
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Call in sick.
Call in sick forever.
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Vancouver journalists: Please. We don't really need video of people lining up to get a Thanksgiving Day meal at UGM. Maybe choose not to air it. Nobody busts into your house to film you & your mashed potatoes. A little dignity is scarce enough already.
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The guy in this article is my friend Scotty. Safe supply Dilaudid kept him alive until he could access detox. He loves cats. Like me, he's an elected VANDU board member, or what you call a "radical activist". Please stop using our lives to scare up votes
NDP-Liberals put tax dollars into free narcotics, radical activists, corrupt pharma companies & self-serving “public health” bureaucracies while detox beds lay empty because they can’t afford staff.
Common sense Conservatives will fund treatment & recovery to bring our loved
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At the methadone clinic, I paid my monthly fees today. Most clinics in BC are private, for-profit. Over many years on methadone, I've paid thousands.
@BCNDP
cut MSP premiums (yay!) but why not these fees? Especially in an OD crisis. Clinics should be publicly funded & accredited
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We protested a previous Liberal PM. We were never even within sight of the guy. Never tried to be. No noose placards. No threats. VPD stormed the demonstration, swinging batons & cracking skulls - literally. Many injuries. Some sent to the hospital. Half a dozen arrests.
.
@JustinTrudeau
is surrounded by the crowd as he leaves the brewery. People were throwing small rocks, which hit some news photographers, and it looked like some were headed toward him as he entered the bus.
#cdnpoli
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I have spent many hours of the last week in St. Paul's. I've had some bad experiences there, but this time I met nurses who understand dopesickness and the need to treat it seriously instead of considering it a trivial punishment for bad choices. Thank you nurses.
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Lots of benzo-dope blackouts in Vancouver over last few days. People just dropping off the radar. Has me worried. Benzos showed up in down in 2018/19, but they really invaded the drug supply over the pandemic. This is not like the old fent overdose crisis. This is a new crisis.
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I stand with
@HarshaWalia
. I've organized with her for 15 years. The public safety minister should wind his neck in.
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Police declining to make arrest, conceding that
@dulfbc
@vandupeople
#safesupply
action was “not distributed for profit but were intended as a harm reduction measure” speaks to the power of two decades of organizing. It is a massive precedent.
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Blue metal fencing is basically the housing plan in Vancouver now.
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I grew up with a fundamentalist Christian premier in power - Bill Vander Zalm. He opposed HIV information for students. So as a young IV drug user, I didn't know the virus could be shared through cottons & spoons. DO NOT deny youth info they need to keep safe.
This is simply outrageous.
There is no such thing as safe meth or crack use. We will be reviewing funding agreements with the organization who felt it was appropriate to teach Medicine Hat teenagers how to use illicit and deadly drugs.
Link to story:
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BC Premier endorses safe supply
We just landed a wine deal with Alberta! BC wineries will be able ship directly to customers in Alberta. Wine lovers in Alberta will once again be able to choose from a world-class selection of top-quality BC wines.
It’s a wine-win.
Cheers!
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North America's first supervised injection site - InSite - is 20 years old today. Embattled for much of its life by right wing attacks, this site was established by years of activism and civil disobedience. As all drug policy reforms are.
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Feeling anxious about
#COVID19
? Talk to drug users. We survived a public health emergency for 5yrs. We've been through sharply increasing fatality stats, rationing, scarcity, discrimination, false media reports, panics, controls on our movements, sickness & deaths of loved ones.
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For those of you that need to hear this: I’m glad you’re alive. ❤️
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How can drug users stock up on meds for heat emerg, wildfire, pandemic or earthquake? Mostly, we're forced to swallow meds under the watchful eye of a pharmacist. "Witnessed ingestion" is written right on the script. Policing us is always more important than our survival.
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Dissolve the Vancouver Police Board. Defund the VPD.
New tonight: Vancouver Police Board approves $6.4 mill increase to VPD's 2021 operating budget for total of $322 million.
Approval comes despite city staff's call for $3.1 mill cut to VPD's budget & request in May from council to cut costs.
Story:
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Weed / 🍄bros who supported the freedom convoy. I see you posting. Come out in the open with your far right politics so the movement can make decisions accordingly. The movement against the drug war is not apolitical. I'm sorry, it's a left social movement even if you hate that
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