Gambling and Drugs Tag

29 Jun 2010 Authoritative parents better at preventing kids’ binge drinking, study finds

Tralee Pearce, Globe and Mail Jun. 24, 2010: Peer influence is known to be a major factor in whether teens binge-drink. But it turns out that parents play a part as well: A Brigham Young University study reveals that those with an authoritative, nurturing style were the least likely to have children who drink heavily. [Read more here.]...

05 Oct 2009 Quality Studies on Gambling in the Globe and Mail

The Globe & Mail is running a series on gambling and its first two articles reveal some staggering statistics about the harm of the gaming industry in Canada. Click here to read "Casinos spend millions to make losers feel like winners" and click here to read "The million dollar club: losing big, losing often." Gambling is taking an increasingly large toll on the well-being of Canadians, destroying families and hurting communities. We need to be a voice in our communities to keep casinos and gaming centres away....

06 May 2009 Drug courts and justice

Do drug treatment courts help curb drug use and crime? By Peter Jon Mitchell, Research Analyst, Institute of Marriage and Family Canada - EReview #68, May 6, 2009 Investing $550,000 to cut $3 million in net spending is a good deal. Changing lives at the same time is a great deal. A recent evaluation of the Ottawa Drug Treatment Court (ODTC) has concluded that the four year old pilot project has done just that. A $550,000 a year grant from the Department of Justice has netted a reduction of $ 3 million annually into the local drug trade – that’s not including the cost of crime associated with drug use. [1] Over the coming months, the Department of Justice will decide if it should renew funding for six drug treatment courts in Canada, of which the earliest endeavour started in Toronto in 1998. If this evaluation is any indicator, they should renew the funding.

24 Jul 2008 The Harm of Harm Reduction Philosophy

By Neil Dykstra, coordinator of Langley ARPA "Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its evil desires." (Rom 6:12)Addictions are the closest thing in our day and age to slavery. Whether it involves drugs, sex, alcohol, gambling or other behaviors, addictions are a psychological and sometimes physical dependence on something. Without taking into account the morality of the subject of the addiction, scripture clearly portrays slavery to the mortal body as the antithesis of godly life. In Genesis 1:28, God’s first commands to man are to be His image-bearer in creation, subduing the earth and everything in it. How can we subdue the earth when we let it subdue us?

13 Jun 2008 Save $1 Billion and 800 Lives: CAMH’s “Avoidable Costs of Alcohol Abuse in Canada 2002” Study released

Centre for Addiction and Mental Health: For Immediate Release – June 11, 2008 (TORONTO): The economic burden of alcohol abuse costs each Canadian $463 per year. In fact, the direct health care costs for alcohol abuse in Canada exceed those of cancer.Released today by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), the Avoidable Cost of Alcohol Abuse in Canada 2002 report estimates that, even under very conservative assumptions,implementing six reviewed interventions would result in cost savings of about $1 billion per year and a savings of about 800 lives, close to 26,000 years of life lost to premature death and more than 88,000 acute care hospital days in Canada per year. This pioneering study is Canada’s first systematic estimate of the avoidable costs of alcohol abuse, and the first study of its kind worldwide.

03 Jun 2008 What we now know about marijuana

by Margret Kopala (with permission) First Appeared in the Ottawa Citizen - May 31, 2008 Leading the recent National Post debate on cannabis, columnist Barbara Kay can't have anticipated Vancouver's safe injection site, rather than legalized cannabis, would be the Trojan Horse for the legalization of all addictive drugs. This week, the right of addicts to continue use of illicit drugs was upheld by the B.C. Supreme Court even though no treatment of which I am aware uses the substance that caused the problem to cure it. Smokers use nicotine gum, not more cigarettes, to kick the habit, don't steal to feed their habit and if heroine and cocaine are so helpful, why aren't doctors prescribing them in pill form? At least we know something about cannabis. In fact we know a lot. And now a paper published in Nature places the medicinal, the harmful and the recreational aspects of cannabis in a perspective that has implications for how we treat all addictive substances.

18 Apr 2008 Exposure of The Failures of Vancouver Drug Injection Site

REAL Women of Canada: ME D I A  R E L E A S E - Ottawa, Ontario April 16, 2008 The Final Report of an Expert Advisory Committee summarizing evidence-based research on the injection site in Vancouver has exposed it as a failure. It has also exposed the fallacy of the arguments used to support the site when it was first established in 2003. The federal government should immediately withdraw its support for the site to indicate its willingness to learn from past mistakes, and to deal with the reality of the situation made apparent by the Advisory Committee’s report.

09 Jan 2008 “It’s Only A Dollar!” Some churches hold Bingos and sell raffle tickets, so can gambling really be wrong?

by Sharon L. Bratcher* “I think we should have a Bingo night to raise money for our community.” “All you spend is $1.00 on a ticket and you could win $1,000,000!” “Our organization is having a raffle to raise money for the handicapped; will you buy a ticket for only $1.00? You might win a 10 speed bicycle!” “I just won $2,000 in the lottery – isn’t that great?” Often we have friends and neighbors and perhaps even relatives who participate in the lottery, raffles, or other types of games of chance. And among secular and some professing Christian groups, games of chance are popular fundraisers because they are a fairly easy way to raise a large amount of money fast.

18 Dec 2007 Report Says Vancouver “Safe Injection” Site a Failure

By Gudrun Schultz  Lifesite NewsVANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 4, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Vancouver safe-injection site for drug addicts has not reached the goals that proponents of the facility claim, according to a new study published Wednesday in the Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice. The controversial Insite facility, the first of its kind in North America, opened as a pilot project over three years ago in Vancouver‘s notorious Downtown Eastside. Heroin or cocaine addicts are provided with clean needles and allowed to inject themselves with their own heroin or cocaine under a nurse’s supervision.

19 Oct 2007 Safe Injection Sites: Are they the Answer?

By Jamie Hellewell (for the Surrey/Cloverdale ARPA Alert)On September 15, Vancouver became the first city in North America to open a legal ‘safe injection site’ for heroine users. The site – called "Insite" – is a small clinic located in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside district near the corner of Main and Hastings. Inside there are 12 private cubicles where needle drug users can inject between the hours of 10:00am-4:00am, seven days a week. The site provides a clean environment, spoons, water and sterile needles for users to prepare and inject heroine. There are also registered nurses on staff to supervise injections in case of an overdose or medical emergency. The site does not provide any drugs and prohibits certain types of injection behaviors: Sharing of drugs is not allowed, all users must self-inject, and there is a mandatory registration for anyone wanting to use the site.