Harm Reduction

The story of today’s prescription opioid overdose crisis didn’t start this year, or 10 years ago, or even 100 years ago. It starts with a plant-the opium poppy-that has been a part of human civilization for thousands of years. Papaver somniforum-literally, ‘sleep-bringing poppy’-is the scientific name for the type of poppy that produces opium, which

The House of Representatives will vote this week on more than a dozen bills to combat opioid addiction. On Wednesday, they passed a bipartisan bill to address pain management prescription practices, and there will still be votes on gathering data on infants affected by opioid abuse, and establishing federal grants to prevent and treat opioid

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Dave Napio started doing heroin over four decades ago, at 11 years old. Like many addicts these days, he heads to Vancouver’s gritty Downtown Eastside neighborhood when he needs a fix. But instead of seeking out a dealer in a dark alley, Mr. Napio, 55, gets his three daily doses from

As more North American cities push for supervised injection sites to address soaring fatal overdose rates, they can find a dozen years of lessons in Vancouver, which has the only such facilities on the continent. Health officials in several Canadian cities – including Montreal, Victoria and, most recently, Toronto – are somewhere along the path

To deal with a rising rate of overdose deaths, three Toronto health clinics that already distribute hundreds of thousands of clean needles to drug users should be allowed to open “small-scale” supervised injection sites, the city’s medical officer of health says. While the idea remains controversial, reaction to the proposal from business associations near the