In a new lawsuit, an association of harm-reduction nurses is arguing that individuals have a constitutional right to use illicit drugs anywhere they want (including playgrounds, beaches, bus stops and businesses) and that laws restricting this behaviour should be nullified. This is absurd — no such right exists.
‘I thought I would help people but instead found myself battling drug dealers, overdosing colleagues, neighbourhood theft and inept management’
I fought as best I could to keep drug dealers away from the supervised injection site I worked at, but it was a battle that came with a price. The threats could be terrifying.
One dealer I had kicked out of the facility came up to me outside and tried to pull my COVID mask off. He said he wanted to take a picture of me on his phone so his boss could come and wait for me after work.
The Canadian border agency is in a constant game of cat-and-mouse with criminal organizations that are trying to import dangerous narcotics as well as the ingredients for fentanyl — sometimes through “creative” means, says a senior border official.
In an interview with CBC’s The House as part of the program’s ongoing coverage of the toxic drug crisis, Aaron McCrorie, vice-president of intelligence and enforcement at the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), said officers have seen a wide variety of “innovative” methods to smuggle drugs.
Most of the precursor chemicals for fentanyl are imported to Canada from China, either directly or transhipped via the United States or South American countries, law enforcement says.
That says a lot about Trudeau’s Canada and our China class.
The authorities are leading demands for Oregon to recriminalise heroin and fentanyl after addicts took over the streets of major cities
Oregon, the first US state to decriminalise hard drugs, is set for a U-turn after addicts took over the streets of major cities.
Police chiefs, district attorneys and city officials are leading demands for Oregon to recriminalise heroin and fentanyl, reversing key provisions of the liberal experiment, which was introduced in 2021.
Underpinning the original initiative, known as Measure 110, was the belief that decriminalising hard drugs would make it easier to get addicts into treatment.
Earlier this month, a group of 35 addiction experts released yet another public letter calling upon the federal government to fix Canada’s failing “safer supply” drug experiment. A year ago this would have been unthinkable — but it seems that the wall of silence around safer supply is crumbling, despite activist-led efforts to discredit critics.
B.C.’s new law banning use of illicit drugs close to public areas — including playgrounds, beaches, bus stops, businesses and residences — infringes on drug users’ constitutional rights, according to a new lawsuit.
Earlier this year, the province began a three-year pilot decriminalizing possession of small quantities of illicit drugs. Last month, it introduced an amendment banning drug use near various public and recreational spaces to encourage people to use overdose prevention sites.
Majority of voters now want to undo a pioneering change as public drug use has become rampant
EUGENE, Ore.—Soon after Oregon became the first state to decriminalize all drugs in 2020, Officer Jose Alvarez stopped arresting people for possession and began giving out tickets with the number for a rehab helpline.
Most of the people smoking fentanyl or meth on this city’s streets balled them up and tossed them onto the ground.
“Those tickets frankly seemed like a waste of time,” said Alvarez, who stopped issuing them a few months after the law went into effect.
B.C. Conservative member of Parliament Todd Doherty tabled a motion asking the health committee to call for an immediate end to the government’s “safe supply” drug funding, sharing that addiction personally affected his own family.
“I’ve been very public and very vocal and upfront about our family’s own struggles with addictions and how I have a brother that lives on the street, that we have struggled to get him off the street,” said Mr. Doherty at a meeting of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health on Oct. 18.
If you want evidence that Canada’s experimental “safer supply” drug programs have been a disaster, all you need to do is open your laptop and visit Reddit, a popular social media platform. Until very recently, if you knew which keywords to use, you could easily find drug traffickers openly selling tens of thousands of hydromorphone pills, many of which clearly originated from Canadian safer supply programs.
For anyone who doubts that Canada’s safer supply experiment has been anything other than a disaster, I offer the story of Mark. It’s a must-read.
I was introduced to Mark, not his real name, by a B.C.-based addiction physician. Mark came from a good family and excelled in school and sports as a child, but was abused by a teacher and a family member at a young age, leading to lifelong anxiety issues that required therapy.
The Department of Justice has spent years in litigation with Safehouse. The Philly based nonprofit wants to run a ‘crackhouse’ where addicts can use drugs under ‘supervision’.
‘Safe injection sites’ have become popular with pro-crime policymakers but, like a lot of drug-based efforts, are illegal at a federal level. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 makes it a crime to “knowingly open, lease, rent, use, or maintain any place, whether permanently or temporarily, for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing, or using any controlled substance” punishable by a fine of $2 million and as much as 20 years in prison.
COBOURG, Ont.—About six years ago, Jamie Briscoe first saw someone smoking drugs off a piece of tinfoil—a method for consuming crack-cocaine, heroin, and other hard drugs—near his home in the little lakeside town of Cobourg, Ontario.
“I was just mind-blown that there was somebody sitting there in the middle of the day doing drugs and nobody was doing anything about it,” he told The Epoch Times. Now, it’s a daily sight, he said.
A startup just listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange with a business model based on a provocative prediction: legal cocaine is coming.
Safe Supply Streaming Co. is betting on a so-called third wave of policy changes that would decriminalize hard drugs, following similar measures making cannabis and psychedelics more mainstream. It plans to acquire companies that could benefit, such as fentanyl test-strip makers, addiction clinics and energy drinks containing coca leaf, according to chief executive Bill Panagiotakapoulos.
h/t Mauser
In 2020, police rolled up to a truck in small-town Saskatchewan as paramedics helped a woman inside. She had overdosed, but survived thanks to her companions’ call for emergency help. The officers, suspecting drugs, detained her companions and searched their truck, finding modified handguns, gun parts, ammunition, baggies, scales and needles. The findings screamed “drug dealer.” One companion, a man, was charged with carrying prohibited weapons and a fake ID.
VANCOUVER – Nearly two-thirds of the overdose deaths in British Columbia this year came after smoking illicit drugs, yet only 40 per cent of the supervised consumption sites in the province offer a safe place to smoke, and the chief coroner says that needs to change.
Lisa Lapointe said the latest data show 65 per cent of overdose deaths in 2023 came after smoking drugs, compared to 15 per cent involving injection, 14 per cent snorting and five per cent from oral consumption. The coroners’ office notes that people can consume using multiple methods.
Also in the data, the updated overdose death toll since the province declared a public health emergency in April 2016. Almost 13,000 have died since then, more than 1,600 this year.
