Canadian province experiments with decriminalising hard drugs

[ZiprHead]

Canadian province experiments with decriminalising hard drugs

Small amounts of cocaine, heroin and fentanyl will be allowed in Vancouver and its surrounding province.

www.bbc.com

Canada's province of British Columbia is starting a first-in-the-nation trial decriminalising small amounts of hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin.
From Tuesday, adults can possess up to 2.5g of such drugs, as well as methamphetamine, fentanyl and morphine.
Canada's federal government granted the request by the west coast province to try out the three-year experiment.
It follows a similar policy in the nearby US state of Oregon, which decriminalised hard drugs in 2020.
Ahead of the pilot's launch, British Columbia and federal officials outlined the rules under the federally approved exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
While those substances will remain illegal, adults found in possession of a combined total of less than 2.5g of the drugs will not be arrested, charged or have their substances seized. Instead, they will be offered information on available health and social services.

 

[southernhybrid]

I've been an advocate for the decriminalization of t these drugs for decades. My position even got me off of jury duty once because I raised my hand when asked if anyone thought that such drugs should be legal. The men who were arrested for having cocaine with intent to sell got 20 and 30 year prison terms. A woman I knew at the time said that her husband who ended up on that jury couldn't sleep for weeks because he felt so guilty about sending two young men to prison for such a minor crime, in his and my opinion. Juries never know what the sentence will be, but he said it was obvious they were guilty. That was over 10 or so years ago, so I hope that such sentences are shorter these days, but I'm not sure. Good for Canada. I doubt we will ever have a more reasonable approach to drug usage in the US. People are always going to use drugs. I'd like to see them decriminalized along with safe spaces for people who use drugs like heroin to shoot up. I'd also like to see rehab for those who want help. I'm ranting in the wrong place now.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yup, the drug war causes far more harm than the drugs. The only drugs I think should be illegal are those commonly used for date rape. Beyond that, it should either be legal, or legal for addicts by prescription. I would, however, severely limit advertising. (However, I would apply the same standards to alcohol and tobacco.)

 

[Oleg]

Yup, the drug war causes far more harm than the drugs.

Eh, the imposition of harmful drugs on the Chinese by the British led to two lost wars and the Century of Humiliation.

 

[Jarhyn]

Yup, the drug war causes far more harm than the drugs.

Eh, the imposition of harmful drugs on the Chinese by the British led to two lost wars and the Century of Humiliation.

Key words: imposition, war.

The British were running a racket to control the drug through violent imposition. Further, it has long been known that drugs like these thrive in low income and low standard of living areas, a problem magnified by high costs.

People use drugs, especially problematic ones, when they believe they or their life is not enough or a good life is unattainable.

The solution is not criminalization, it's nationalization of the supply, cost control, and improvement of the basic standard of living.

If there is some segment of the population, likely quite small, that falls into that pit despite efforts to keep people happy, I would rather that "bad end" for them than any other, one in which they are at least happy-ish as they struggle for relevance in the world and fail.

 

[Oleg]

People use drugs, especially problematic ones, when they believe they or their life is not enough or a good life is unattainable.

Or when they're addicted. People with good lives can get addicted and have poor lives.

The solution is not criminalization, it's nationalization of the supply, cost control, and improvement of the basic standard of living.

Nonsense. Why would you want a permant underclass of addicted citizens? I'd agree that just throwing people in jail is not the solution. But ridding society of these drugs is the better course. Give people the option of treatment or a short jail sentence. Let's do what we can to return these people to society rather than think ourselves good by keeping them sick.

 

[Jarhyn]

People use drugs, especially problematic ones, when they believe they or their life is not enough or a good life is unattainable.

Or when they're addicted. People with good lives can get addicted and have poor lives.

The solution is not criminalization, it's nationalization of the supply, cost control, and improvement of the basic standard of living.

Nonsense. Why would you want a permant underclass of addicted citizens? I'd agree that just throwing people in jail is not the solution. But ridding society of these drugs is the better course. Give people the option of treatment or a short jail sentence. Let's do what we can to return these people to society rather than think ourselves good by keeping them sick.

What do you think makes addiction happen?

I've met a number of great folks who use... Pretty much any drug you can imagine. Most do it responsibly and almost all avoid opiates except for dental pain, because "it's not worth it".

The thing they have in common is they all have access to education, housing, food, a reasonable amount of non-drug entertainment, and support structures with friends and/or family.

You have ways of trying to creatively misinterpret measures and it doesn't make you look any better.

More, I would do everything possible to keep people from slipping through cracks, and being able to afford to leave those cracks they slip into. Still, I'm not going to force someone onto financial life support if that's not what they want.

This only comes AFTER taking care of folks and making sure there are opportunities that nobody is shut out from.

You and your lot complain about homeless people not wanting jobs and just wanting drugs and to have no responsibility? I say give them that, and a safe place to do it with every opportunity to exit from that trajectory. If people decide of their own free will to be trash, I would deign to offer them a comfortable bin.

It shows more how YOU think that your first thought about letting people access drugs cheaply and safely, and you think "permanent underclass".

Personally, I think when someone says "I want to waste my life", I would minimize the consequences. You have no right to their "productivity" in the first place seeing as they didn't ask to be born.

 

[Oleg]

You and your lot complain about homeless people not wanting jobs and just wanting drugs and to have no responsibility?

It's not from nowhere. In Seattle, they had teams go into homeless encampments and offer services and housing. The stipulation was these folks would have to give up their drugs. They chose the drugs.

 

[Toni]

I guess I’m a little less certain, based entirely on the handful of people I know who have destroyed their lives and done serious harm to everyone who cares about them but especially their children. It is worse than the damage done by alcoholics, which is awful enough. In only one case did the addiction do any time and that was not directly related to drugs. I see those kids, now young adults with children of their own and I see how much they struggle not to fall into the same traps their parents did. Not everyone succeeds.

In none of these cases did the families live in poverty, at least none that was not caused directly by substance abuse. In one case a gambling addiction was part of the mix. In every case the parents were quite intelligent and some were extremely talented in some areas. For some, the parents also came from dysfunctional homes with at least one parent with substance abuse problems.

One of my kids works as a public defender. It is rare ta hat any of his clients is facing charges that do not include drug charges. He agrees with decriminalization. We’ve talked a bit about just how and why anybody would ever try meth, having seen what it did/does to their parents and other family members. His take was that his clients were surrounded by people who dealt with their problems with drugs and that’s how they learned to deal with theirs. Genetic predisposition towards alcohol and drug dependence coupled with learned behavior create traps that people struggle with their entire lives, many never escaping.

I just don’t see how decriminalization will solve anything except overcrowding in the prison and judicial systems. Both are laudable, of course.

I think the real push for decriminalization is precisely to relieve pressure on prisons and the judicial system to save considerable taxpayer money.

I think such efforts will do nothing to relieve and possibly would exacerbate the non-criminal personal and societal burdens of addiction. If we lean so hard into the criminal aspects abd the money savings we will continue to overlook the extreme need for addiction rehabilitation, mental health care and better ways to deal with acute and chronic pain. If we fail to address these issues in a meaningful abd effective way, we are simply passing the issues onto more generations.

 

[bilby]

You have no right to their "productivity" in the first place

If avoiding the creation of a permanent underclass is a priority, then the thing we need to mitigate against isn't drugs, it's capitalism.

 

[Jarhyn]

You and your lot complain about homeless people not wanting jobs and just wanting drugs and to have no responsibility?

It's not from nowhere. In Seattle, they had teams go into homeless encampments and offer services and housing. The stipulation was these folks would have to give up their drugs. They chose the drugs.

No shit they chose the drugs when it was forced as an OR, a choice of one or the other.

Fuck your puritanical "helping".

Do you think the people who invent your phones and computers go it sober?

"We tried one thing doomed to fail and it failed."

No shit it failed! Maybe take the suggestion of letting them keep their access to drugs, and making them affordable so they can leave when they are ready. The thing that doesn't say they are trash for liking drugs or having no home.

If they decide to be trash when they don't have to be, even then it's nice to provide a pleasant bin for them.

It's exactly the barrier to exit and the bad faith doomed-to-fail bullshit that creates underclasses. So take your bad faith underclass bullshit and pound sand.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I guess I’m a little less certain, based entirely on the handful of people I know who have destroyed their lives and done serious harm to everyone who cares about them but especially their children. It is worse than the damage done by alcoholics, which is awful enough. In only one case did the addiction do any time and that was not directly related to drugs. I see those kids, now young adults with children of their own and I see how much they struggle not to fall into the same traps their parents did. Not everyone succeeds.

As far as I can tell, the drug war (or America's over-reliance on arresting black males for drug crimes) has devastated far more families than drugs could ever have.

Addiction is a very tough nut to crack. The problem we have is that our attempt to prohibit access has created so many more ills than it saved... to the point, we are messing up the lives of people in other countries because of our drug use alone. However, free access to narcotics seems like a bad idea too.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

You and your lot complain about homeless people not wanting jobs and just wanting drugs and to have no responsibility?

It's not from nowhere. In Seattle, they had teams go into homeless encampments and offer services and housing. The stipulation was these folks would have to give up their drugs. They chose the drugs.

Addiction makes people make bad decisions. We are fine with this for alcohol though.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

People use drugs, especially problematic ones, when they believe they or their life is not enough or a good life is unattainable.

Or when they're addicted. People with good lives can get addicted and have poor lives.

The solution is not criminalization, it's nationalization of the supply, cost control, and improvement of the basic standard of living.

Nonsense. Why would you want a permant underclass of addicted citizens? I'd agree that just throwing people in jail is not the solution. But ridding society of these drugs is the better course. Give people the option of treatment or a short jail sentence. Let's do what we can to return these people to society rather than think ourselves good by keeping them sick.

Okay, the "ridding society of these drugs" is a laudable goal... which has umm.... utterly failed and propped up even more crime and violence. I'd love to live in a world without drugs... and Jets fans. But that isn't going to happen, so we need to actually address what is, not what'd be nice.

 

[Toni]

I guess I’m a little less certain, based entirely on the handful of people I know who have destroyed their lives and done serious harm to everyone who cares about them but especially their children. It is worse than the damage done by alcoholics, which is awful enough. In only one case did the addiction do any time and that was not directly related to drugs. I see those kids, now young adults with children of their own and I see how much they struggle not to fall into the same traps their parents did. Not everyone succeeds.

As far as I can tell, the drug war (or America's over-reliance on arresting black males for drug crimes) has devastated far more families than drugs could ever have.

Addiction is a very tough nut to crack. The problem we have is that our attempt to prohibit access has created so many more ills than it saved... to the point, we are messing up the lives of people in other countries because of our drug use alone. However, free access to narcotics seems like a bad idea too.

I’m just talking about people I know personally, including some I am related to. They all happen to be white. Only one has done any time at all. Of course that’s an entirely different issue: who is imprisoned on drug charges and who is not.

The addiction devastation is not confined to the addict. Not by a long shot. I’m thinking specifically of three young adults from 3 different families and three different situations.

I cannot imagine that their experience—and mind you: they are all functioning adults with their own families! So pretty much, best case scenario —is isolated to them or to white kids in the Midwest.

 

[James Brown]

How are we supposed to "rid society of these drugs" when we can't even keep hard drugs out of prisons?

 

[Tharmas]

I write as a recovered alcoholic/addict. When I was a teenager I learned to abuse street drugs because they were so much easier for me to get ahold of than alcohol (my primary drug of choice). Alcohol was licensed, regulated and controlled.
My point is that legalizing doesn't mean handing out drugs to everyone. It means establishing a measure of control.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

People use drugs, especially problematic ones, when they believe they or their life is not enough or a good life is unattainable.

Or when they're addicted. People with good lives can get addicted and have poor lives.

It's quite possible to leave a decent life addicted to opiates so long as they're reasonably available. Plenty of chronic pain patients do.

The solution is not criminalization, it's nationalization of the supply, cost control, and improvement of the basic standard of living.

Nonsense. Why would you want a permant underclass of addicted citizens? I'd agree that just throwing people in jail is not the solution. But ridding society of these drugs is the better course. Give people the option of treatment or a short jail sentence. Let's do what we can to return these people to society rather than think ourselves good by keeping them sick.

Drug treatment only works if the patient truly wants to be free of their addiction. It's not something that can be imposed with any likelyhood of success.

 

[Toni]

People use drugs, especially problematic ones, when they believe they or their life is not enough or a good life is unattainable.

Or when they're addicted. People with good lives can get addicted and have poor lives.

It's quite possible to leave a decent life addicted to opiates so long as they're reasonably available. Plenty of chronic pain patients do.

The solution is not criminalization, it's nationalization of the supply, cost control, and improvement of the basic standard of living.

Nonsense. Why would you want a permant underclass of addicted citizens? I'd agree that just throwing people in jail is not the solution. But ridding society of these drugs is the better course. Give people the option of treatment or a short jail sentence. Let's do what we can to return these people to society rather than think ourselves good by keeping them sick.

Drug treatment only works if the patient truly wants to be free of their addiction. It's not something that can be imposed with any likelyhood of success.

Really? You think that addicts have a hard time getting their drugs? Nope.

But you’re right: if the addiction is under control, it is possible to live for a while addicted to opiates. Avoiding needles is pretty key.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

People use drugs, especially problematic ones, when they believe they or their life is not enough or a good life is unattainable.

Or when they're addicted. People with good lives can get addicted and have poor lives.

It's quite possible to leave a decent life addicted to opiates so long as they're reasonably available. Plenty of chronic pain patients do.

The solution is not criminalization, it's nationalization of the supply, cost control, and improvement of the basic standard of living.

Nonsense. Why would you want a permant underclass of addicted citizens? I'd agree that just throwing people in jail is not the solution. But ridding society of these drugs is the better course. Give people the option of treatment or a short jail sentence. Let's do what we can to return these people to society rather than think ourselves good by keeping them sick.

Drug treatment only works if the patient truly wants to be free of their addiction. It's not something that can be imposed with any likelyhood of success.

Really? You think that addicts have a hard time getting their drugs? Nope.

But you’re right: if the addiction is under control, it is possible to live for a while addicted to opiates. Avoiding needles is pretty key.

Hard as in it's expensive and severely interferes with living a normal life. And needles aren't needed if your objective is simply to avoid withdrawal symptoms.