Loading ...As B.C. Partially Backs Off Decriminalization Of Illegal Drugs, Another Radical Trudeau Experiment Collapses
Turns out that incentivizing the widespread use of illegal drugs in public places isn’t a good idea. What a shock!
SPENCER FERNANDO :
Great Piece : This is how he Finishes ( Paywalled …so the beginning is posted in a comment )
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Extremism
At this point, common-sense Canadians are fully justified in denouncing the Liberals & the NDP as extremists and radicals.
On issue after issue, the Liberals and their NDP coalition partners have sought to move Canada far to the left.
One by one, they have imposed radical ideological experiments on Canada.
And one by one, those radical experiments have crumbled.
Look at the carbon tax, which is now widely hated by Canadians.
Look at immigration, where the Liberals are trying to distance themselves from their own radical immigration hikes.
Look at their recent reckless spending & taxing budget, which featured an ‘attack the rich’ capital gains tax hike that is looking more and more indefensible with each passing day.
The Liberals – having turned their party into a vehicle for the personality cult of the narcissistic Justin Trudeau – have lost touch with their once somewhat deserved reputation for centrism and moderation.
In doing so, they have left the political centre wide open for Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives, who are making the most of it.
Poilievre is dominating in the polls by talking about fighting crime, reducing taxes, getting spending under control, and enforcing laws against illegal drug use, all of which would have been the baseline people expected from the government until Trudeau and his ilk took charge.
Most Canadians are still reasonable and sensible people, and it’s good to see that more of our fellow citizens are waking up to how extreme, radical, and out-of-touch Trudeau and his enablers are.
Spencer Fernando
B.C. has finally had enough.
Even with a far-left NDP government in power, the province simply can’t put up with being the centre of the radical Trudeau Liberal drug decriminalization experiment any longer.
At the end of January 2023, B.C. received an exemption from the federal government allowing the province to ignore the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
This allowed the province to decriminalize the possession of limited amounts of illegal drugs, including fentanyl, heroin, meth, cocaine, MDMA, and opioids.
This meant that police could not arrest people for possessing those substances in public places.
Meanwhile, laws against the use of substances like alcohol in public places remained in place. As police in B.C. admitted, this led to situations in which someone could be arrested for having a beer in a park, while that same person would be free to use meth.
Unsurprisingly, this had disastrous results.
A wider and wider swath of B.C. has become an open-air drug den, with the use of illegal drugs even spreading to hospitals where doctors and nurses are legally unable to remove people for using illegal drugs even when other patients are being negatively affected.
Now, you may be wondering whether the decriminalization experiment at least reduced overdose deaths in the province.
Nope.
In 2023 – nearly a full year of the ‘experiment’ – overdose deaths hit a new record.
Here’s what the Chief Coroner of B.C. said in a January 2024 press release:
“Preliminary reporting released by the BC Coroners Service confirms that toxic, unregulated drugs claimed the lives of at least 2,511 people in British Columbia in 2023, the largest number of drug-related deaths ever reported to the agency.
“Tragically, toxic, illicit drugs are continuing to cause unprecedented numbers of deaths across our province,” said Lisa Lapointe, chief coroner. “This crisis, driven primarily by unregulated fentanyl, has cost our province dearly in the loss of much-loved and valued members of our communities. We cannot bring our deceased loved ones back, but we can and must do much more to protect the lives of tens of thousands of our family members, friends and colleagues still at risk.”
There were 6.9 deaths per day from ‘unregulated’ drug overdoses, an increase of 5% from the year prior.
This is a deeply sad, yet deeply predictable result.
It tracks with nearly every other ‘big policy change’ implemented by the Liberals:
The original problem gets worse, new problems are created, massive amounts of money are spent, and everyone is left worse off.
Of course, many have been warning about this for quite some time.
In November of 2022 – as the Liberal government pushed closer and closer to fully implementing their radical decriminalization experiment – Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre warned against policies that were feeding addiction rather than incentivizing treatment.
The Liberals – and much of the legacy media – attacked him relentlessly for making that claim.
Many ‘experts’ – the same experts whose policy ‘fixes’ have led to record-high overdose deaths and surging crime – also denounced the Conservative Leader.
And yet, he turned out to be correct.
Now, the B.C. NDP government – who once enthusiastically supported the radical decriminalization experiment but are now facing an unexpectedly tight election race against the surging B.C. Conservative Party – are changing their tune:
“British Columbia is preparing to ban most public drug use, a change to parts of its decriminalization pilot project that the premier says should have been in place all along.
The province has made an “urgent” request to Health Canada to make amendments to B.C.’s exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to give police the power to step in when they see illicit drug use in public spaces, including inside hospitals, on transit and in parks.
He said when decriminalization was first introduced, the focus was on removing the stigma and reducing the reluctance of people to reach out for help.
“Now, clearly, with the benefit of hindsight, police needed those authorities. And I think the goals of minimizing stigma, of encouraging and providing that opportunity for people to come forward with help, were important and critical goals that still inform our policy today,” he said.”
This speaks to the horrendous quality of political leadership in the Liberal Party and the NDP.
Any common-sense person could have told you that decriminalizing the use of illegal drugs would lead to more illegal drug use.
Yet, NDP Premiers and the Liberal Prime Minister thought they were smarter than everyone else.
They thought the real problem with the use of horrifically addictive drugs wasn’t the drug use, but the supposed ‘stigmatization’ of the drug use.
Of course, many things are stigmatized for good reason.
Using illegal drugs is not only bad from a physical and mental health perspective, but it also makes someone a danger to others.
And there’s nothing compassionate about what the government is doing.
When someone enables an addict, we rightfully criticize that person, because we know the truly compassionate and humane thing to do is to try and help someone get treatment and take their life back from illegal drugs.
But the Liberal government & B.C. NDP government has become enablers and drug pushers on a massive scale.
The only thing putting the brakes on their radical experiment is their fear of losing at the polls.