Canada - Opinion: It’s past time to decriminalize simple possession of narcotics

[S.J.B.]

It’s past time to decriminalize simple possession of narcotics
The Star
Arthur Cockfield
June 30th, 2019

With cannabis legalization already a hazy memory, political momentum is building to consider the decriminalization of simple possession of all narcotics. Under decriminalization, administrative fines could be issued for possession of small amounts of drugs, but no criminal sanctions would follow. Illicit drug trafficking would remain a crime.

Last April, B.C.’s provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, published a report recommending this step. And last week, a parliamentary health committee recommended decriminalization. A member of this committee, Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith (one of my former students), then introduced a decriminalization bill (Bill C-460) in Parliament. The gesture may be symbolic, however, because so far his own government disagrees with this approach.

Yet there are powerful reasons to move to decriminalization.

First, Canada is undergoing its most serious public health crisis since the Spanish influenza of 1917. In the past two and a half years, over 10,000 Canadians have died from overdosing opioids like fentanyl. Overdose deaths are now so prevalent that Canadian life expectancy at birth has stopped rising.

In a Judeo-Christian culture that privileges abstinence and purity of mind and body, these addicts are the fallen, and as such can be easily dismissed and forgotten. As detailed in Dr. Henry’s report, it is the stigma and possible criminal sanctions that discourages drug users from seeking medical help that could save their lives. For instance, Portugal has had great success in reducing overdose deaths since it decriminalized drug possession in 2001.

Read the full story here.

 

[Nicomorphinist]

Very good article . . .he even stuck to the real problem, which is poison smack and counterfeit pills. In the US usually power trippers and crooks in the rehabilitation indu$try say it is an addiction crisi$, make all sorts of demands and cry crocodile tears about the whole thing. If one were the owner of a big rehab clinic and/or chain of them, all this sound and fury would have dollar signs in their eyes.

 

[S.J.B.]

Very good article . . .he even stuck to the real problem, which is poison smack and counterfeit pills. In the US usually power trippers and crooks in the rehabilitation indu$try say it is an addiction crisi$, make all sorts of demands and cry crocodile tears about the whole thing.

The activists have been very on-point here in Canada making sure it's known that this is an adulteration crisis not an addiction crisis. Proper drug access (and a bit of proper education) can't solve addiction but it could stop the vast majority of drug poisoning deaths.

 

[Nicomorphinist]

The prescription of hydromorphone for addicts is, if I am not mistaken, possible in Canada but not the United States. It was the bloody idiot Harrison Narcotics Act 1914 (so draconian that the CSA 1970 was said to be humane) and how the Feds insisted, blatantly ignoring Supreme Court cases like Linder v United States, where it was affirmed that doctors are acting within their normal course of business detoxing and maintaining narcotic habitués and addicts. It doesn't sound like anything of that type is happening in Canada Has it been this way ab initio or was there something in place wiped out by the Controlled Drugs & Substance Act 1996?

The Central Constitutional Courts of a number of countries have affirmed in cases over the year that people in those jurisdiction have a right to take narcotics. There are a few ones wheree"copiedI

God bless Canada!

 

[S.J.B.]

The prescription hydromorphone for addicts is, if I am not mistaken, possible in Canada but not the United States. It was the bloody idiot Harrison Narcotics Act 1914 (so draconian that the CSA 1970 was said to be humane) and how the Feds insisted, blatantly ignoring Supreme Court cases like Linder v United States, where it was affirmed that doctors are acting within their normal course of business detoxing and maintaining narcotic habitués and addicts. It doesn't sound like anything of that type is happening in Canada Has it been this way ab initio or was there something in place wiped out by the Controlled Drugs & Substance Act 1996?

God bless Canada!

As far as I know, there is nothing explicitly in legislation or case law preventing physicians from prescribing opioids for maintenance either in Canada or the United States. There were a series of Supreme Court decisions before Linder that interpreted the Harrison Narcotics Act as banning maintenance prescriptions but those were superceded by Linder and I'm not aware of anything superceding Linder. I am no scholar of American law, though, so if anyone is aware of such a case I would be interested to see it. As far as Canada, I don't think the criminal law ever banned maintenance prescriptions. It is likely that the real limiter in both countries is physician fear of prosecution (whether justified or not), or at least of being hassled and/or ostracized. I think the fear is less in Canada than the U.S. - reasonably so, as we have far-less-harsh sentencing, conviction rates are close to 50:50 instead of in the high 90s, and we don't have a rabid federal police force solely dedicated to drug enforcement - and the recent explosion in deaths due to street opioids has given many physicians an "opening" to start patients on opioid agonist, particularly hydromorphone, maintenance. The recent study out of Vancouver, where hydromorphone compared favourably to diacetylmorphine in maintenance of long-term street-heroin addicts, was definitely a boon as well.

 

[Foreigner]

Canada doesn't care about the 10,000 people who died of opiate addiction because most of those people are indigenous, junkies, and/or wash outs. (Not my beliefs, just observing the actions of others.)

The real estate sector has totally decimated the services available to help addicts. Not only that, the real estate sector is how billions in drug money were laundered into Canada. Our government turned a blind eye. In my opinion, they are basically trying to kill off addicts. If enough die, they can "clean up" neighborhoods, build new real estate, and make even more money.

It's just so obvious to me that they are trying to kill addicts.

 

[Nicomorphinist]

Canada doesn't care about the 10,000 people who died of opiate addiction because most of those people are indigenous, junkies, and/or wash outs. (Not my beliefs, just observing the actions of others.)

The real estate sector has totally decimated the services available to help addicts. Not only that, the real estate sector is how billions in drug money were laundered into Canada. Our government turned a blind eye. In my opinion, they are basically trying to kithey can "clean up" neighborhoods, build new real estate, and make even more money.

It's just so obvious to me that they are trying to kill addicts.

They would do it, and have, and proposed it, as in the 1970s proposal to do it with government-produced high-thebaine and high-orapavine

Ten thousand people dead in the United States from people denaturing underground moonshine with methanol, cincophen, strychnine, oleander, and the like during alcohol prohibition 1920-1933