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Proposed legislation confronts the opioid crisis in Cascadia
Washington state governor Jay Inslee is pushing several bills that will treat opioid addiction as a disease–including an expansion of availability nalaxone and a first-in-the-nation medication treatment program for state prisons. In Oregon, governor Kate Brown is advocating for bills that would investigate pilot treatment programs and require registration of anyone who prescribes opioids. And in Vancouver, a UBC researcher found that 100 percent of heroin addicts in Downtown Eastside tested positive for fentanyl. In related news, the mayor of Lion’s Gate BC apologized for spreading a false story about a teen dying from a fentanyl-spiked vape.
Trudeau “declares war” on BC with pipeline vow
Martyn Smith at the Georgia Straight says that Canadian prime minister Trudeau’s vow to build the KinderMorgan pipeline across BC despite local and aboriginal opposition amounts to giving the province the finger. “A seven-fold increase in oil supertanker traffic in the Salish Sea that would further threaten Canada’s coastal communities and marine wildlife is clearly not in the national interest,” he writes.
Will pikas survive climate change? Researchers say “maybe.”
Pikas are super-cute alpine critters that look like a cross between a mouse and rabbit. They’re prolific in the Cascades, but rising temperatures due to climate change are threatening their numbers. Researchers have found isolated communities of pikas (such as at Crater Lake, Oregon) are more vulnerable to temperature increases.
“I married a white supremacist.”
Eugene Weekly has a terrifying story from a woman who watched as her husband slowly descended into the rabbit hole of Nazi beliefs. Herself a Jew, the author (who is anonymous) found herself in a Stockholm syndrome situation, denying that her husband was turning into a monster. Meanwhile, Knute Berger at Crosscut talks with David Neiwart, who’s tracked white supremacist groups for decades, about why the Northwest is becoming a hotbed of activity for the alt-right.
New Black History Festival for Oregon
The Oregonian reports on the first annual Black History Festival NW, a month-long series of events including youth art exhibits, readings, a scavenger hunt, lectures, and special screenings of Marvel’s Black Panther. The full schedule of events is here.
A playlist for Anca Szilagyi’s novel Daughters of the Air
Seattle writer Anca Szilagyi, whose story “Scrolling Through the Feed” was Cascadia Magazine’s first published work of fiction, has a fantastic debut novel out: Daughters of the Air, the story of a teenage runaway in 1980s New York whose family has fled the horrors of Argentina’s dirty war. Anca has created a rad playlist to accompany the novel, and the mix of Grace Jones, Nick Cave, Klaus Nomi, and PJ Harvey is dark, surreal, but ultimately hopeful–much like the novel.
That’s today’s news and arts from across the Pacific Northwest. –Andrew Engelson
Photo credit: American Pika by Frédéric Dulude-de Broin, CC BY-SA 4.0