Providence In the News

In the early 1970s, when I was a pathology professor at McGill University — home to one of North America’s most prestigious lung-research centres — I paid St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver a visit. I was impressed by its clinical and teaching programs that underpinned the hospital’s pulmonary care.

As the opioid crisis spreads across North America, the Canadian city of Vancouver is pioneering a radical approach to drug treatment - let addicts use.

For 30 years, Russell Cooper’s life was dominated by a crippling heroin addiction. He first tried it with a friend in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in his early 20s, and it made all his self-esteem and anxiety issues disappear. But the cost was the breakdown of his marriage, getting fired from his railroad job, and serving seven years in prison for robbing banks to support his habit.