Drug Legalization

True compassion recognizes that a person stuck in addiction needs help — help that broken souls often want but can’t choose.

Last month the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the rights of cities to enforce common sense laws which prohibit the homeless from sleeping in public spaces, such as parks or sidewalks where children play or families walk. It’s almost absurd that the Court was forced to expend its limited resources adjudicating a controversy over whether such laws should be constitutional.

Thank God the B.C. government has rejected the latest reckless proposals from safer-supply advocate Dr. Bonnie Henry.

In a new report released Thursday, Henry, the Provincial Health Officer, recommended that B.C. legalize drugs through a “non-medical” model of “safer supply” wherein substances like fentanyl, crystal meth and cocaine could be obtained without prescription. The province’s NDP government immediately dismissed the idea — which was praiseworthy, because Henry’s report was unscientific and irresponsible.

Supervised consumption sites are just “drug dens” that a future Conservative government would not fund and seek to close, Pierre Poilievre said Friday.

During a visit to a park near such a site in Montreal, Poilievre said he would shutter all locations near schools, playgrounds and “anywhere else that they endanger the public.”

“Radical bureaucrats don’t have the right to open these drug dens anywhere they want,” he said.

Pierre Poilievre DESTROYS another reporterpic.twitter.com/KWFh43De2t

— The Pleb 🇨🇦 Reporter (@truckdriverpleb) July 12, 2024

-related deaths continue to rise in Canada, averaging approximately 22 lives lost each day in 2023, an ongoing trend since the pandemic, according to government data.

There were 8,049 deaths due to opioid poisoning in the country last year, a 7 percent increase over 2022, according to a newly released report from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).

The National Post has learned that police leaders in London, Ont. have known for months that staggering amounts of “safer supply” opioids are being diverted to the black market. Yet the London Police Service (LPS) failed to share this information with the public despite a raucous national debate about whether, or how much, such diversion is occurring.

Since the program started in 2016, patient deaths and infections have shot up, and prescriptions have been diverted to the streets

I have been a practicing physician in Ontario for 39 years, the last 16 of which have been in London. I have served in many capacities, including having a family practice and working as an acting medical officer of health. Since 2012, I have worked in addiction medicine. I feel compelled to speak out about the harm “safe supply” is causing in my community.

VANCOUVER — It was less than two years ago that officials in British Columbia, the epicenter of Canada’s drug overdose crisis, unveiled what they called “bold action.”

The experiment, backed by Canada’s police chiefs, was to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of some drugs — including methamphetamine, cocaine, fentanyl and heroin — for personal use. The approach, officials said, would reduce the stigma that can discourage users from seeking treatment and the criminal records that can prevent them from rebuilding their lives.

The opioid crisis claimed more than 520 lives in Toronto last year, a grim figure that public health officials blamed on an unregulated drug supply increasingly contaminated with toxic substances.

In a press release Wednesday, Toronto Public Health said preliminary statistics show the city recorded 523 opioid toxicity deaths in 2023, a steep increase from figures before the pandemic.

What those junkies need is free drugs and hands off by law enforcement.

The Ford government stood aside for years while “safer supply” drug programs ravaged Ontario’s communities – but the province is now finally clamping down and giving these programs the scrutiny they deserve.