The tactic of using criminalization and legal threats to solve the problem of drug addiction has been thoroughly, inarguably disproven to work. Decriminalization allows that incredible amount of money being spent towards prosecuting people who need Help, and instead frees that up to spend it towards something that will actually improve the situation, which is treating this as the public health issue that it is.
BC can take that exact same money that it's currently spending to lock people up, and instead spend it on public health solutions that have been shown time and time again to improve outcomes and make significant progress towards this issue. From an outcome-based policy perspective, this is an obvious choice.
At least in America, even if you decriminalize something, there's something akin to the military industrial complex with healthcare -- they think becauase they felt ENTITLED to work in the medical field, and racked up debt, they should able to cause people to die of depression as they're punished for making healthy decisions.
For example, if I'd woken up yesterday and had a bowl of CBG rich, high THC indica, then did email for two hours, then did two hours of coding, I could do enough knowledge work to earn my housing and food for the week.
Instead I'm running around throwing coffees on credit cards because when I tried to do things "by the book" in my home state of PA, anytime I start to make a healthy decision, someone with a vested interst tries to knock me off kilter.
(Congrats! I'm sitting in a café in my neighborhood nursing wounds from a hate crime, with a can of mace in my backpack, as the entire world seems to lose their minds. Is this the cyberpunk future we envisioned, or are Netflix and weed the new bread and circuses?)
>that have been shown time and time again to improve outcomes and make significant progress towards this issue.
I'm all for doing this, and I hope it works, but "time and time again" is a stretch. Where, Portugal and Oregon? Where else? This is still experimental and by no means a "no-brainer".
*Only in British Columbia, which is less than 15% of the population.
Also important to note that this has to happen in agreement with both the provincial and federal governments, which is far from guaranteed to succeed in other provinces. See: Alberta.
Hang on, I don't think it's true that this had to have provincial agreement for this to happen. The federal government makes criminal law in Canada, not the provinces.
But if you're looking to trial this and you have a province that is asking to be allowed to try it, then using the province as the experiment ground is the obvious choice.
This reminds me of how the shroom dispensaries popped up in Vancouver because City Council has barred the police force from enforcing psilocybin prohibition (ostensibly so that police can focus on opioids instead, although any positive outcomes from that approach seems dubious).
So you have 'mainstream' online shrooms shops in Canada. It's great, on the one hand. On the other hand, it's easy for everyone to assume that magic mushrooms are almost legal (like cannabis was) even though it's very different. Medicinal cannabis was around for a long time; currently Health Canada only allows ~80 people in the country to use psilocybin for health.
But why didn't they include psilocybin or other psychedelics in this decriminalization? It is because they are defacto decriminalized already due to this policing decision?
> But why didn't they include psilocybin or other psychedelics in this decriminalization? It is because they are defacto decriminalized already due to this policing decision?
Because a) they contribute to very little of the problems this move is focussed on, b) there are a lot of psychedelics, and any additional drugs included in this policy probably added to the risk of it not being approved, and possibly c) not wanting to run the risk of having some kind of psychedelic incident that the media run with as a scare story, because "Doctor's daughter jumps out of a window on acid" will trump any number of "Petty crime, burglary and muggings are down 40% from last year" stories.
I tried truffles in Amsterdam, I was told one reason they sell those is you need to take a lot more to get a bad trip, similar to why they only sold poundcakes as edibles.
(I was trying to stick to flower so I didn't look hard for magic brownies, but honestly I think poundcake tastes better -- now that I don't drink I often want to grab something like a poundcake or pocky that has calories and carbs but not as much as a Hershey bar, when I literally just want something small to settle my stomach and have zero desire for psychoactivity)
Doing psilocybint was a lifechanging experience, in a positive way -- it cured me of a huge chunk of my depression, at the expense I saw every interaction that followed, including two coworkers collaborating to try to get me to step in front of a train.
One stood, and told me it was safe to cross, as the other looked around the corner to make sure a tram was coming. I she reads these: I gave you my salary information and I told you this isn't high school, and then you tried to fake an accidental death.
In parallel with that, a different woman, from a different country, also attending the conferene, told me that some people made it through the fall of the GDR and the Nazis unpunished.
I deeply appreciate interactions like the second, but I will never forgive or forget that when I tried to do what people told me to since childhood, someone tried to kill me, a pattern that needs to end.
(I've only been to Vancouver once, it was a really nice city when I visited but like any similar sized one in the states, you gotta be careful -- it's not Ottawa!!)
Oregon did the same, back in 2020. It hasn’t gone very well. Some key problems:
1.) Dealers have learned to take advantage of the personal use amount protection by keeping small amounts on their person and a stash nearby.
2.) Several gangs from larger West Coast cities have moved here to expand their territory. We’ve had a big uptick in shootings in the past few years, and a lot of them have been due to this. There was an inciting incident in which a prominent member was killed at a memorial service, which resulted in a back and forth retaliation war that killed a lot of people.
3.) Related to #1 and #2, these gangs have learned that the homeless community is both an ideal customer and an ideal base of operations. Dealers often set up shop in a tent in the larger encampments, or in an RV nearby. This has made the meth and fentanyl problem amongst that community much worse.
4.) It’s too early to judge, but so far it’s looking like the rate at which addicts who are offered resources to help them actually accept that help is very low.
When this issue was presented as a ballot measure, it was described as following Portugal’s model. However, our implementation is missing a key ingredient: consequences. Although Portugal did decriminalize drugs, they don’t just give people a pamphlet about where to get help and send them on their way. Instead they have a series of interventions, managed by doctors and social workers, that impose increasing penalties as a person’s addiction becomes more harmful to the community, and they don’t permit drug use in public. Lacking these features, the net effect of Oregon’s decriminalization measure has been a big increase in public drug use and not much else.
Arguably single-dose MDMA is less than single-dose coke and equals meth in terms of physical harm. Of course very different story if you consider repeated usage.
This policy move is coming out of the fact that all these street drugs are toxic and frequently not as advertised and so many people are dying because they don't know what they're using. It could be that the reason MDMA is included in that the health officers want to encourage drug users (whether they're addicted users of fentanyl or party drug users) to use drug testing services and not shy away from this because they're holding an illegal substance.
Its neurotoxic like meth and coke. It might not be as dangerous and the damage is less persistent. But it's way more harmful than cannabis or psychedelics. If you want to group drugs by harmfulness, it is definitely together with the other stims.
MDMA seems more harmful to me with semi-frequent use. The comedowns are brutal and repeated use seems to make it worse. Either are fine taken occasionally but opioids and meth (vyanese) can be taken daily with fairly small negative effects while I doubt you can do MDMA even once weekly for a year without being much worse off in the end.
In terms of societal harm sure but MDMA is still dangerous. With the pills around today it's easy to overdose. Not to mention all the people that've died from overheating or overhydrating. It's not a 'whatever' drug like cannabis. I say this as somebody who has a positive view on MDMA.
Coming back from Vacouver, I might be cynical but this is symbolic if anything.
I work in downtown and got to see junkies shooting up in broad daylight, the cops weren't arresting them for possession, they just walked by like everyone else.
These drugs have been unofficially decrimininalized for years in BC. This doesn't change anything.
> The fear of being criminalized has led many people to hide their addiction and use drugs alone.
They have literal camps of homeless near Chinatown/Gastown with pockets everywhere else. They don't seem to be shy about their substance abuse.
The problem with decriminalization is that there's no way to legally buy the substances, so organized crime is still involved, and consumers still can't tell whether the substances they buy and use are safe.
Those problems exist under the current system too. Decriminalization is still a step forward because it undoes much of what makes prohibition bad, such as it moves use out into the open where it becomes less harmful. And it stops police from having a tool they can use to harass the people who they want to harass, and hopefully some day focus on real crimes
In Switzerland, you can visit the specialized centers for drug users, buy pharmaceutical-quality substances, and consume there directly (no outside consumption is allowed). This works, because the interior of the center is very uncool, boring, and it is filled with leaflets on getting help on quitting drugs.
This system is amazing, and I can only wonder why it is not implemented everywhere (Switzerland and Portugal are working examples).
Creating a safe supply of drugs that can be prescribed by doctors is def a topic of conversation in BC politics as the ultimate solution to this problem.
I would like to think that this decriminalization change is a necessary precursor to this and that we will be moving swiftly to get Doctors on board around prescribing people the drugs they need to get them off the toxic street drugs.
I mean presumably Doctors would decline to write a prescription for a drug that is illegal to hold.
I know this is a very contentious issue, and I'm by no means an expert. I don't think there are any correct paths, especially when it comes to tax payer expenses, but I can't help feeling like this is giving up.
Very crude and unhelpful anecdote coming:
I recently travelled to a US West Coast city for the first time in 4 years, and the change was stark: homeless in every street corner, drug dealers selling meth and heroin on the street, while tech workers were driving beside in their luxury SUVs. I couldn't help but feel like this city has become Gotham, and that crime was everywhere; and there was nothing anyone could do.
I know it's not just US cities, but the only place in Canada (as a Canadian) I've seen this similar devolution is in Vancouver.
I'd honestly really appreciate being directed to arguments that showcase that decriminalization of drugs and theft provide any positive outcomes beyond less incarceration rates. I really feel for the people on the street who have gotten there, and the residents that live nearby - I would certainly not want to live there or visit again.
I appreciate your experience here. If you're interested, I'd highly recommend looking into Portugal's results in decriminalizing drugs (coinciding with an enormous reduction in opioid overdoses): https://www.apa.org/monitor/2018/10/portugal-opioid
I'd also recommending looking into the UK's previous method of treating opioid addiction, commonly referred to as "The British system." Vice is hardly an unbiased source, but they serve as a good entry point on this topic imo: https://www.vice.com/en/article/yw4nnk/how-the-us-stopped-a-...
It's important to note that the systems people hold up as evidence of decriminalization's success are rarely "solely" down to decriminalization. Typically, they involve a broader "substance-abuse-as-public-health-crisis" approach. However, decriminalization is essential for such an approach to work.
I feel that not doing this, not trying new, innovative strategies, would be giving up. We already know things that don't work. We know that Regan era "don't do drugs" screens on arcade machines doesn't work. If we were truly giving up we'd be sticking with what we know doesn't work and turning off our brains to the fact that it doesn't work.
Instead what we're seeing is people searching around for new innovative approaches to the problem that haven't be tried yet.
To your point around crime, it is thought that this decriminalization effort may reduce petty theft.
One of the most significant changes being made here in Vancouver is that police can no longer confiscate small amounts of drugs. Up to this point they were doing this very often. Not just drug dealers, but frequently confiscating from regular users.
It is thought that this active policing and confiscation has helped to contribute to a cycle of petty theft, in that the police are effectively robbing drug users and forcing them to spend more of their income on drugs. When a person's drugs they need to feel normal are confiscated, their need for them doesn't go away, and they immediately have a new problem in that need to buy more. Stealing something to sell from a car or store is a very quick way to get that money. Effectively at this point not confiscating drugs is giving drug users more income and reducing pressure to steal to earn more income.
Will people continue to steal for other reasons? Perhaps some. There are also lots of agencies giving free food and there is minimum assistance and (not enough) social housing, so it is argued that the support network is good enough that people shouldn't need to steal to survive.
The next step here as well is that this decriminalization is a path to a safe prescribed supply of drugs, which would further save drug users money.
When I moved to Vancouver from Toronto I found the homeless population striking. I'd ask people why they thought its the case. Many folks are of the mind that its pretty much the only city in Canada a person can sleep on the street 365d a yr. I'm sure there are other reasons but if you don't understand how dangerously cold a Canadian winter gets you might not factor this in.
Right, but they _just_ decriminalized drugs, so we haven’t seen the impact. What you’re describing in Vancouver is the result of the existing policies which criminalized drugs.
You decriminalize drugs and criminalize pitching a tent in the park. The benefit is that the government no longer tells an individual what they can and cannot put into their own body.
As a Canadian and former addict, I am all for this, I still see addicts daily and the number one thing that strikes me is how truly pathetic of a life it is. You really don't know suffering until you've been in and out of addiction. Whatever it is that helps addicts kick addiction, DO IT. I was lucky in that I still had something to lose when I hit rock bottom. But when I was able to convince myself that I had nothing to live for other than drugs, drugs became my whole world. If I had been in jail, I would have used drugs. If I was homeless, I would've used drugs. Your physical realities don't matter. Lock me up and call me a worthless junkie, I don't care.
Except I really did care, it's just that I forgot what that feels like, because of all the drugs! If you don't offer addicts a chance to get back to real life, they will usually stay addicts. Ideas and threats can't compete with a fantasy world, only reality can.
We're at the point where six people in BC are dying a day due to toxic drugs and the body count is far, far exceeding that of the other public health emergency, the covid-19 pandemic.
It's hard to applaud the government for finally turning away from Regan era drug policy thinking and enacting this change because it's taken years and the amount of dead due to inaction so great.
It has been obvious for years that there was a toxic drug crisis on the street, that the drugs were poisoned and that people were overdosing and dying because it was impossible to know what was in the drugs and how much to use without overdosing.
The real solution to this problem will be to replace the toxic street drugs with a safe supply of prescribed drugs so that people know what they're using.
This decriminalization move is a small step toward that future outcome, while in the mean time making it safer for drug users to using in a safe injection site context without fear that they're doing something illegal and having their drugs confiscated by police.
Several commenters seem to have missed the distinction between decriminalisation and legalisation so here is the vital difference:
> Adults will be allowed to possess a combined total of 2.5 grams of opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA.
> While those substances will remain illegal, adults found in possession for personal use will not be arrested, charged or have their drugs seized. Instead, they will be offered information on available health and social services
> In its request to the federal government last year, BC said it asked for the drug laws exemption in order "to remove the shame that often prevents people from reaching out for life-saving help
> Instead, they will be offered information on available health and social services
I can't emphasize this enough. If you hate drugs and think they're strictly horrible for society, what's worse is us ignoring the underlying reasons for using drugs to extreme levels.
If anyone hasn't heard of Rat Park, please do yourself and everyone a favor and watch this video / read on it
"How the flawed Rat Park experiment launched the drug war"
I don’t think normalizing the situation is good in anyway. This will only create bigger problems in the future. The US and Canada already have issues with drug addiction compared to other western countries.
And what happens when the people who sell those decriminalized drugs move on to things like buying up real estate and gentrifying the people who were self medicating out of their homes with their profits?
Decriminalization solves the mass incarceration issue, possibly, but there are other things to think about.
People should have a right to do with their minds and bodies whatever they want without interference from others.
Keeping drugs illegal harms countless users, who can't be sure the drug they're using isn't cut with something harmful or is what they though they were getting or isn't too pure (all of which are the major causes of overdoses and deaths).
Throwing people in jail also harms them and their families (and risks them getting killed or maimed during arrest or while in jail).
Jail itself is a training ground for criminals, and many inmates come out more hardened criminals, and they're forced in to committing more crimes because once they've been in jails many legal jobs are closed to them because most companies don't want to hire people with a criminal record.
Society also wastes billions of dollars on fighting the War on Drugs, which could be used much more productively, especially as the War on Drugs is so ineffective and actually hurts millions of people world-wide, causes organized crime to thrive, and even destabilizes governments when organized crime gets too powerful and starts corrupting/killing politicians, lawyers, journalists, and judges... etc.
Addiction should be treated as a medical issue, not a criminal one.
The two deadliest addictive drugs, alcohol and tobacco, have been legal for a long time and kill thousands and destroy many lives each year. Millions of otherwise upright and law abiding citizens use and abuse those drugs regularly.
Should we take a hard line on them in order to redeem society?
On the contrary, this seems a very popular opinion all of a sudden.
So you want to put small time shoplifters and drug users in jail? Why?
Does it really go no further than "these are the rules, break the rules and I will spend a whole lot of money making your life even worse than it already is"?
There are two sides here, the "war on drugs" and harmful drug addictions. In one case your system gets fucked, in the other the system fucks you.
Freedom was supposed to be complete liberty as long as with your actions you aren't directly limiting the freedom of others, or so I was taught. In practice things couldn't be farther from the truth.
I'm sure we could all have our own take on what a thriving society is. But I don't see this specific issue being all that relevant to that topic. To me this is about, a few, very few, entities waking up to the fact that you cannot assert that much control to enforce adherence of the population to a "one true way" of living. Doesn't work, it's absurd, and in the end you're only allowing the connected/elite to get of scot-free for breaking the law.
> An analog can be seen in places
(with my own completion) Portugal[0]. There was also a report for Netherlands how drug use among young people saw a decrease through the years since it has been decriminalized; but I couldn't Google it easy now.
Anyway, I want to take your comment in good faith, but as a minty-fresh account on this website I'm skeptic because often when privacy, drug, [insert non government friendly] topics are discussed/presented, new accounts pop up pushing ideas that prop the current status quo, or dismiss the topic.
[+] [-] anaisbetts|3 years ago|reply
BC can take that exact same money that it's currently spending to lock people up, and instead spend it on public health solutions that have been shown time and time again to improve outcomes and make significant progress towards this issue. From an outcome-based policy perspective, this is an obvious choice.
[+] [-] dontbenebby|3 years ago|reply
At least in America, even if you decriminalize something, there's something akin to the military industrial complex with healthcare -- they think becauase they felt ENTITLED to work in the medical field, and racked up debt, they should able to cause people to die of depression as they're punished for making healthy decisions.
For example, if I'd woken up yesterday and had a bowl of CBG rich, high THC indica, then did email for two hours, then did two hours of coding, I could do enough knowledge work to earn my housing and food for the week.
Instead I'm running around throwing coffees on credit cards because when I tried to do things "by the book" in my home state of PA, anytime I start to make a healthy decision, someone with a vested interst tries to knock me off kilter.
(Congrats! I'm sitting in a café in my neighborhood nursing wounds from a hate crime, with a can of mace in my backpack, as the entire world seems to lose their minds. Is this the cyberpunk future we envisioned, or are Netflix and weed the new bread and circuses?)
[+] [-] itsoktocry|3 years ago|reply
I'm all for doing this, and I hope it works, but "time and time again" is a stretch. Where, Portugal and Oregon? Where else? This is still experimental and by no means a "no-brainer".
[+] [-] refurb|3 years ago|reply
I have family there and even big time dealers rarely do prison time unless it some bigger criminal conspiracy.
Users? Never. Even when repeated charged.
[+] [-] arroz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] momothereal|3 years ago|reply
Also important to note that this has to happen in agreement with both the provincial and federal governments, which is far from guaranteed to succeed in other provinces. See: Alberta.
IMO this is a more detailed article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/opioid-crisis-bc-canada-1.6...
[+] [-] hbrav|3 years ago|reply
But if you're looking to trial this and you have a province that is asking to be allowed to try it, then using the province as the experiment ground is the obvious choice.
[+] [-] Vladimof|3 years ago|reply
> See: Alberta.
at least Alberta is only about 11% of Canada.... Ontario and Québec together account for about 60% of Canada... (by population)
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_of_Canada_by_provin...
[+] [-] corry|3 years ago|reply
So you have 'mainstream' online shrooms shops in Canada. It's great, on the one hand. On the other hand, it's easy for everyone to assume that magic mushrooms are almost legal (like cannabis was) even though it's very different. Medicinal cannabis was around for a long time; currently Health Canada only allows ~80 people in the country to use psilocybin for health.
But why didn't they include psilocybin or other psychedelics in this decriminalization? It is because they are defacto decriminalized already due to this policing decision?
[+] [-] spiralx|3 years ago|reply
Because a) they contribute to very little of the problems this move is focussed on, b) there are a lot of psychedelics, and any additional drugs included in this policy probably added to the risk of it not being approved, and possibly c) not wanting to run the risk of having some kind of psychedelic incident that the media run with as a scare story, because "Doctor's daughter jumps out of a window on acid" will trump any number of "Petty crime, burglary and muggings are down 40% from last year" stories.
[+] [-] dontbenebby|3 years ago|reply
(I was trying to stick to flower so I didn't look hard for magic brownies, but honestly I think poundcake tastes better -- now that I don't drink I often want to grab something like a poundcake or pocky that has calories and carbs but not as much as a Hershey bar, when I literally just want something small to settle my stomach and have zero desire for psychoactivity)
Doing psilocybint was a lifechanging experience, in a positive way -- it cured me of a huge chunk of my depression, at the expense I saw every interaction that followed, including two coworkers collaborating to try to get me to step in front of a train.
One stood, and told me it was safe to cross, as the other looked around the corner to make sure a tram was coming. I she reads these: I gave you my salary information and I told you this isn't high school, and then you tried to fake an accidental death.
In parallel with that, a different woman, from a different country, also attending the conferene, told me that some people made it through the fall of the GDR and the Nazis unpunished.
I deeply appreciate interactions like the second, but I will never forgive or forget that when I tried to do what people told me to since childhood, someone tried to kill me, a pattern that needs to end.
(I've only been to Vancouver once, it was a really nice city when I visited but like any similar sized one in the states, you gotta be careful -- it's not Ottawa!!)
[+] [-] swearwolf|3 years ago|reply
1.) Dealers have learned to take advantage of the personal use amount protection by keeping small amounts on their person and a stash nearby.
2.) Several gangs from larger West Coast cities have moved here to expand their territory. We’ve had a big uptick in shootings in the past few years, and a lot of them have been due to this. There was an inciting incident in which a prominent member was killed at a memorial service, which resulted in a back and forth retaliation war that killed a lot of people.
3.) Related to #1 and #2, these gangs have learned that the homeless community is both an ideal customer and an ideal base of operations. Dealers often set up shop in a tent in the larger encampments, or in an RV nearby. This has made the meth and fentanyl problem amongst that community much worse.
4.) It’s too early to judge, but so far it’s looking like the rate at which addicts who are offered resources to help them actually accept that help is very low.
When this issue was presented as a ballot measure, it was described as following Portugal’s model. However, our implementation is missing a key ingredient: consequences. Although Portugal did decriminalize drugs, they don’t just give people a pamphlet about where to get help and send them on their way. Instead they have a series of interventions, managed by doctors and social workers, that impose increasing penalties as a person’s addiction becomes more harmful to the community, and they don’t permit drug use in public. Lacking these features, the net effect of Oregon’s decriminalization measure has been a big increase in public drug use and not much else.
[+] [-] epmatsw|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qwerty456127|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tiktaalik|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tokai|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tenoke|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] c7DJTLrn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] belval|3 years ago|reply
I work in downtown and got to see junkies shooting up in broad daylight, the cops weren't arresting them for possession, they just walked by like everyone else.
These drugs have been unofficially decrimininalized for years in BC. This doesn't change anything.
> The fear of being criminalized has led many people to hide their addiction and use drugs alone.
They have literal camps of homeless near Chinatown/Gastown with pockets everywhere else. They don't seem to be shy about their substance abuse.
[+] [-] pmoriarty|3 years ago|reply
Legalization would solve both those problems.
[+] [-] version_five|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atemerev|3 years ago|reply
This system is amazing, and I can only wonder why it is not implemented everywhere (Switzerland and Portugal are working examples).
[+] [-] Tiktaalik|3 years ago|reply
I would like to think that this decriminalization change is a necessary precursor to this and that we will be moving swiftly to get Doctors on board around prescribing people the drugs they need to get them off the toxic street drugs.
I mean presumably Doctors would decline to write a prescription for a drug that is illegal to hold.
[+] [-] sudosysgen|3 years ago|reply
It's not clear to me we want, for example, heroin to be freely available. So it seems like a good least worst option.
[+] [-] Vladimof|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeryx|3 years ago|reply
Very crude and unhelpful anecdote coming: I recently travelled to a US West Coast city for the first time in 4 years, and the change was stark: homeless in every street corner, drug dealers selling meth and heroin on the street, while tech workers were driving beside in their luxury SUVs. I couldn't help but feel like this city has become Gotham, and that crime was everywhere; and there was nothing anyone could do.
I know it's not just US cities, but the only place in Canada (as a Canadian) I've seen this similar devolution is in Vancouver.
I'd honestly really appreciate being directed to arguments that showcase that decriminalization of drugs and theft provide any positive outcomes beyond less incarceration rates. I really feel for the people on the street who have gotten there, and the residents that live nearby - I would certainly not want to live there or visit again.
[+] [-] ChefboyOG|3 years ago|reply
I'd also recommending looking into the UK's previous method of treating opioid addiction, commonly referred to as "The British system." Vice is hardly an unbiased source, but they serve as a good entry point on this topic imo: https://www.vice.com/en/article/yw4nnk/how-the-us-stopped-a-...
It's important to note that the systems people hold up as evidence of decriminalization's success are rarely "solely" down to decriminalization. Typically, they involve a broader "substance-abuse-as-public-health-crisis" approach. However, decriminalization is essential for such an approach to work.
[+] [-] Tiktaalik|3 years ago|reply
Instead what we're seeing is people searching around for new innovative approaches to the problem that haven't be tried yet.
To your point around crime, it is thought that this decriminalization effort may reduce petty theft.
One of the most significant changes being made here in Vancouver is that police can no longer confiscate small amounts of drugs. Up to this point they were doing this very often. Not just drug dealers, but frequently confiscating from regular users.
It is thought that this active policing and confiscation has helped to contribute to a cycle of petty theft, in that the police are effectively robbing drug users and forcing them to spend more of their income on drugs. When a person's drugs they need to feel normal are confiscated, their need for them doesn't go away, and they immediately have a new problem in that need to buy more. Stealing something to sell from a car or store is a very quick way to get that money. Effectively at this point not confiscating drugs is giving drug users more income and reducing pressure to steal to earn more income.
Will people continue to steal for other reasons? Perhaps some. There are also lots of agencies giving free food and there is minimum assistance and (not enough) social housing, so it is argued that the support network is good enough that people shouldn't need to steal to survive.
The next step here as well is that this decriminalization is a path to a safe prescribed supply of drugs, which would further save drug users money.
[+] [-] stevehiehn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fnbr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] water554|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hydrok9|3 years ago|reply
Except I really did care, it's just that I forgot what that feels like, because of all the drugs! If you don't offer addicts a chance to get back to real life, they will usually stay addicts. Ideas and threats can't compete with a fantasy world, only reality can.
[+] [-] Tiktaalik|3 years ago|reply
It's hard to applaud the government for finally turning away from Regan era drug policy thinking and enacting this change because it's taken years and the amount of dead due to inaction so great.
It has been obvious for years that there was a toxic drug crisis on the street, that the drugs were poisoned and that people were overdosing and dying because it was impossible to know what was in the drugs and how much to use without overdosing.
The real solution to this problem will be to replace the toxic street drugs with a safe supply of prescribed drugs so that people know what they're using.
This decriminalization move is a small step toward that future outcome, while in the mean time making it safer for drug users to using in a safe injection site context without fear that they're doing something illegal and having their drugs confiscated by police.
[+] [-] pluc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|3 years ago|reply
> Adults will be allowed to possess a combined total of 2.5 grams of opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA.
> While those substances will remain illegal, adults found in possession for personal use will not be arrested, charged or have their drugs seized. Instead, they will be offered information on available health and social services
> In its request to the federal government last year, BC said it asked for the drug laws exemption in order "to remove the shame that often prevents people from reaching out for life-saving help
[+] [-] sergnio|3 years ago|reply
I can't emphasize this enough. If you hate drugs and think they're strictly horrible for society, what's worse is us ignoring the underlying reasons for using drugs to extreme levels.
If anyone hasn't heard of Rat Park, please do yourself and everyone a favor and watch this video / read on it
"How the flawed Rat Park experiment launched the drug war"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-0KfwFCMRM&ab_channel=Freet...
[+] [-] arroz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dontbenebby|3 years ago|reply
Decriminalization solves the mass incarceration issue, possibly, but there are other things to think about.
[+] [-] alldayeveryday|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pmoriarty|3 years ago|reply
Keeping drugs illegal harms countless users, who can't be sure the drug they're using isn't cut with something harmful or is what they though they were getting or isn't too pure (all of which are the major causes of overdoses and deaths).
Throwing people in jail also harms them and their families (and risks them getting killed or maimed during arrest or while in jail).
Jail itself is a training ground for criminals, and many inmates come out more hardened criminals, and they're forced in to committing more crimes because once they've been in jails many legal jobs are closed to them because most companies don't want to hire people with a criminal record.
Society also wastes billions of dollars on fighting the War on Drugs, which could be used much more productively, especially as the War on Drugs is so ineffective and actually hurts millions of people world-wide, causes organized crime to thrive, and even destabilizes governments when organized crime gets too powerful and starts corrupting/killing politicians, lawyers, journalists, and judges... etc.
Addiction should be treated as a medical issue, not a criminal one.
[+] [-] dkjaudyeqooe|3 years ago|reply
Should we take a hard line on them in order to redeem society?
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|3 years ago|reply
So you want to put small time shoplifters and drug users in jail? Why?
Does it really go no further than "these are the rules, break the rules and I will spend a whole lot of money making your life even worse than it already is"?
[+] [-] mhitza|3 years ago|reply
Freedom was supposed to be complete liberty as long as with your actions you aren't directly limiting the freedom of others, or so I was taught. In practice things couldn't be farther from the truth.
I'm sure we could all have our own take on what a thriving society is. But I don't see this specific issue being all that relevant to that topic. To me this is about, a few, very few, entities waking up to the fact that you cannot assert that much control to enforce adherence of the population to a "one true way" of living. Doesn't work, it's absurd, and in the end you're only allowing the connected/elite to get of scot-free for breaking the law.
> An analog can be seen in places
(with my own completion) Portugal[0]. There was also a report for Netherlands how drug use among young people saw a decrease through the years since it has been decriminalized; but I couldn't Google it easy now.
Anyway, I want to take your comment in good faith, but as a minty-fresh account on this website I'm skeptic because often when privacy, drug, [insert non government friendly] topics are discussed/presented, new accounts pop up pushing ideas that prop the current status quo, or dismiss the topic.
[0] https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-po...
[+] [-] oneoff786|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pipeline_peak|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wly_cdgr|3 years ago|reply