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DRUGS
Addiction experts call for national opioid strategy BY THE CANADIAN PRESS
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ORONTO — Canada needs a comprehensive national strategy to curb rampant overprescribing of opioids and to reduce escalating numbers of deaths caused by overdoses of the powerful narcotics, experts say. Writing in Monday’s edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Dr. Benedikt Fischer of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and co-authors say an estimated 2,000 Canadians died from opioid overdoses in 2015, and many provinces are on track for an even higher number of deaths in 2016. “It’s a real public health disaster,” Fischer said in an interview. “Over the last 10 years, we’re looking at somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 dead people in Canada just from opioid overdoses alone.” In a separate report Monday, the Toronto centre urged Ottawa to launch a review of all prescription painkillers sold in Canada and said high-dose opioid medications should be pulled from the market. Worldwide, Canadians are the second-highest consumers of prescription opioids like oxycodone, hydromorphone and fentanyl, after the U.S. “We have hundreds of thousands of people now who are dependent on these drugs because of misuse or
overprescribing or excessive exposure,” said Fischer, laying the blame on the medical system that sees too many physicians prescribing the drugs for chronic pain, when research “clearly shows” it is not efficacious for that kind of pain and can actually do harm. Medical evidence suggests opioids should be restricted to patients with acute pain, such as that related to cancer or following surgery, and should be given in limited doses and for a short duration to prevent dependence, and accidental overdoses. But instead of focusing on overprescribing — the major driver of opioid misuse and abuse — Fischer said governments and the medical system have instead tinkered with downstream effects, such as increasing access to naloxone, a drug that can reverse an opioid overdose, and treatment of dependency with another medication called suboxone. While Ontario has delisted Oxycontin on its provincial drug benefit program, that move merely shifted the problem to other prescription opioids like morphine and fentanyl patches, said Fischer. However, the Ontario government announced in July it would remove those high-dose opioids from its insurance plan next year, except for patients requiring the medications for palliative care.
Tuesday, November 8, 2016
CRIME
‘Smell of food would really excite’ python, trial hears BY THE CANADIAN PRESS
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AMPBELLTON, N.B. — Two boys killed by a python may have become prey because they had been playing with farm animals, a reptile expert testified Monday. Bob Johnson, the now-retired former curator of reptiles and amphibians at the Toronto Zoo, told the criminal negligence trial of the python’s owner that a snake’s keen sense of smell lets it know prey is nearby. “The smell of food would really excite,” he said. “That could be the trigger.” Noah Barthe, four, and his six-yearold brother Connor had spent Aug. 4, 2013, petting animals and playing at a farm owned by the father of JeanClaude Savoie before a sleepover in Savoie’s apartment. Savoie is on trial on charges of criminal negligence causing death. Johnson said snakes become more aggressive when they detect possible sources of food — and an attack would have been unlikely had there been no animal smells on the boys. “Those boys could have been a stimulant to that snake,” he said. The brothers were killed by Savoie’s African rock python after it escaped an enclosure in his apartment by travelling through a ventilation duct and dropping into the living room where they slept. Savoie’s own son, sleeping in another room, was unharmed. A number of witnesses have said
it was common to see the cover of the vent on the enclosure’s floor. Defence lawyer Leslie Matchim told the jury in his opening statement Monday that Savoie believed the snake was too big get through the duct, so he didn’t see a need to secure the opening. Savoie, he said, was clearly wrong. “Being wrong isn’t necessarily criminal negligence,” Matchim said. The lawyer reminded the jury of testimony from a volunteer at Savoie’s reptile shop downstairs from his apartment: she said Savoie told her that the snake had gotten into the ventilation pipe before, but only made it part way through. In his testimony, Johnson said any snake enclosures for the Toronto Zoo would have a system of double doors and any openings would be securely caged. The enclosure in Savoie’s apartment had a “dryer vent” style of cover for the ventilation duct that was not secured with screws or tape, he said. Johnson said the enclosure lacked items such as rocks and branches to stimulate the python. “I would not say that is very conducive to the well-being of the snake,” he said. Last week, a veterinarian who conducted the necropsy on the snake testified it appeared the snake hadn’t fed in at least 24 hours. A pathologist who performed autopsies on the boys said they died of asphyxiation and each were covered in puncture wounds from snake bites.
WINNIPEG
Teen who attacked two women has very low IQ, FASD BY THE CANADIAN PRESS
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INNIPEG — A man who pleaded guilty in two high-profile sex attacks, including one that left a victim near death along the shores of a frigid Winnipeg river, suffers from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and reads at a Grade 3 level, a court was told Monday. The man, who cannot be named because he was 17 at the time of the attacks in 2014, also suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder due to sexual abuse he suffered as a child, reads a forensic psychology report entered into evidence. Testing showed the man’s “fullscale IQ value falling below 70 — considered within an ‘extremely low’ range,” the report states.
The man pleaded guilty earlier this year to two counts of aggravated sexual assault. The Crown wants the man sentenced as an adult, and a four-day hearing on the issue started Monday. A co-accused, Justin Hudson, 22, has also pleaded guilty to the same charges. The two men happened upon a 16-year-old girl on the night of Nov. 7. They robbed her, repeatedly beat her, sexually assaulted her and stomped on her head. She ended up in the Assiniboine River, crawled out 100 metres away before being attacked again with a hammer. The girl was found by a passerby the next morning and later became an advocate for an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women.