Drug Cocktails : Facts about mixing medicine, booze and street drugs

We are committed to maintaining confidentiality and personal privacy. Collection, use, disclosure and retention of personal information is subject to, and must comply with, the provisions of the BC Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA). The purpose of this privacy notice is to describe our practices regarding personal information use and collection through this website. Please note that we do not disclose, give, sell or transfer any personal information about our website visitors unless required for law enforcement or otherwise provided for by law.

We reserve the right to update this policy at any time. Users are responsible for reviewing this document periodically for changes.

What is personal information?

Personal information means recorded information about an identifiable individual other than contact information and would include, but is not limited to, such things as an individual's name, address, birth date, e-mail address, phone number, blood type and health care history.

Name, profession and email address where you prefer to receive professional correspondence when provided by professionals (at registration or when contacting us) is considered contact information.

What kind of information is being collected and how is it used?

Personal information from youth is not collected through this website. When a professional registers to access this website, by completing the registration from, we may use this contact information to verify the individual requesting access is a professional and has a valid email address for professional correspondence (by sending an access password to that email address). The relative proportions of different professional groups accessing the website is tracked (aggregate data only) to inform future design changes to the website.

If a professional sends an email message to us by completing the contact form found on our website, we only use the professional contact information provided to us through this website for responding to and processing your requests for information.

Contact information for professionals collected via this website will only be used for the specific purpose for which you provided the information and will not be made available to others for any other purpose.

The server where the DrugCocktails.ca database is stored is physically located in Richmond, BC.

Cookies

Some of our web pages use "cookies" which are small amounts of information stored by your web browser software on your work station. Cookies are designed to track browsing history on a website for the convenience of the user. They help the website "remember" what areas of a website a browser has accessed or used previously. Cookies can, however, be misused, and have become a privacy concern for some because they can be used to record and analyze an individual's broader browsing history.

It's important to know that cookies are plain text files and cannot execute files or make copies of themselves. They do not carry or deliver viruses and cannot scan or retrieve your personal information.

The cookies we use on this site and what we use them for are described below. This site operates on 'implied consent', which means that by visiting and clicking through the site, we assume you agree with this usage. If you do not agree, then you should not use this site, or you can delete the cookies after visiting this site, or use your browser's anonymous usage setting (called "Incognito" in Chrome, "In Private" for Internet Explorer, "Private Browsing" in Firefox and Safari).

More information on cookies, what they are used for and how to delete cookies after visiting this site can be found at http://www.allaboutcookies.org/cookies/session-cookies-used-for.html

It’s important to know that cookies are plain text files and cannot execute files or make copies of themselves. They do not carry or deliver viruses and cannot scan or retrieve your personal information. There are two types of Cookies – Session and Persistent.

Session Cookies

Session cookie information is deleted as soon as you leave the website. The use of temporary session cookies is solely for the purpose of allowing the user to interact with the website in an effective manner. An example of how session cookies help is that once you have agreed to the Terms & Conditions of Use of this website, if you choose to enter another search query, you are not asked to agree to the Terms & Conditions of Use with each subsequent search – the session cookie keeps the information that you have already agreed to the Terms & Conditions of Use and you don't have to re-enter it.

Analytics

The DrugCocktails.ca website uses Google Analytics with IP anonymization to analyze site usage. This feature snips the last octet of the IP address so that it cannot be identified as narrowly as a full IP address. For more details on this process please see https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2763052?hl=en.

Social Buttons

Social buttons let visitors share web pages. There are buttons for: Twitter and Facebook ‘Like’ on this site. In order to connect social buttons to the relevant external sites, there are scripts from those domains, which are outside of this site. Those sites could be collecting information about what you are doing all around the internet, including this site. To be certain what information those sites collect, and how to opt out, check the respective policies of each site.

Facebook and Twitter Collection Notice

The personal information you post may be collected by a program of PHSA under sections 26(c) of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act for the purposes of engaging and consulting with the public. Please be aware that any information collected may be stored and/or accessed outside of Canada on servers not belonging to the government. To protect your own privacy and the privacy of others, please do not include any personal information including phone numbers and email addresses in the body of your comment. Please do not share personal information about others, including pictures. If you have any questions about the collection of your personal information, please contact Dean Elbe, DrugCocktails.ca project lead, 604-875-3550, .

Moderation Policy for Facebook and Twitter

We welcome your participation in our discussion and look forward to an active exchange of ideas. We want to publish your comments, but we expect conversations to follow the conventions of polite discourse. Therefore, we monitor comments on a daily basis and will delete comments that:

contain abusive, obscene, indecent or offensive language
include defamatory, abusive, harassing or hateful remarks or make unproven or unsupported accusations against individuals or organizations
constitute spam, promote services or products
invade anyone’s privacy or impersonates anyone
are far off-topic
are posted without the necessary rights, licenses and consents (see Terms of Use)
encourage conduct that may or would constitute a criminal offence or give rise to civil liability, or that otherwise violates
any local, provincial, national or international law or regulation anywhere in the world
contain long embedded URLs
contain excessive links or contain code
identify any publicly-elected representative or candidate regardless of their political affiliation, whether those comments are supportive or critical
are contrary to the principles of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

We don’t edit comments to remove objectionable content, so please ensure that your comment contains none of the above. To protect your own privacy and the privacy of others, please do not include phone numbers or e-mail addresses in the body of your comment.

If you have questions about this moderation policy or how we apply it, please contact: .

Bit.ly

Drugcocktails.ca uses Bit.ly to shorten long URLs for use in email messages, Twitter feeds and on Facebook pages. Bit.ly collects and provides data on how often you as an email recipient or Facebook/Twitter user, click on the shortened URLs distributed by drugcocktails.ca. Bit.ly analytics show how many people clicked on the URLs posted by drugcocktails.ca, compared to the total number of clicks on the shortened URLs. Bit.ly analytics do not provide any personally identifying information (PII) about the visitors who open the shortened links. The Bit.ly Privacy Policy is available at http://bit.ly/pages/privacy.

Facebook

Drugcocktails.ca Facebook pages are managed by CW employees who post news and other items of interest to be consumed by the public. If you have a Facebook account, you can log in to your account to post comments, and 'like' drugcoctails.ca Facebook pages and individual entries. If once you click on a drugcocktails.ca Facebook page, you comment or click on the 'like' button, your PII will be visible to drugcocktails.ca staff and other Facebook site visitors. The amount of visible personal information displayed will depend on your own Facebook privacy settings.

You can completely avoid displaying any PII by not creating a Facebook account, not posting comments, not clicking on the 'like' options, or interacting with drugcocktails.ca Facebook accounts in any way (i.e., private messaging, sharing posts, etc.). Drugcocktails.ca staff do not collect, use or disclose any information about visitors who comment or 'like' the drugcocktails.ca Facebook sites. However, as a practice, comment moderator policy requires the removal from drugcocktails.ca Facebook pages of any comments that contain spam or are improper, inflammatory, or offensive. The Facebook Privacy Policy is available at http://www.facebook.com/policy.php.

Twitter

DrugCocktails.ca uses Twitter, a free messaging service offered by a third party, as one tool in its efforts to communicate clearly, quickly and in an engaging manner to people interested in our work. You can follow us @DrugCocktails

Twitter content delivered by DrugCocktails.ca includes (but is not limited to):

links to news releases, presentation information, tips on use of the website, and facts about medication-substance interactions from the DrugCocktails.ca database
links to relevant information produced and published elsewhere (work of other organizations, patient organizations, researchers, news organizations and others). This can include videos, blog posts, and retweets (RTs) from other Twitter users. (See below for our policy on RTs.)
interesting facts, quotes or observations related to our work

Retweets (RTs)

Tweets we retweet (RT) do not imply endorsement on the part of BC Mental Health & Addiction Services, BC Children’s Hospital or the Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA). We may retweet news, links and personal observations we believe are relevant to the work we do. Importantly, our decision to RT should not be taken as explicit endorsement of any position or argument that may vary from the BC Mental Health & Addiction Services or PHSA current official position, nor should it be taken as an indication of a possible shift in the current official position.

Following

Our decision to follow a particular Twitter user does not imply endorsement of any kind. We follow accounts on Twitter we believe are relevant to our work. This could include following the Twitter accounts of companies and other commercial enterprises (and/or their employees) who comment on substance abuse and harm reduction related issues.

Availability

We commit to updating and monitoring our Twitter account during regular office hours: 0900 – 1630h, Pacific Time. However, like many Twitter users, we may monitor and respond at other times of the day. We accept no responsibility for lack of service due to Twitter downtime.

@Replies and Direct Messages

We will read all @replies and Direct Messages sent to us and, when possible, will respond to them.

E-mail

Information sent over the Internet is not secure. This means that if the visitor uses the Contact Us page, or other e-mail address published on this site, to send an e-mail, the information provided may be intercepted as it travels to our website. We will not be responsible for any damages suffered by individuals as a result of the transmission and information that is sent to us or for any errors or changes made to transmitted information.

Warning re: use of personal email accounts as business contact

All Users are cautioned against entering any personal e-mail addresses, postal addresses or telephone numbers on this website, and are encouraged to only enter business contact information. In particular, Users need to be aware that when personal e-mail addresses linked to U.S.-based e-mail providers (e.g., gmail.com, hotmail.com or yahoo.com accounts) are entered into the website, it may result in data transmitted via such e-mail accounts being retained on servers in the United States of America.

Contact Us

If you have any questions regarding the collection or use or your information or the content of this policy, you may direct those inquiries to:

Dean Elbe
DrugCocktails.ca Project Coordinator
Mental Health Building, BC Children’s Hospital
4500 Oak Street
Vancouver, BC
V6H 3N1

Privacy Policy