by Philippa Pictou, Health Director, Pictou Landing

Last year Pictou Landing hosted a community meeting on Prescription Drug Abuse which hosted a presentation by Denise Pellarin and Peter MacDougall from the Nova Scotia Prescription Monitoring Program. We invited a number of partners including community members, band staff, CMM Health Advisor, RCMP, Mental Health and Addictions staff from Pictou County Health Authority, Aberdeen Hospital, and the Methadone Treatment program in Truro. We had a large turnout… our Board room was filled to capacity. We wanted to begin a dialog of what we could do collectively to help people who are addicted to prescription drugs and to stop the diversion and over prescribing of prescription drugs to Pictou Landing and surrounding areas.

Following this meeting Bill Rudolph of the RCMP invited us to join the Pictou County Health and Police Liaison Committee which was a new committee that had just formed to increase communication and find solutions to issues that impacted shared by the hospital and police. The committee now includes all the police services serving Pictou County (RCMP, Trenton, New Glasgow, Stellarton, Westville and Street Crime Unit), Aberdeen Hospital staff, Addictions, Mental Health, Legal Aid, Community Services, Pharmacy, the Medical Officer of Health and Pictou Landing. Since Prescription Drug Abuse is one of the common issues the committee brainstormed what we could do to make change. We came up with a number of strategies, and decided that our first action would be ...

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