Drugs

When Oregon voted to decriminalise possession of hard drugs such as heroin, cocaine and crystal meth three years ago, campaigners hailed the move as a brave step towards ending the failed war on drugs.

Yet hope has given way to a grim realisation that the policies appear to have failed, with soaring overdose deaths and the state’s biggest city, Portland, suffering from crime and squalor.

Guy Felicella was 12 years old when he first tried drugs – sharing a joint with some buddies. Marijuana quickly led to LSD. LSD led to cocaine, which led to heroin. Harder drugs led to a harder life. He became involved with gangs. His rap sheet would eventually reflect the unrelenting hold narcotics had on him, one that thwarted many attempts to leave drugs behind.

His criminal record includes 55 convictions, all drug-related, all for possession for the purpose of selling or simply consuming himself. Including the time he spent in juvenile detention centres, Mr. Felicella figures he has spent seven to eight years of his life in jails of one sort or another.

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.

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.

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.

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.