At about 6:30 p.m. one recent evening a man rushed through the door of Convenience Plus, a cluttered downtown corner store. “Have you got Narcan?” he asked. The cashier handed him a rectangular red-and-white kit. The man dashed out the door again.
Narcan is a brand name for naloxone, a drug that reverses overdoses by blocking the effects of opioid drugs on the brain. A squirt in the nostril from a plastic dispenser can bring victims back from the brink of death in minutes.
East Hastings Street in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside has long been the epicenter of Canada’s deadly opioid crisis. For years, lines of tents, discarded needles and open drug use have been common sights.
Residents of the neighbourhood have repeatedly called for a radical change to the government’s approach to illegal drugs, particularly since a recent spate of overdose deaths.
This week, they got their wish. An exemption came into effect on Wednesday, allowing any resident of the province of British Columbia to possess 2.5 grams of ecstasy, crack, cocaine or heroin – and even the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl – without fear of criminal charge.
The Downtown Eastside is an open wound.
There is nothing positive to be said about it beyond having the good fortune to escape that little hell.
I recall walking along East Hastings early one Saturday morning.
From about a block away I kept my eye on the very pretty young aboriginal girl approaching me.
Pretty and pretty fucked up. Open sores, needle tracks ran up both her arms.
I declined her offer to “Party.”
Last week, British Columbia became the first province in Canada and the second jurisdiction in North America to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of hard drugs for personal use. Those drugs include heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and even fentanyl, a synthetic opioid more than 50 times more powerful than heroin.
Inside the Canadian city where opioids, methamphetamine and cocaine have been decriminalised
As a bitter wind gusted down East Hastings Street, an addict wearing shorts despite the snow was selling his Liverpool FC shirt. “I’m sick, man, I need money,” he said, asking for C$20 (£12) as he eyed his next fix.
Not far away on Vancouver’s East Side yesterday, there was a free-for-all of drug use taking place — users huddled in small groups as they freely abused heroin, fentanyl, cocaine and methamphetamine. None of them, however, was breaking a single law.
Today, British Columbia introduced a measure that decriminalises possession of hard drugs in the Canadian province.
Police simply walk past drug users as new law comes into force despite 2,272 deaths from illicit substances last year in British Columbia
At just past 8am I am standing on East Hastings Street in downtown Vancouver with a small packet of crack cocaine in my hand.
Snow is falling gently and dozens, if not hundreds, of drug addicts are already on the move, unbothered when they tread in the human faeces littering the pavement.
Some have already had their fix, and slump lifelessly against shopfronts or slumber in makeshift tents where many stash guns and knives.
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.
And … 2,272 British Columbians died from toxic illicit drugs in 2022: coroner
Watch: BC officially legalizes 2.5 grams of opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA for personal use and those in possession will no longer be arrested, charged or have their drugs seized. pic.twitter.com/vG0LN6wAAl
— The Canadian Independent (@canindependent) January 31, 2023
h/t XC
Police forces across British Columbia are finalizing training on new drug laws that will limit or entirely cease their interactions with people who use drugs as the province becomes the first in Canada to decriminalize simple possession.
The legal change, which takes effect Tuesday, marks a monumental shift in policing drug-related offences. While many police departments have in recent years moved away from arresting and recommending charges for possession alone, officers will now also stop confiscating illegal drugs – a standard practice they have known their whole careers.
Vancouver Homeless Downtown Eastside
One of Canada’s leading experts on drug addiction says British Columbia’s provincial government asked him to delete a crucial database in an attempt to censor criticism of the province’s homeless policies. The incident appears to fit within a larger, nationwide campaign to silence experts who believe that, when it comes to homelessness and drugs, Canadian policy-makers are on the wrong track.
Soft policies caused disorder and violent crime
“It’s fine on the other side, it’s fine on the other side!” sing five rowdy, dancing Brits, to the tune of the Pet Shop Boys’ “Go West”. On the other side of the 14th century Oudezijds Achterburgwal canal, a cluster of partying men yodel back. It is midnight on a Friday in the heart of Amsterdam’s De Wallen district, and I am on a reconnaissance tour with Amsterdam’s Night Watch.
Eight Canadians have filed a Charter challenge against the Government of Canada and the Minister of Health regarding patient access to psilocybin and psilocybin therapy.
The plaintiffs, which include seven patients and one health-care practitioner, are arguing that the current modes of accessing psilocybin are insufficient and a violation of Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees the right to life, liberty and security of the person.
The bill would authorize cities and counties to establish “safe consumption sites” where addicts could use illegal narcotics under supervision. Those accessing the “hygienic space supervised by trained staff” could consume pre-obtained drugs. Program staff would be trained to administer an “opioid antagonist” in the event of an overdose.
The place where Chris gets his fentanyl is bright and airy, all blond wood and exposed brick. The staff is friendly and knowledgeable about the potency of the pills he can crush, cook and inject.
Soft pop music played, and an attendant spritzed a bit of Covid-cautious spray on his seat before he settled into a booth on a recent afternoon with a couple of red-and-yellow pills, a tourniquet, a tiny candle and a lighter.
“The best thing about this is the guarantee: I can come in here four times a day and get it,” Chris said. He no longer spends all of his waking hours in a frantic scrabble of panhandling and “other stuff” to scrape up the cash to pay a dealer. He won’t get arrested — and he won’t overdose and die using a drug that is not what it is sold as.
This fentanyl dispensary is legal, and Canada’s public health system finances it.
Senator Larry Campbell, who struggles with depression, PTSD, and “getting old,” reveals that psilocybin microdoses helped improve his mood.
“This is the first time I’ve admitted this,” teased Senator Larry Campbell of his unexpected psilocybin experience while speaking at the opening ceremonies of the Catalyst Psychedelics Summit in Kingston, Ontario.
A Republican congressman is painting life in Washington as a non-stop orgy of “sexual perversion” and drug use akin to the fictional antics on TV’s House of Cards
North Carolina GOP Rep. Madison Cawthorn, 26, claims D.C. is just like the series.
Following last week’s revelation by the Washington Free Beacon that the Biden Administration had provided free crack pipes and “safe smoking kits” to drug addicts in San Francisco and elsewhere, it appears two Republican lawmakers have proposed a new bill dubbed “Hunter’s Act”, which aims to prevent the Biden administration from spending taxpayer dollars on crack pipes and other drug paraphernalia.
