Quebec changed procedures last year so that simple drug possession was effectively decriminalized but they didn’t tell anyone, even police. One researcher thinks this is because the change wouldn’t please the CAQ’s electoral base.
A couple more items about this, Wednesday morning, from CBC and Le Devoir.
Plans are being made for the Canada Malting site in St‑Henri, but they won’t materialize tomorrow.
Not holding my breath, there have been plans for much better sites like Silo 5 for decades that still come up empty.
The Malting is in really bad shape now, but it’s also a very contaminated site. It’s not just a question of “simply” demolishing and carting away several thousand tons of cement, tile, brick, and organic waste.
Dave Noël in Le Devoir tells about an old land acquisition scandal that brought down Quebec’s second premier, Gédéon Ouimet. The story is briefly summarized on Wikipedia. Noël says Ouimet has largely been forgotten, but he does have a bridge named after him.
Brenda Milner of the Neuro is being honoured as she reaches 106.
What experimental treatment can that woman be using?!
Neuromancy?
I’ll show myself out.
A new study alleges that people come out of consulting in emergency rooms with prescriptions for too many opioids, most of which they don’t take, but end up being sold to or taken by others.
I had my wisdom teeth out a few years ago and they gave me prescriptions for three different painkillers, including Percocet. I got the mild pain killer and T3s but not the other. I hardly even used the T3s and had a bunch sitting in my medicine cabinet for years just in case. There’s no way I would have ever used all those drugs and I had complications which caused my recovery to be longer and more painful than normal.
I had my gallbladder removed Sept 2023 , they discharged be with 60 Oxycodone. I told them I didn’t need them as pain didn’t even warrant an advil, but they insisted I took them with me and wouldn’t let me go without them. Took them to the pharmacy to be destroyed two weeks later.
It was so weird, because I kept telling them that if my worst migraines were a 10 the pain I was in was at most a 3 or 4 and they nearly called me a liar?
I know I have a high body pain tolerance due to migraines being the worst… but the insisting on not discharging me if I didn’t take the drugs with me was very strange.
First, last, time at HSP LaSalle….
azrhey, I had the same surgery about ten years ago, and a similar story. Rx for oxycodone, but I never needed it. I don’t even have migraines as a benchmark. I think the pills are still in my medicine cabinet, maybe I should turn them in.
They’ve certainly expired by now but yeah, you should always turn in meds.
I keep old ones in case I need them. Usually expired just means potency is lower, which is fine. I’ve never had more than a half dozen extra, they get used up eventually. Somewhat embarrassingly, the last one I had I used for a really painful hangnail. But it worked! I do not have addiction issues, and no one with addiction issues has access to my bathroom, so it seems better to just keep them.
Fair enough, I just have a paranoia around things “going bad” and killing me.
Damn… they never give me the good stuff. I end up leaving with Diclofenac and ibuprofen. Why won’t they give me the good stuff? What am I doing wrong? Why can’t I get the fun stuff?
There’s nothing wrong with disposing of them properly. I just hate waste and appreciate the security. It’s been years since I had any and to tell the truth the last ones I had were prescribed to my (late) grandmother, who asked me to keep them for her.
jeather, that’s more or less what I had in the back of my mind. What if I had a bad toothache on a Friday night?
There was a study by the US Army a while ago on drug shelf life. They keep a lot of drugs on hand, and use and replace what they can, but many expire. So they tested potency over 15 years after production and found most drugs were fine. Some were less potent, but they still had most of the effect generally, and weren’t dangerous. The one exception is tetracycline, which transforms into a toxic substance over time, so you should absolutely dispose of it once it expires. Not a doctor, ymmv, etc.
Thanks Nicholas – that’s useful information
@Ephraim I hear ya, buddy. I got all 4 wisdom teeth out at once and all I got was local and valium.
@Nicholas on the topic of tetracycline, the same could and should be said about most antibiotics. You should not take expired antibiotics, especially liquid antibiotics (that usually require refrigeration). Not only can they go bad, but the loss of potency can lead to antibiotic resistence. Expired antibiotics should be disposed of correctly at the pharmacy (and not, for example, flushed down the toilet).
Most other medication is fine way past the expiry date. I’ve take ibuprofen that I’d forgotten in some luggage about 10 years after I got it and it was still quite effective, for example.
I really don’t mind (most) expired medicine I still have a tube of hydrocortisone that expired in 2018 that I still use once or twice a year for a freak skin rash and I thik most of my ibuprofen is also expired but hey still works… I did get rid of the oxy because I some people with addiction issues do have access to my pharmacy from time to time and better not tempt anyone…
As for how to get the good stuff… I don’t I know… took me years to convince my neuro to put me on triptans for the migraines because “it can’t be that bad” but I was again prescribed way too many oxy when I broke my radius? So AFAIK, it’s a bit random…
@azrhey I wonder if they just got fed up with people coming back post-surgery because of pain management, and figured it would be beneficial to the hospital to load everyone up with scripts even if it created an addiction risk (that would not involve the particular hospital unit)
From a previous life working on drug shortage policy, one of the low-hanging fruit of managing shortages is to see if expiration dates can be pushed (depending on the results of potency/safety tests). This came up quite a bit, IIRC, during the paediatric painkiller shortage in 2022/23.
@Ian – Vallum? You are getting better stuff than me. Diclofenac and Ibuprofen are OTC. When I was in deep daily pain, I was on Duloxetine, which is an SSRI used for neuropathic pain. So basically, I couldn’t be sad about the fact that I was in pain.
Only time I ever get the good stuff was in hospital as a general anaesthetic for surgery and for “gems of discomfort”. Never take home!
Just one valium, nothing fun.
Both CBC and CTV have a CP piece Tuesday morning about the Lachine Canal becoming a popular fishing spot despite its industrial past.
“Parks Canada, which operates the Lachine Canal, … said it hadn’t observed an increase in the number of anglers in recent months”
This doesn’t jibe with my experience.
Weather permitting, I tend to bike the full length of the canal path twice a week in season (April 15 – November 15 IIRC) and this year I’ve seen a significant increase in the number of anglers along the canal — maybe double the number I saw in pre-pandemic years — including in places were I’d never or rarely seen them before, like in the brush alongside the CN line in St-Henri and around the Atwater bridge. There are also often anglers on the site of the former Lachine marina, where they used to be banned in season unless they’d rented a dock.
Maybe it’s the gap between the official numbers of anglers with permits vs anglers without?
I didn’t even realize you need a fishing license in the city … Fishing is super popular all over Montreal, I figured it was just catch and release folk out for a chill day of pole fishing – giant aggressive pike trying to eat children notwithstanding.
Ian 14:32 on 2024-07-16 Permalink
Um… wow. Just wow. Very progressive of them, and given the success in Portugal it’s proibably a good idea, but not telling the police is a bit of an oversight.
“A 2015 study found that the social costs of drug use in Portugal fell 12% between 2000 and 2004, and 18% by 2010. While the former figure was largely driven by the reduction in drug-related deaths, the latter was linked to a ‘significant reduction’ in costs associated with criminal proceedings for drug offences and lost income of individuals imprisoned for these offences.”
https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-portugal-setting-the-record-straight
Nicholas 15:12 on 2024-07-16 Permalink
Had they said something there would have been wall-to-wall coverage across the Quebecor media system. (Yes, they absolutely should have told people, regardless.)
jeather 15:39 on 2024-07-16 Permalink
Doesn’t this secrecy seem like it will get more, weirder coverage?