Terrifying video has emerged of drug addicts at a bus station waiting room just hours before school children made their way to school.
The disturbing footage, reminiscent of the television show The Walking Dead, was shot at Clareview bus station in Edmonton, a city of one million people, with city officials seemingly powerless to do anything about it.
The 15-secondviral clip online sees seven addicts behaving more like zombies as a couple are seen slowly moving around the room in a stupor.
Three others can be seen hunched over with with the heads almost touching their feed in a state of near-unconsciousness, while another can be seen sitting on the floor, the few possessions they have strewn about the place.
A video showing drug addicts in a waiting room at an Alberta bus station hours before school children arrived has gone viral
Online viewers attempted to explain what had caused the seven addicts to behave in such a manner, with many suggesting that methadone might be behind their symptoms.
Methadone is medication used to to treat people who are addicted to heroin and narcotic pain medicines with one of the side effects being that it can cause drowsiness.
The animal sedative Xylazine – known as ‘tranq’ – is also now exacerbating the crisis.
It’s often combined with fentanyl and its horrific effects cause addicts to zonk out as they lose feeling in their muscles.
One former opiate user who saw the footage described it as an ‘endless downward spiral into a black abyss of misery.’
‘I feel for them, even though what they’re doing is f***ed up. Worst part is, you cannot force them to get clean. They have to want it …. and many don’t truly mean it when they say “I want to get clean.” Such a sad thing,’ they wrote.
‘Worst part of it all is the mess they leave behind, which is usually hazardous waste, like needles and other unpleasant and dangerous trash.’
Seven addicts can be seen in various states of stupor and near-unconsciousness at the Clareview bus station in Edmonton
Others responding tried to explain why the addicts appeared bent over.
‘I know people will shoot up, but they’ll get up for some reason and then the heroin/fentanyl really kicks in. Thus, they are kind of frozen standing up doing the ‘heroin hunch.’ Plus, some people shoot up while standing, so the drug kicks in real fast and they are kind of stuck in place.
‘Trying to find out why heroin junkies do this, or a meth tweeker does that …. well, it’s impossible to figure out because the behavior is so abnormal. What goes through a junkies mind, while they’re high, is an enigma. Trust me, the stuff I thought about made zero sense,’ a former junkie wrote, sharing his experience.
Another commenter explained it as occurring because of the different drugs rushing through the drug addict’s system.
‘I’ve had it explained to me as a blend of opiate and speed, so that your body is trying to nod off under the opiates but your central nervous system is reacting to the amphetamines and trying to keep you moving, thus the bent over bobbing,’ another user wrote.
A man is passed out on Bienville Street in New Orleans. A local coroner has blamed fentanyl for the rise in drug-related deaths
Others viewing the shocking footage took a more hardline approach stating how they wanted such individuals off the streets entirely.
‘My moral compass on this is getting more clear every day. These people need to be institutionalized against their will. If you want to die of heroin, you can. You are free to do so but you are not free to inflict this on society,’ a Redditer posted.
‘Die, lock up or quit. We cant tolerate this slow, public degradation. It’s like broadcasting suicide, it’s beyond perverse. When someone cant make decisions for themselves society has to make it for them.’
One resident of Edmonton identified the bus station and noted how the city does have a drug problem and how there are several bad areas of the city that exist.
‘The downtown area is unsafe with plenty of what you see in this video. Homeless, tent cities, etc. Public transit is unsafe, this is where this video was recorded. You can’t get into the downtown high rise businesses without being buzzed in,’ the user explained.
‘Security guards and safe walking plans in place but still people getting attacked and murdered by drug addicts and parolees out from our insanely lenient in-out justice system.
‘Still, people live and work in these areas and have to deal with this on a daily basis. Our politicians are not doing enough. It’s just disgusting and sad that all anyone cares about is a decimal point.’
San Francisco has tried a raft of different policies to stop the deaths but it is a struggle
Some of those commenting on the video had more sympathy for the situation the drug addicts were in.
‘People gawk and get mad at situations like this, then also get mad at safe injection sites. There are very few safe indoor spaces for homeless people, the alternative is for them to be shooting up on the streets,’ they explained.
‘These people are not going to die off or disappear as long as drugs are still hitting the streets, they will be replaced by other addicts.
‘These people need support if the problem is ever going to be solved, yet the Alberta government is stripping away that support every day, and the people that support the removal of that funding film and post s*** like this on social media, then complain that homeless people are ruining their city,’ they fumed.
‘No, bad policies are ruining your city. Drug addiction exists everywhere. Lack of support is keeping these people on the streets.’
The scene is being replayed in cities across North America with addicts hunched in doorways, sleeping in their own feces night after night, openly injecting, cooking and smoking hard drugs such as heroin, crack cocaine, crystal meth and fentanyl.
Fentanyl alone is a lethal synthetic opioid that is 50 times stronger than heroin and has killed hundreds of thousands across the continent.
In cities coast to coast, from Boston to San Francisco, addicts lie senseless on the pavement, even in the rain, or stagger around looking for their next fix.
A determined sheriff’s deputy compiled these shocking before and after mugshots back in 2004 to show how meth ravages the appearance of addicts in a bid to deter people away from the drug
Fentanyl is the latest stage in the opioid crisis which started in America in the early 2000s when millions of people became addicted to prescription opioids that were marketed by drug companies and readily handed out by doctors.
When the prescriptions became harder to get in the 2010s, addicts had to resort to heroin. Now, they have turned to the cheaper choice, fentanyl, instead.
Canadians in particular pride themselves on the beauty of their country and the generosity of their people, but as the video shows, even their cities are not immune from the opioid crisis.
British Columbia, and especially Vancouver, has become a mecca for liberal Canadians, who have elected a provincial government that believes society is too judgmental about addicts.
Earlier this year, the province started a three-year experiment to decriminalize all hard drugs.
The aim of decriminalization is to eliminate the ‘shame’ of drug use.
On the intersection of Atkinson Street and Southampton Street in Boston local cleanup teams attempted to evict the tent city and shoed the addicts away
Health officials say it’s all about breaking down the ‘barriers and stigma’ of drug addiction and reducing the rising number of fatal overdoses by ensuring that drug users can access ‘pure’ supplies safely manufactured by pharmaceutical companies.
Some 14,000 people have died from fatal overdoses in British Columbia — currently an average of five a day — since the province, which has a population of 5.3 million, declared a public health emergency in 2016.
In 2021, fentanyl — which dealers mix into other drugs because it is cheap and incredibly strong — was involved in 87 per cent of these deaths. In Vancouver alone, at least 2,200 addicts live in tents.
But the decriminalization scheme applies not only to hardened addicts but anyone 18 and over who wants to take hard drugs — including those who were previously deterred by their illegality.
2023 was San Francisco’s deadliest year ever for drug overdoses, with 806 deaths from drug-related causes
Anyone will be able to inject, smoke, snort or swallow whatever and wherever they like — even sitting on the swings next to children in a playground if they so choose.
Down the west coast in San Francisco, the city faced its deadliest year ever for drug overdose deaths in 2023 with 806 people dying, topping its highest year on record, 2020, when 726 people died.
The rise in drug deaths goes hand in hand with a crime wave which has forced businesses to shut down and emptied the city center.
San Francisco has tried a raft of different measures to bring down the number of deaths, from increasing police presence to opening a ‘safe injection’ site which they then closed again.
But none of them have worked.
Pictured above is a man on the streets of San Francisco during the current drugs crisis
Dr Daniel Ciccarone, a professor at the University of California, said: ‘I had predicted the epidemic would start to burn out. But it is unbelievably resilient and horribly durable.’
And he warned, ‘clearly the city has not done well enough… our policy options are not working.’
And the drug deaths are going hand in hand with a crime wave which has sparked an exodus of businesses and thrown the city into a ‘doom loop’.
A recent report showed 95 retailers in downtown San Francisco have closed since the start of the COVID pandemic, a decline of more than 50 percent from 2019.
Office vacancy rates hit a record high of 34 per cent last year as shops were driven out of the downtown area by heightened crime and economists warn the city is spiraling into an ‘urban doom loop’.
Looting specifically became a huge problem for the city while rampant theft caused the downfall of San Francisco’s main shopping area – Union Square – and forced many major chains and local businesses to permanently shut their doors.
