Drug decriminalization criticized from all sides
Possession limit low, window too short, advocates say; others prefer prevention
Days after Ottawa announced the historic step of decriminalizing small amounts of illicit drugs in B.C., the measures are being blasted by those on the left who say it leaves Canada with a fractured approach to the opioid crisis and those on the right who say there's not enough focus on treatment and prevention.
Federal Addictions Minister Carolyn Bennett and her B.C. counterpart, Sheila Malcolmson, heralded the bold step taken Tuesday when they announced B.C. will become the first jurisdiction in Canada to decriminalize small amounts of drugs.
The aim of decriminalization, supported by the provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, and B.C.'S chief coroner, Lisa Lapointe, is to reduce the stigma around drug use so people will not use alone, which could be deadly.
However, drug policy experts and harm-reduction advocates said Ottawa did the bare minimum, allowing adults to avoid charges or seizure if they're found with 2.5 grams or less of opioids, cocaine and amphetamines. That threshold is much lower than B.C.'S request for 4.5 grams, which experts and people who use drugs say is just over a one-day supply for those with severe substance-use disorders.
Lapointe said the province's November submission to Health Canada was clear that lower possession thresholds could lead to unequal application of drug laws across B.C.
For example, according to the submission, there were twice as many drug-related arrests per capita in Kelowna in 2018 than in Vancouver, where police had already implemented a de facto decriminalization policy.
“The fear is that the lower the personal limit, the more discretion there is on the part of law enforcement in terms of seizing” those drugs, Lapointe told Postmedia News on Friday. “In large part, this (decriminalization) will succeed or fail depending on the spirit in which this is embraced by law enforcement.”
Bennett said Tuesday the 2.5gram threshold is a “floor, not a ceiling” and there's room for adjustments before 2026.
The federal government also did not make decriminalization permanent, instead approving a three-year exemption to the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances
Act from Jan. 31, 2023 to Jan. 31, 2026, after which B.C. will need to reapply.
Jane Philpott, a former federal health minister who championed decriminalization in Canada, said the three-year exemption may not be enough time to measure whether the policy shift has had an impact.
She said evidence from Portugal, the first European country to decriminalize small amounts of drugs for personal use in 2001, could not be assessed for several years after other health, legal, and housing measures were also put in place for entrenched drug users. Portugal also had to ramp up treatment options.
“Three years of a small piece of a whole package will not be enough to be able to say whether this works or doesn't,” she said. “And in some ways, there's anxiety over the failure to demonstrate its success.”
Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart said Insite, North America's first legal supervised consumption site, was initially approved as a pilot but received a permanent Health Canada exemption as evidence mounted that it was preventing fatal overdoses.
Similarly, the federal government will be looking for evidence that decriminalization is leading to fewer fatal and non-fatal overdoses, Stewart said.
Gord Johns, the federal NDP'S addictions and mental health critic
said he is “heartbroken” his private member's bill, which would create a national decriminalization strategy and expunge criminal records for simple possession, was defeated Wednesday.
“An incremental piecemeal approach is not the way to respond to a national crisis,” said Johns, the MP for Courtenay—alberni. “Imagine if we did a patchwork, incremental approach to COVID -19 or SARS or Ebola.”
Decriminalization has divided Canadian premiers, with leaders in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia saying they have no plans to pursue decriminalization.
B.C. Liberal Leader Kevin Falcon is skeptical that decriminalization “is going to do anything to deal with the fact that we've got six people dying every single day of overdoses.”
He's concerned the provincial government is not doing enough to educate young children that illicit drugs can have lethal consequences.
“We've got a government that spends money telling kids not to smoke, but they're doing nothing to let kids know that drugs are deadly and dangerous,” he said Thursday.
The government is not spending enough on treatment to reduce drug dependency, he said.
“We should be focusing on treatment and providing services to help those that have and are suffering with addiction to get off the drugs,” Falcon said.
“Decriminalization is going to do nothing to help any of those things.”