Are Cerb-fuelled cocaine sprees police hype?

The war on drugs takes no prisoners.

Earlier this month, CBC reported that Cape Breton Regional Police (CBRP) have blamed the federal government’s financial assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic — the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) — on the rise in cocaine use on our streets.

Const. John Campbell also implied that the legalization of cannabis in 2018 has contributed to the increase in cocaine use. Drug dealers can’t move as much illegal cannabis now, the reasoning goes, so cocaine has become their primary product.

While it’s true that cocaine use has risen during the pandemic, and this warrants concern by the public, law enforcement and policy-makers alike, the Cape Breton Regional Police have failed to demonstrate a causal link between increased government assistance, legalization of cannabis and the increase in cocaine use.

According to the Canadian Centre for Substance Use and Addiction, cocaine use has been rising since 2013. But as of 2019, the latest data available, cocaine use in the general population was sitting at roughly two per cent.

The CBRP would not provide the CBC with their latest cocaine-use numbers for Cape Breton, so their claims amount to little more than vaguery and conjecture until hard data is available. Even if the police had data on cocaine use, it would be extremely irresponsible for them to blame government benefits, which were introduced to reduce the pandemic induced economic hardship for the most vulnerable,

Such hypothesizing should be left to experts who study substance use, and is only useful if we have evidencebased policy to change behaviours.

We should ask ourselves: What effect do the CBRP’S comments have on how we view the most vulnerable people of our communities? And why would they make such claims?

Their claims imply that the people hardest hit by the pandemic are squandering their money for dangerous drugs. The effect will be an increase in mistrust of people’s ability to spend government financial assistance “responsibly” and in a corresponding decrease in support for such assistance. Ironically, this would drive more people to substance use.

While it is true that opioid overdoses have skyrocketed during the pandemic, it remains to be seen whether there has been a corresponding increase in cocaine-related health problems.

On the other hand, alcohol use has increased, and 12 per cent of Canadians report drinking more since the pandemic, according to a peerreviewed study by the Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention Journal of Canada.

Alcohol is the drug responsible for the highest cost to the criminal justice system in Canada. This increase in drinking will have long-term social and economic costs. Alcohol is a significant driver of domestic abuse, motor vehicle collisions and antisocial behaviour in general.

Why has the CBRP chosen to cry wolf on coke use instead? I think it’s simply because cocaine is illegal, an artifact of the failed war on drugs. Since cannabis was legalized, the police have turned to other less prevalent drugs to demonize substance users.

When he blamed the legalization of cannabis on the rise in cocaine use, Const. Campbell recycled the same old tired rhetoric of cannabis as a gateway drug to more harmful substances, in this case cocaine. Never mind that this has long been debunked, and the vast majority of cannabis users do not use more potent drugs like opioids or cocaine.

Instead, the true answer to this rise was present all along: “Campbell said police in Cape Breton have actually seen a decrease in opioid use on the street… and cocaine has emerged in its place.”

So here we have a representative of the local police service regurgitating harmful 1970s-era war-on-drugs propaganda that serves only to further disenfranchise and stigmatize people, many of whom are in need of actual, effective help such as health care and social work.

All this in the face of stark evidence — admitted by police — that people have simply modified their habits to avoid the increasingly life-threatening effects of opioids like fentanyl-laced heroin. That’s not to say that cocaine isn’t also incredibly harmful to one’s health, but it is a lesser of two evils.

It reflects poorly on the CBC that it did not do its due diligence and provide critical commentary or reporting from other stakeholders such as doctors, social workers, or health policy experts.

But more importantly, it shows that the police are not a reliable source for commentary on social issues such as substance use.

This instance, on our island, is a microcosm of a much larger issue in policing writ large. Policing is in need of serious reforms if it is to really serve its purported mission of justice.

Until that happens, police should leave the social commentary to the professionals.