PEREGRINE PULP

I’ve been writing about this province's epidemic of overdose deaths and related themes for a while now. Just in recent times I’ve...

A 2021 study out of Denmark estimated the proportion of cases of schizophrenia associated with cannabis use in that country doubled in recent decades. Though cannabis remains illegal there, concern about this reality and threats of an explosion of psychotic disorders has persisted around any discussion of legalization. Relatedly, a team of researchers just completed a similar study to investigate the incidence of cannabis associated schizophrenia in Canada. Their study looke

So what is this fluoride panic about? It’s certainly not about the existing evidence.

EVERY EXPERT: Putin just has nothing to gain from launching a war with Ukraine. He would never do it. ME: I don’t know about that. ALL...

I’ve been writing for some time about the sudden and curious rejection of our age-old understanding that humans cause much, and in many...

In recent weeks and months there has been a whole rash of articles about rising temperatures killing people. The reporting started with...

Narendra : They’re not trying to hide anything from you, though. Adrenalina : Aren’t they? Narendra : They would if they could. For...

I don’t know how I got here. Somehow I developed this crazy belief that firefighters fought fires. Crazy, right? My bad. Per capita, Vancouver is one of the country’s busiest fire departments, and getting busier all the time. But almost none of that fire service activity involves firefighters marching into buildings, masks on and hoses over their shoulders, to beat back flames. As a matter of fact, if you eliminated calls for service that weren’t for fires or false alarms (w

Last September the CMHC came out with a study suggesting that for Canada to reach housing affordability last seen 20 years ago “an...

If you’re the chief coroner, hold an executive position in public health, or are the independent representative for children and youth or...

On April 12th, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld sent George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice and email titled “Predicting the Future.” The...

CBC - Federal plan would count rent toward a credit score. Wow. It's almost impossible for me to make sense of the level of detachment...

Early in the new year is when we get the official tally from the BC Coroners Service for the number of overdose deaths the province saw in the previous year. In 2019, our already staggeringly high death count climbed again, approaching 1,000 drug overdoses. That was a level of deaths here in BC that formed what was seen as a kind of last straw for those in public health and advocacy. This caused the province to redouble the harm reduction efforts and make many radical new cha

In 2011, I wrote an essay about recycling. I was venting my frustration that, despite many decades of “the three Rs”, tons of emergent strategies, and so much problem-solving passion to be found, as a society we’ve only ever seemed to make the plastics pollution and single-use situation far worse.

I've recently written a few rants about cannabis legalization in Canada and harm reduction in BC . Exploring these themes further, I just came across three new papers investigating mental health emergencies induced by cannabis consumption. All super interesting. The first study is titled Association between non-medical cannabis legalization and emergency department visits for cannabis-induced psychosis. Led by Dr Myran , a family physician with the Ottawa Hospital Research I

The United States and 21 other countries pledged on Saturday at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai to triple nuclear energy...

Though I bought "A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency" the moment it came out, back in 2020, only now did I finish reading it. (You should go buy five copies.) Obviously, as the title suggests, it's a book about transforming our society with a reorientation toward a concern for climate and addressing the problems we face. In spelling out just how all this will work, the author starts by quoting Gramsci.* And, well, it goes downhill fast from there. Among ma

We moved into a new place. The first strata council meeting eventually arrived. My partner had been anticipating the event for two months, was eager to go, and I was thrilled for her to represent. I was also happy to opt out. She reported back that I was the only one not in attendance, that she explained my absence to the group as “He doesn’t like meetings,” and that the secretary noted this in the Council’s minutes. I thought all of that was funny. I recounted it to friends