Canada responds to British Columbia drug crisis by decriminalizing narcotics

[Davin]

This should cleanup the problem in a matter of days.

Yes, becauuse the war on drugs has been an outstanding success and there are no more drugs.

 

[Davin]

BS. You keep degrading society and allowing all forms of decadence it's not going to improve society. You endanger more people, you will see more drug addiction that liberals will want to pay for their threatment. It's insanity.

So you are for making alcohol illegal then right?

 

[Moon]

Right, because our policy of criminalizing drug use has worked so well, as evidenced by our skyrocketing rate of overdose deaths. I mean, if it's working as well as our policy of making it a criminal offense, why mess with it? Seems so dumb! I mean, this is a picture of success!!

View attachment 67394598

Making it easier for people to posses these drugs will make overdose more or less likely to increase, or decrease?

 

[Chainsawmassacre]

Canada responds to British Columbia drug crisis by decriminalizing narcotics

The three-year experiment in British Columbia is set to begin Jan. 31 and will allow anyone 18 or older to possess up to 2.5 grams of drugs like opioids, coke, meth and MDMA/ecstasy for personal us…

nypost.com

A Canadian province ravaged by overdose deaths will stop arresting adults caught with small amounts of hard drugs in a desperate attempt to stem the fatalities.

The three-year experiment in British Columbia is set to begin Jan. 31 and will allow anyone 18 or older to possess up to 2.5 grams of drugs including opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA, also known as ecstasy, for personal use.

The Canadian government approved the plan Tuesday, with Dr. Theresa Tam, the country’s chief public health officer, tweeting, “Stigma and fear of criminalization cause some people to hide their drug use, use alone, or use in other ways that increase the risk of harm.”
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So it's an experiment that will end. Then the cops will arrest you.

So in BC guns will be illegal but drugs will be legal. Be interesting to see how that works out.

 

[JasperL]

OK, so you have no idea despite having “advocated this for decades”, yet believe other (unnamed, of course) countries which allow buying and possessing unregulated ‘street drugs’ saw reduced violence and disease.

Portugal decriminalized all drug possession and use in 2000. A total disaster. Why look at the skyrocketing drug deaths versus the EU!!! Oh, right, they declined dramatically, and are still half the rate of the EU as a whole. Oh well, so much for the theory that decriminalizing use leads to more deaths.

Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?

The long read: Since it decriminalised all drugs in 2001, Portugal has seen dramatic drops in overdoses, HIV infection and drug-related crime

www.theguardian.com

And they lead the EU in

 

[Chainsawmassacre]

Which is stupid, they should make it legal and control the sale and distribution just like alcohol

That’s been done with marijuana in much of the US but illegal pot still flourishes because it’s cheaper.

 

[Moon]

Ah nope, without addressing basically anything I said, you suddenly wanted to talk about production as if that means a damned thing and you weren’t entirely correct anyway.

And this is why the more conservative thought process about this always falls apart, there’s probably no way you’re going to address the nuance of all this, it always seems to have far more to do with the moral aspect and wanting to punish and seeing it as a failure to stop needlessly punishing even if the punishing doesn’t do anything to meet it’s stated goals.

The point of bringing alcohol in, is that it is a massively dangerous and destructive drug to society…

Yet we tolerate it, we don’t criminalize it’s users (unless they commit a crime in conjunction with being intoxicated) and we attempt to treat it as an medical issue.

Why then, can we not extent the same thought process to drug users.

Punishing them criminally has not worked, at all, not even close…

You’ve not addressed any of this because facts quite simply, are not on your side.

Prohibition has not and will never work and our current drug enforcement regime has actively made the situation worse in many different ways.

We tolerate alcohol because there’s no way to stop people from making it. There’s no way the government can make the ingredients illegal. You brought it up as some gotcha attempt and now you’re whining that I point out the obvious difference between alcohol and these illegal drugs.

If you want to stick to the original discussion about why you support decriminalizing these drugs is a better solution to reduce overdose deaths, I’m all for it.

 

[JasperL]

Making it easier for people to posses these drugs will make overdose more or less likely to increase, or decrease?

The data show the policy change will lower overdose deaths, that treating drug addiction as a public health issue, instead of a criminal issue, works to lower drug overdose deaths.

Our policy has failed for DECADES now. Failed, by any measure. F-. We've filled our prisons, drugs are still cheap, overdose deaths skyrocketing, crime, turf wars, etc. What more evidence do you need to convince you that it's at least worth a change in policy to see if a different strategy works better. It's hard to draw direct parallels with Portugal, but what's clear by any look at the data in that country post 2000 when they legalized drug USE is that their policy certainly did not make their drug problems worse, and lots of data indicate vast improvements on every measure that matters, unless you are an investor in private prisons or the militarization of our police forces.

 

[Jetboogieman]

We tolerate alcohol because there’s no way to stop people from making it. There’s no way the government can make the ingredients illegal. You brought it up as some gotcha attempt and now you’re whining that I point out the obvious difference between alcohol and these illegal drugs.

If you want to stick to the original discussion about why you support decriminalizing these drugs is a better solution to reduce overdose deaths, I’m all for it.

That is exactly what I’m doing and your rebuttal about alcohol has fallen flat on its face…

You have nothing.

You’ve said nothing.

You’ve addressed nothing.

Just mindlessly want to keep following a path that hasn’t worked and will never work and actively does more harm.

Your way has probably and demonstrably not worked, yet you’ve said nothing to address that.

 

[Moon]

That is exactly what I’m doing and your rebuttal about alcohol has fallen flat on its face…

You have nothing.

You’ve said nothing.

You’ve addressed nothing.

Just mindlessly want to keep following a path that hasn’t worked and will never work and actively does more harm.

Your way has probably and demonstrably not worked, yet you’ve said nothing to address that.

What I’ve said is I think decriminalizing these drugs is not likely to improve the number of overdose deaths, and that by doing so the government appears to be saying they want more overdose deaths. You want to dance around and bring up alcohol for some reason, and then whine about moving the goalposts. Pick a lane.

 

[JasperL]

BS. You keep degrading society and allowing all forms of decadence it's not going to improve society. You endanger more people, you will see more drug addiction that liberals will want to pay for their threatment. It's insanity.

What seems insane to me is continuing a policy that has failed by so many measures so miserably for now DECADES. Why would anyone believe our current policy is working? Is it the skyrocketing rate of overdose deaths, the filled up prisons?

Why NOT treat drug addiction like alcoholism and treat it as a public health issue instead of a criminal issue? Would it make it better if we started arresting drunks who buy a 1.75 of vodka then go home and get drunk like I used to do 7 nights a week?

 

[Lord Tammerlain]

That’s been done with marijuana in much of the US but illegal pot still flourishes because it’s cheaper.

Which means it is being taxed too high

 

[Chainsawmassacre]

Which means it is being taxed too high

Which is what Canada will likely do.

 

[JasperL]

What I’ve said is I think decriminalizing these drugs is not likely to improve the number of overdose deaths, and that by doing so the government appears to be saying they want more overdose deaths. You want to dance around and bring up alcohol for some reason, and then whine about moving the goalposts. Pick a lane.

The government appears to not be morons, and see that the current policy is a failure and are going to try something different. And treating drug addiction like all other addictions as a public health issue is no more saying you want more drug overdose deaths than policy that treats cigarettes as a public health issue (how we treated it for decades) means that the government wants MORE to die of lung cancer. Those dots do not connect, at all.

 

[ttwtt78640]

Portugal decriminalized all drug possession and use in 2000. A total disaster. Why look at the skyrocketing drug deaths versus the EU!!! Oh, right, they declined dramatically, and are still half the rate of the EU as a whole. Oh well, so much for the theory that decriminalizing use leads to more deaths.

Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?

The long read: Since it decriminalised all drugs in 2001, Portugal has seen dramatic drops in overdoses, HIV infection and drug-related crime

www.theguardian.com

View attachment 67394599

And they lead the EU in

Hmm… what do “drug deaths” (presumably overdoses) have to do with violence and disease?

 

[Moon]

The government appears to not be morons, and see that the current policy is a failure and are going to try something different. And treating drug addiction like all other addictions as a public health issue is no more saying you want more drug overdose deaths than policy that treats cigarettes as a public health issue (how we treated it for decades) means that the government wants MORE to die of lung cancer. Those dots do not connect, at all.

BC is the same province that started with safe injection sites for addicts and now they’re seeing a sharp increase in overdose deaths. NY is experiencing the same according to the article posted in the OP. Now they want to decriminalize drugs to decrease overdose deaths. Not sure I’d be in a hurry to proclaim that the government isn’t acting like morons.

 

[Jetboogieman]

What I’ve said is I think decriminalizing these drugs is not likely to improve the number of overdose deaths, and that by doing so the government appears to be saying they want more overdose deaths. You want to dance around and bring up alcohol for some reason, and then whine about moving the goalposts. Pick a lane.

So you want more:

drunk driving deaths?

You want more alcohol fueled violence and property damage that results in increased policing costs?

You want more families and individuals destroyed by alcohol addiction and abuse?

You want more healthcare costs associated with alcohol addiction and abuse?

If you don’t want to outlaw alcohol, you stand for all this… Apparently.

Your argument is that it doesn’t matter if it works or not, to not criminalize users, means you want more negative consequences of that drug being available.

Because this is essentially what you’re saying.

 

[Moon]

So you want more:

drunk driving deaths?

You want more alcohol fueled violence and property damage that results in increased policing costs?

You want more families and individuals destroyed by alcohol addiction and abuse?

You want more healthcare costs associated with alcohol addiction and abuse?

If you don’t want to outlaw alcohol, you stand for all this… Apparently.

Your argument is that it doesn’t matter if it works or not, to not criminalize users, means you want more negative consequences of that drug being available.

Because this is essentially what you’re saying.

Sorry, not entertaining your goalpost moving anymore.

 

[Schism]

Yes, becauuse the war on drugs has been an outstanding success and there are no more drugs.

Feel free to show me the data proving once and for all that heroin use is declining because decriminalization.

And don't even bother talking about Portugal, because there is no available addiction treatment for the indigent in America.

Go ahead and make some phone calls and tell me which treatment centers are ready to accept those with no money.

 

[Jetboogieman]

Sorry, not entertaining your goalpost moving anymore.

Its your own argument.

Its simply inconvenient for you.

So you march, blindly on down the same path that hasn’t worked and will never work, that’s costing you billions, imprisoning citizens instead of treating them and leading to more broken homes, death, carnage, more cash for cartels and criminal elements, more migrants and broken nations.

Yours is the way of failure and self righteous nonsense, backed up by nothing.

 

[JasperL]

Hmm… what do “drug deaths” (presumably overdoses) have to do with violence and disease?

LOL, you didn't even look at the headline of the article I cited.

Here's the sub headline: "Since it decriminalised all drugs in 2001, Portugal has seen dramatic drops in overdoses, HIV infection and drug-related crime"

You should read just a little bit about the policy change, its effects, before dismissing that strategy.

I'm for whatever works, and it appears to me based on our decades of miserable failure that our approach isn't working, and will never, ever work. So I'm for new strategies, and Portugal's approach is IMO one of many possible strategies that should be tried, as is Canada's. I just don't understand the willingness of people in this country to embrace the failed by any measure "War on Drugs."

 

[Moon]

Its your own argument.

Its simply inconvenient for you.

So you march, blindly on down the same path that hasn’t worked and will never work, that’s costing you billions, imprisoning citizens instead of treating them and leading to more broken homes, death, carnage, more cash for cartels and criminal elements, more migrants and broken nations.

Yours is the way of failure and self righteous nonsense, backed up by nothing.

The article is about British Columbia, so won’t cost me a cent whatever they decide to do.

They could easily decide to focus on treatment rather than making drugs easier to possess and consume, yet they don’t. Weird, don’t you think?

 

[Mr Person]

BS. You keep degrading society and allowing all forms of decadence it's not going to improve society. You endanger more people, you will see more drug addiction that liberals will want to pay for their threatment. It's insanity.

Or, you're just engaged in a mix of lying and bullshitting.

The War on Drugs failed. Prohibit everything to death failed. Time to try something new: harm-reduction and proper education (not that horrible joke they pulled on kids called "D.A.R.E.")



Nevermind that the number of people who were so-called "scared straight" from a drug sentence and actually quit as a result is miniscule compared to the amount that buy drugs in prison (often smuggled by COs) and/or get out and go right back. They've been let out with hardly any possessions to their name and little in the way of a life unless friends/family are still putting up with their shit and trying to help. Getting various government help is deliberately byzantine. They're miserable, perhaps mentally ill, and they know what'll bring a couple hours of fake sunshine.

Or twenty minutes. Or five, depending on just how deep the addiction is.

 

[Lord Tammerlain]

Which is what Canada will likely do.

The Marijuana stores seem to be operating fairly well. I expect most people are buying from stores now or growing their own which is allowed ( certain number of plants

 

[Davin]

Feel free to show me the data proving once and for all that heroin use is declining because decriminalization.

And don't even bother talking about Portugal, because there is no available addiction treatment for the indigent in America.

Go ahead and make some phone calls and tell me which treatment centers are ready to accept those with no money.

I'm still waiting for you to show us how the war on drugs is a success? Care to show that?

I guess you are also for making alcohol illegal right?