UPFRONT | News CONCUSSION Blood test to Feds won’t decriminalize any drugs besides help diagnose cannabis, despite calls from cities brain injury ottawa—The federal gov-Despite calls from three model as an example, which For the first time in the U.S., a blood test will be available to help doctors determine if people who’ve experienced a blow to the head could have a traumatic brain injury such as brain bleeding or bruising. Until this point, physicians have relied on subjective markers – mainly patient-reported symptoms such as headaches, nausea, or light sensitivity – to make an edu-cated “guess” on which individuals have brain trauma and require a head CT scan. In February 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a test called the Banyan Brain Trauma Indicator ® , which aids in the evaluation of patients with a suspected traumatic brain injury, or concussion. The major study that led to ap-proval of the test was published in The Lancet Neurology . The clinical trial included close to 2,000 indi-viduals presenting with a head in-jury to 22 emergency departments in the U.S. and Europe. Banyan Biomarkers, Inc., the company that developed the test, is working to make the test available in hospitals and emergency departments. The test detects two brain pro-teins that are present in the blood soon after a hit to the head. Approved for use in individuals 18 years and older, the test has the potential to reduce CT scans. Limiting scans to patients with a positive blood test could eliminate needless radiation; allow people to get in and out of the emergency room faster; and lower health care costs. The blood test is effective up to 12 hours following injury. —University Of Rochester Medical Center www.canadianchiropractor.ca OPIOIDS ernment says it will not consider decriminalizing drugs beyond marijuana, despite calls from Canada’s major cities to consider the measure. As the opioid epidemic washes over the country, Montreal and Toronto are echoing Vancouver and urg-ing the federal government to treat drug use as a public health issue, rather than a criminal one. Montreal’s public health department has just thrown its support behind a report released recently by Toron-to’s board of health, which urges the federal govern-ment to decriminalize all drugs. Mylene Drouin, the direc-tor of Montreal’s public health department, said she is in favour of Toronto’s re-port and that decriminaliza-tion will be on the agenda at provincial and national health meetings. A Health Canada report released in June found that nearly 4,000 Canadians died from an apparent opioid overdose in 2017, including 303 opioid overdose-related deaths in Toronto. In Mon-treal, the number of deaths relating to probable opioid overdoses was 140 for a pe-riod of a little over a year, ending June 30. Vancouver Mayor Greg Roberston has long called for the decriminalization of all drugs, which has been repeated by health officials and advocates across British Columbia. In Vancouver, there was an estimated 335 opioid related deaths in 2017. cities, the federal govern-ment is not budging on its position, insisting that de-criminalization is not an option. Thierry Belair, a spokes-man for Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor, said the federal government is not looking to decriminalize or legalize any drugs aside from cannabis. Belair said the govern-ment understands that stigma and barriers to treat-ment need to be reduced, and Ottawa has taken steps in that direction. He said the federal gov-ernment has made it easier for health professionals to provide access to opioid substitution therapies; and the federal government has also approved more than 25 supervised consumption sites. Fardous Hosseiny, na-tional director of research and public policy at the Canadian Mental Health Association, which has advo-cated for decriminalization, said the organization wel-comes the call from Vancou-ver, Toronto and now Mon-treal, and hopes it puts some pressure on the federal gov-ernment. “Given the scale of the opioid crisis in Canada, we know that we need to take bold action,” he said. “We know that evidence tells us that the war on drugs hasn’t worked, so criminali-zation really stigmatizes people and creates barriers for them accessing treatment and accessing help when they need it.” Hosseiny raised Portugal’s B.C. urged the federal gov-ernment adopt. The EU country decriminalized all drugs by eliminating crimi-nal penalties for small pos-session and consumption of illicit drugs in 2001. While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Petitpas Taylor may not be keen to add the decriminalization of all drugs to the election ban-ner in 2019, their party’s supporters like the idea. The Liberal convention in Halifax last April saw dele-gates adopt a resolution that supported decriminalizing all illegal drugs. The resolu-tion put forward by the na-tional Liberal caucus for debate at the convention called for illegal drugs to be treated as a public health issue. It also urged the gov-ernment to adopt the Portu-gal model. Petitpas Taylor said at the time that what works for a small country like Portugal wouldn’t work in a large one like Canada. Federal NDP Leader Jag-meet Singh urged Trudeau last fall to decriminalize all illegal drugs and he also campaigned on a promise to decriminalize all drugs dur-ing his party’s leadership race. Conservatives have been largely opposed to legalizing pot and would object to the idea of decriminalizing even harder drugs. —Janice Dickson, The Canadian Press Read more of the latest news and research at canadianchiropractor.ca September 2018 Canadian Chiropractor 9
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