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Tags: Addiction

YALE OR JAIL.

This week the City of Toronto unveiled its new Drug Toxicity Crisis Acknowledgement, an addition to its existing Land Acknowledgement and African Ancestral Acknowledgement.

It didn’t actually unveil what City Hall staffers are expected to read or display at the start of certain formal events or meetings. The drug acknowledgement was leaked to an Instagrammer who sent it to the world, including my Instagram feed.

Here’s part of what it says: “We acknowledge that this crisis is rooted in systemic discrimination. People who use drugs often experience stigma, and multiple intersecting forms of discrimination, including racism, sexism and colonialism.”

Read on…

May 29, 2026 May 29, 2026

Leave your high perch – and save your child’s life.

I know some couples who are household names in business and public service. They check all the boxes: virtuous without being virtue-signallers, hard-working without being owned by it, all while being powerful and household words.

Three of these couples in particular have kids who are in trouble: with substance abuse; mental disorders; or what I’ll call ‘chronic purposelessness.’

The parents are frantic, searching for the treatment or cure that will restore calm in their family and security in their kids.

One of them perches very high in a giant company. He oversees the people who oversee the people who run the company’s group benefits program. That is to say, the insurance company that manages many thousands of medical claims each year, including a rising number of mental health claims.

Read on…

November 25, 2023 January 10, 2024

My name’s Bob and I’m an iPhonoholic.

On Tuesday, Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka announced he would make a state visit to China to meet Xi Jinping.

By Thursday, however, that trip was cancelled because the Prime Minister had tripped on the stairs while looking at his phone, concussing him. He appeared on video, in a blood-spattered shirt, to tell his nation the news.

For many years now in Holland, bicyclists have been forbidden from riding their bikes while using their mobile phones because of the large number of accidents they cause. This happens especially with North American visitors who, jet-lagged and on unfamiliar ground, barely make it out of the bike rental shop without mowing down a pedestrian.

In America, at any time throughout the day, 660,000 drivers are trying to text while they drive. One in four car accidents in the US is caused by texting and driving, which means 1.6 million crashes each year.

Worse still, texting while driving is six times more likely to cause an accident than driving drunk.

Why is this worse?

Meanwhile…

July 29, 2023 August 22, 2023

Global Warming, Meet Global Drinking

Last week I fell across a funny Australian news site, The Shovel, whose top story was headlined, “Man announces he will quit drinking by 2050.”

I got it, as do you. This lovely piece of satire was about climate change. Greg Taylor would be able to continue to drink for the foreseeable future before reducing consumption in 2048 when he turned 101. He’d also be able to bring forward drinking credits earned from the days over the past 40 years he has drunk nothing.

November 9, 2021 November 25, 2021

Manufacturing Addiction

Back when I was a drug addict, quality control didn’t exist because the manufacturers and sales force were drug dealers. You could die because what

August 31, 2021 August 31, 2021

Pent-Up Demand Goes Panting

Last weekend all across Ontario, the entire 15 million of us, poured into theatres, museums, gyms, hair-dressers and border crossings. Even though none of what

July 24, 2021 August 9, 2021

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