Vancouver city councillor Rebecca Bligh called for the city to reconsider a pre-legalization zoning decision banning REC stores from the city’s Downtown East Side, an area of intense and concentrated poverty and opioid use.
Straight Cannabis
- Bligh argued research proves cannabis helps people stay off more dangerous drugs including alcohol, and therefore affordable cannabis should be legally available within that community.
CBC British Columbia - Overdose Prevention Society executive director Sarah Blyth joined Bligh in calling for affordably priced cannabis to be available in the neighbourhood, where locals are used to cannabis going for $3 to $7 per gram rather than the average of $12 to $14 found in licensed REC retailers.
Global News - Blyth said, “If it’s legal, then it shouldn’t be hard for people to get it … That’s always been my philosophy: if people are doing something, to try and make it as safe and legal as you can.”
The Star
- For the first time since the 1990s, the average Canadian life expectancy did not increase this year, due to opioid overdoses.
The Province - Epidemiologist M-J Milloy told a conference that US states with legal cannabis have 25% fewer deaths from opioid overdose.
Twitter–E. Hope
