LILLEY: B.C.’s drug decriminalization experience serves as a warning

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British Columbia has admitted that decriminalizing all drugs was a mistake.

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So why are the top doctors for the Province of Ontario and the City of Toronto still pushing for decriminalization to be adopted here?

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“Keeping people safe is our highest priority,” B.C. Premier David Eby said to reporters at a news conference Friday.

“While we are caring and compassionate for those struggling with addiction, we do not accept street disorder that makes communities feel unsafe.”

On Jan. 31, 2023, Health Canada granted B.C. an exemption to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. This meant that using drugs like crack, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA, or opioids like fentanyl, were free and legal to use in the open.

The argument for making the change was to do away with stigma for addicts. But the reality was utter chaos in the streets, and the hospitals of the province.

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Open drug use in parks, on public transit and elsewhere became problematic. Police were unable to do anything about public complaints, something Eby now acknowledges was a mistake.

“Clearly, with the benefit of hindsight, police needed those authorities,” Eby said.

The recriminalization won’t be complete and having small personal amounts of the otherwise banned drugs won’t be illegal in your home, in homeless shelters or in so-called safe consumption sites.

The problem with the policies adopted by B.C. in recent years goes well beyond open public drug use. Toronto hasn’t adopted decriminalization yet and we have open drug use in parks, on the TTC, on street corners and elsewhere.

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The real problem with B.C.’s ever-liberalized drug laws is that they don’t work at what they are supposed to do, lowering the overdose death rate.

In 2023, decriminalization was in legal effect for 11 months and the province still had a record-breaking 2,546 drug overdose deaths. With the exception of 2019, overdose deaths have been on the rise every year in the last decade.

B.C.’s population is one-third of Ontario’s, but they have more overdose deaths. In 2014, B.C. had just 370 overdose deaths, in the first two months of this year they had already recorded 377 deaths

These are clear signs that we shouldn’t be following B.C.’s lead.

Yet, the City of Toronto has an official request before Health Canada asking for the same kind of exemption B.C. was granted. Under what the city calls the Toronto Model, drugs would be legal to use everywhere except child care centres, K-12 schools and airports.

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That means smoking crack on the bus, streetcar or subway would be legal. Shooting heroin or fentanyl in a kid’s playground would be legal.

It’s utter madness masquerading as compassion and forward thinking. It’s supported by Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw and the city’s Chief Medical Officer Eileen de Villa.

Last month, Dr. Kieran Moore, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer, released his annual report calling for the decriminalization of hard drugs, while also making alcohol harder to get.

Thankfully, the Ford government shut down Moore’s ideologically based and scientifically flimsy report and recommendations.

In his report, Moore called for Ontario to evaluate and learn from jurisdictions that had already gone down the decriminalization route, including Oregon and B.C. But both of those jurisdictions have now reversed course after horrific experiences.

It’s time for the chief medical officers for Toronto and Ontario to withdraw their recommendations and follow suit.

We need real solutions for the problems of addictions and overdoses – and decriminalization is now the answer.

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