Should Canada decriminalize drug abuse?
Or should Canada make heroin available over the counter at convenience stores?
Drug abuse is a serious world problem, not confined to Western democracies. Some countries have draconian laws that severely punish drug users including death penalties, like Saudi Arabia for example. Has that reduced the incidence of drug abuse? Apparently not. Recent studies estimate that over 5% of Saudi youths have used drugs.
Last night on TVO’s The Agenda, Steve Paikin interviewed two police chiefs regarding the drug problem and both were convinced that simple possession of an illicit drug should not be a crime. The Vancouver police officer admitted that the Vancouver police rarely enforce drug laws in any event, with only 5 people charged with possession last year of some 700 arrested. Her argument was that decriminalization would simply enact a law that de facto was in place already. She made no attempt to explain how the decriminalization of simple possession would reduce drug abuse nor could she if drug possession was already being ignored by law enforcement. It seems all such a law would do is protect police officers from allegations of dereliction of duty.
Deaths from drug abuse in Canada reached 47,000 in 2007 and that number has undoubtedly grown since. Deaths from COVID-19 by contrast are less than 30,000 since the pandemic began. To “save lives” Canadian policy makers confronting COVID have spent billions of dollars, crushed livelihoods with “lockdowns” and contributed to mental health disorders by closing schools. The same policy makers have done virtually nothing to prevent drug related deaths despite their devastating number. Instead, these two police chiefs think decriminalizing drug use would be beneficial. Is it just me, or does anyone else see the glaring holes in logic? Is common sense dead in Canada?
As I listened to Paikin’s interviews of these police officials who both thought drug abuse was a public health problem rather than a law enforcement problem, I asked myself the rhetorical question: “Would making cocaine and heroin available without prescription and legally sold through convenience stores make drug abuse abate?” In effect, legalization of drug abuse is a step in that direction so the question is directional, not prescriptive.
A more telling question is why our elected leaders will move heaven and Earth to defend society from a disease which has to date only infected 5% of Canada’s population and from which over 98% of Canadians enjoy not only a full recovery but also a high degree of immunity from reinfection, yet literally ignore the larger and more devastating problem of widespread drug abuse. Canadian addiction experts estimate that over 20% of Canadians suffer from a substance abuse problem.
COVID is a major risk for people over the age of 60 while drug abuse primarily attacks our young. In terms of years of life lost to these “public health emergencies” no one could sensibly argue that COVID is the greater risk. Yet government action to deal with drug abuse is “crickets”. It is not that Canada does not have a substance abuse strategy. That platform is well documented and focuses on “harm reduction” and removing the “stigma” of drug use.
Harm reduction means protecting addicts from themselves. Removing the “stigma” of drug abuse is little more than saying to our kids “it is OK to use narcotics”. It is hard to see how “safe injection sites”, decriminalization of simple possession, and removing the “stigma” of drug abuse will lead to less drug abuse, and easy to conclude it will exacerbate the problem. In my opinion, it is typical left wing nonsense that risks replacing anything that works with something that sounds good. Once a person is addicted to narcotics, the odds of recovery are low - as low as 20% in the case of heroin according to U.S. data. Drug abuse will only decline if addiction can be prevented rather than “cured” and prevention in my opinion is an education issue in addition to stringent law enforcement aimed at preventing importation and distribution of narcotics. To date, law enforcement efforts have been ineffective and education to prevent abuse almost non-existent.
On June 29, 2021 I lost my eldest daughter to heroin at age 35. She did not overdose but rather bled to death when the heroin injection site on her thigh abscessed and the infection opened an artery in her leg. She was the mother of three of my grandchildren and had been using drugs for over a decade with occasional trips to “rehab” after which she was “clean” for short periods and reverted to drug abuse again.
In the summer of 2013, she persuaded me that she was “clean” after rehab and wanted to restart her university education and I agreed to support her, giving her a VISA card with a credit limit of $10,000 and my undertaking to pay the monthly amount owing to cover her rent, tuition, food and clothing while she tried to get her life in order. Within two weeks, she had run up over $8,000 in cash advances all of which went to support her drug use. Lying, cheating, and fraud had all become part of her character. I cut off the support.
Canada’s democracy is in danger from within. We have leaders prepared to curtail civil liberties and mandate behaviour to “protect” us from an infectious disease that most Canadians will not attract and of those that do become infected the vast majority will recover. The same leaders are absent without leave with respect to the larger and more pervasive threat drug abuse poses to our youth meeting that threat with little more than empty rhetoric.
I don’t know what the answer to drug abuse is or should be. I do know that a tiny fraction the $300 odd billion spent on COVID defense would go a long way to studying the problem in depth and perhaps finding ways to educate our children about the real risks in drug use rather than indoctrinating them with left wing crap like gender studies or critical race theories. Education is likely the only real defense against the self inflicted wounds posed by narcotics. I am not optimistic I will live to see much improvement under the current slate of politicians Canadians have put in power.