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Canada bans guns, but temporarily decriminalizes certain drugs; cocaine, meth, ecstasy, or opioids

June 2, 2022 | | Print Article

Starting next year, Canadians caught in British Columbia with cocaine, meth, ecstasy, or opioids will no longer be arrested and charged with criminal possession of an illegal substance, in what is a temporary move by lawmakers meant to combat a surge in fatal drug overdoses.

“Canada’s ongoing overdose crisis is shaped by complex factors, many of which are beyond an individual’s control,” tweeted Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam on Tuesday. “Mental health has worsened and substance use has increased among people in [Canada] throughout the pandemic.”

“An exemption was granted from Jan 31, 2023 to Jan 31, 2026 so that people aged 18+ in [British Columbia] will not be subject to criminal charges for personal possession of small amounts of certain illegal drugs,” Dr. Tam continued, adding a link to the government website explaining the subsection 56(1) class exemption.

According to the website, “substance use harms are first and foremost a health and social issue and should be treated as such.”

Consideration for the exemption was based, in part, on the notion that “stigma associated with substance use can lead people to hide their drug use, use in riskier ways and prevent them from accessing services and supports.”

There have been more than 9,400 deaths due to illicit drug overdoses in British Columbia since 2016, with a record 2,224 deaths recorded last year alone, the Daily Mail reports, and according to British Columbia’s minister of mental health, Sheila Malcolmson, the coroner in the province logs between five and seven deaths per day. Many of those deaths occur when the user is alone, often at home.

“Fear and shame keeps drug use a secret,” Malcolmson said.

By alleviating the fear of being arrested, Canada hopes addicts will seek help before they end up a statistic.

With the adoption of the exemption, says British Columbia’s health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, “we are taking an important step forward to removing that fear and shame and stigma.”

“This is not one single thing that will reverse this crisis,” Dr. Henry added, “but it will make a difference.”

 


The move coincides with a proposal by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to ban, nationwide, the sale, transfer, and importation of handguns in the country, which will make it far more difficult for law-abiding, sober citizens to protect themselves against violent crimes — many of which are committed by known drug users.

Known as the “harm reduction movement,” advocates of policies that would approach the drug crisis with compassion rather than litigation have long been making headway in Canada and parts of the United States, and British Columbia has led the charge.

In 2003, Vancouver opened North America’s first supervised injection site and, a decade earlier, championed British Columbia’s first needle exchange program.

Given that, for its efforts, the province now leads the nation in overdoses, opponents of the measure question if providing drug addicts with safe places and sterile needles to use and decriminalizing the possession of up to 2.5 grams of opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA, known as “ecstasy,” may not be the best way to go.

The Daily Mail notes that in Oregon — the first state in the U.S. to, in 2020, decriminalize the personal possession of hard drugs — only 1 percent of those who received a citation rather than a trip to the county lockup since the new law took effect in February 2021 availed themselves of the state’s new hotline for help with substance abuse.

As American Wire previously reported, the Biden administration has already been slammed for denying it distributed crack pipes to drug addicts via “harm-reduction organizations.”

And in California on Wednesday, a bill aimed at creating legal, supervised injection sites where people can be revived if they OD just advanced to the full Assembly.

The bill, proposed by Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener will allow test programs in Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco, Sacramento’s CBS13 reports.

“We know that we are experiencing a crisis of overdose deaths, and these are preventable,” said Wiener. “This is one way to help keep people safe and to actually help people get into treatment.”

Online, some Twitter users believe Canada’s latest “temporary” move is nothing short of insane.

“This is absolutely crazy,” proclaimed one user. “The exact opposite of what should be done.”

“Enabling drug use instead of discouraging it works so well in the minds of liberals,” tweeted another. “You’re just pushing the problem out into the future and take no responsibility just like these children won’t.”

But, argued a third Twitter user, the problem of drug overdoses is a societal issue, not a criminal one.

“The fact is that most people become drug addicts cuz they were/are suffering from untreated pain or mental illness,” she tweeted. “They are put on meds. [W]hen those meds are cut off, they turn to the streets.”

“We weren’t born addicted,” she stated. “Society created us.”

 

Melissa Fine
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