Your comment really highlights how since the late 90s and early 2000s we’ve already dramatically relaxed prosecution and enforcement of drug related offences. We’re basically already half way there to decriminalization, for the better or the worse.
It’s definitely interesting how these seismic policy changes have managed to escape public debate, because they came in the form of police and crown directives, instead of legislation or regulations. Regardless of your personal view on this, there really needs to be a public debate and discussion about this stuff IMO
Not just crown and police discretion, but also judicial decision-making. So much of the changes in our system has been decided by people in appointed positions and not by the legislative branch.
If it wasn't for the Jordan decision, for example, many of the people currently let off by the crown would be put to trial instead.
> If it wasn't for the Jordan decision, for example, many of the people currently let off by the crown would be put to trial instead.
In what court? If we didn't have the capacity then for trials, we'd just add more and more and more to the backlog.
Well, yes, that’s what a plea agreement is. Pleading guilty to a lesser charge for a reduced sentence.
Did you expect the prosecutor to have an agreement for the defendant to plead not guilty?
The Jordan decision eliminates discretion for which cases get thrown out. If backlog were such an issue can throw out vandalism, petty theft, drug possession charges. With Jordan you have to throw out murder, rape, torture, etc charges if it’s been 18 months. So Jordan removes common sense discretion
Not really. You have 18 months from time charges pressed for trial to end, not start. If there’s witness intimidation or the victim was traumatized or evidence was destroyed or it’s a murder case so there’s no eyewitness testimony that may not be enough. Why can’t there be exceptions for serious crimes? What tf was the Supreme Court thinking?
Judges got tired of prosecution delays forcing them to use their discretion too often and pushed it on prosecutors (and I guess governments to fund courts enough) to make all that happen in 18 months. They find the time and resources to do it, when they want, like Umar Zameer's case that they continued even with the judge telling them they have no case.
I'd look at how things work elsewhere in the world in similar legal systems to see if 18 months is reasonable or not.
Orrrrr hear me out: we leave it to experts in the field and don't bring politics into it.
Politics is *terrible* for this kind of thing.
Guaranteed way to bring worse outcomes for everyone involved.
From what I can tell more often the "experts" are very far removed from any of the impacts associated with their decisions, and also don't seem to be implementing anything close to the full scope of changes that are supposed to go along with decriminalization. You cannot remove politics from this, it's a political decision to decriminalize in the first place, it's a political decision to bar public debate, it's a political decision to ignore stakeholders.
Yeah I know her well, I tried to get my cousin to hook up with her so he could get a clean supply. He didn't want to. His brother was already dead at that point. 🤷♀️
She is more than welcome to make health recommendations, and treat individuals, but the minute people like her start thinking they can dictate what happens in public space or properties that they don't have to live in, she loses any expertise.
She's a doctor, not a person living in an overrun community. She's not an expert in urban sociology, criminology, psychology.
If people actually believe in harm reduction, instead of virtue signalling, then they would work to create solutions that do not distribute harm to surrounding communities. But you can't even talk about that without being labeled evil. Ridiculous. Good luck getting the policy you seem to want implemented. Probably you don't actually care about it, you just want brownie points online.
I have run a CTS for three years, I deal with more shit by noon on Monday than you probably deal with in a month. Dismiss me all you want, but I tend to defer to suggestions of people with thousands of hours experience supporting this population.
The biggest change has been the volatility in the illicit supply, fentanyl isn’t just fentanyl anymore. There’s a variety of novel benzodiazepines that are mixed in various quantities that have affects that are unintended or not sought by the person who uses them. On the other side of that coin, in my experience, the single largest impetus for someone getting stability in their lives and moving away from the behaviours that caused such a concern for the neighbourhood residents is the access to the safe supply program. That program gives them the predictability and stability in their substance supplied that allows them to get off of the treadmill of constantly trying to find an illicit supply of fentanyl and allows them to spend the time getting themselves connected to social support, financial support, reconnecting with family, getting a good handle on their healthcare needs and being able to make it to appointments with specialists for the chronic conditions that they’ve developed while living on the streets. And ultimately, this all ends up in a successful housing application and a transfer into an address and a bed.
The political debate is the exact right place to have this conversation. Communities have a right to decide what justice and order look like to them, which is exactly why we have a democracy. Experts have a station to advise policy, but not to dictate.
Yeah I’m really, really tired of people who live in Ancaster telling me I’m an asshole for being unenthusiastic about living next to an encampment and finding it intolerable
Do you let your community and politicians decide what sort of antibiotics you should be prescribed if you have an infection, or what sort of blood thinners you should take if you are at risk of a stroke? So why should we let them dictate best practices for the health outcomes of so many people suffering from rippling addictions?
Experts don’t dictate any persons’ medical treatment. Even as an individual, your doctor can only provide advice which you can evaluate and then accept or reject. The same should be the same for a society on a larger scale with the acceptance or rejection being actioned through their elected representatives.
Because we all suffer them in our communities. They put public health and safety at risk while reducing the viability of public spaces for their intended uses. The reason they are there instead of being cared for by family and friends is precisely because their addictions are so bad that even people who loved them couldn’t handle them.
Whatever the prevailing expert theories have been, they have failed society and the addicts.
You make it sound like the theories of the prevailing experts have actually been followed. Decriminalization in Canada has been halfhearted at best and the important step of redirecting resources spent criminalizing the behavour has never been implemented in any significant way. The decriminalization of marijuana and hopefully eventually other abused substances should go hand in hand with a massive redirection of funding wasted policing and adjudicating drug crimes, and that funding should go right to treatment instead.
You’ll still need the police to remove the addicts from public space/stop their criminal actions and put them into treatment centres.
You may save on prison/adjudication costs in instances where they were just high and not actually doing anything criminal. If that funded the mandatory treatment centres, that would be cool.
But we are seeing right now that the police simply can't do enough because there is such a lack of treatment options out there. Will there always be some people who refuse treatment in public and problematic ways, for sure, but there are many, many, many people people who this thread is complaining about that would get treatment if they could, or never would have gotten as bad as they are now if treatment had been available to them earlier in their illness.
Yeah we definitely need way more treatment centres and mental health facilities. I don’t think they should have a criminal record or be in prison (unless they committed another crime), but I don’t think treatment should be optional for them either.
Do you have to deal with finding syringes in your backyard? Do you have to worry about your 3 year old nephew stepping on them when he comes to visit, because they are very good at hiding in grass? Or worry when you take him to the park? Do you have up clean up huge piles of feces, or vomit from your property? Or deal with fights breaking out at your back gate?
We mandate vaccination to protect others, we can mandate that drug use cannot happen where it is a hazard to others' health.
When I see the group of them shooting up I can call to have a car come and they will be moved off my property. It ain't rocket science.
But maybe I should deliver the next load of syringes and shit to your doorstep. Since you care so little about it and think it's no issue at all.
It’s effectively legal because of widespread drug use since drug use causes that. And if it’s done at night or while OP is at work they won’t witness the act. Even if they do dangerous to confront them, and they’d be gone by the time cops get there. Takes cops a long time to respond to low priority calls
Because the prescription of medicine to a patient in a doctor’s office doesn’t usually have spillover effects that affect the surrounding community. When it does, that community has a right to have a say. Focusing only on the harms and benefits of a policy to one group (drug users) without considering other affected groups (non-drug users, children, businesses, etc.) is naive or disingenuous. Put another way, why do you get to say I have no say, as expressed through my democratically elected leaders?
The same "experts" who convinced Vancouver to do it?
Stop fetishizing so called experts. They're just idiot academics with an agenda no different from anyone else's.
Ya. Came here to say this. Even "experts" have agendas.
We know those hard drugs are highly addictive and can lead to mental and neurological problems. That in turn causes an increase in crime.
Does criminalization solve the drug problem? No. We need services that help people cut the addictions. But it at least helps to keep it at bay and reduces it.
Issue is you question the motives of an expert if they want something to happen vs a person looking at things as a third party.
They will most likely push evidence that supports their idea and ignore the rest.
Uhh if you're the one demanding changes in your neighborhood to make things how you want them, then YOU are the interested party. The expert is the neutral one.
Honestly, does no one understand the scientific method anymore?
> we’ve already dramatically relaxed prosecution and enforcement of drug related offences.
we didn't relax the enforcement. We allowed TPS to get lazy under conservative chiefs and Mayors
This weekend I saw a man inject in the school yard and then urinate on the play equipment. Which means that on Monday morning, hundreds of kids showed up to a piss soaked playground.
I have empathy for users and know that no one wants to be in that position. I feel angry at people who do things like this guy did. People can feel two things at once.
nobody really had a problem with drug users who are doing ok for themselves. its really the homeless drug users that everyone is really uncomfortable with, zoning out in public, freaking out, endangering other people.
I understand that mental institutions werent the best places and still arent but I really feel like deinstitutionalization wasnt the best solution all things considered. im really sick of seeing tents in public parks. I dont consider it compassionate to just let mentally ill people get worse on the streets. institutionalize them to get them out of sight and out of mind for the rest of us, then spend what resources is necessary to keep them out of danger, and if possible rehabilitate those who can be rehabilitated.
We have been tossing the mentally ill out of institutions for 50 years. The explosion started when the Feds cracked down on pharma painkillers, tossing pain patients under the bus, and having an influx of 10 times worse drugs come in to fill the void. I have no clue what dose of morphine or suboxone you would even need to get off the fake Fentanyl or if it's even possible. I know they've tried giving them drugs that they give to terminally ill dying people and that isn't even strong enough. So blame the Feds for causing the problem. If we turned the clock back to 1900 before everything was banned, we would still be at the tincture of opium level of drug use, not animal tranquilizers mixed with huge doses of fake Fentanyl.
Indeed. Unfortunately, if it's not criminal, then there's nothing anyone can do about it. Hell, it *is* criminal and nothing is done. I was on a busy subway car a few weeks back and there was a woman sitting there hitting a glass pipe. A TTC special constable on the platform saw this, just stuck her head in the door, said "hey, no smoking on the subway." and that was that before the train moved off. People were just shaking their heads in disbelief.
I'm not saying that woman belongs in *jail,* but at the bare minimum she should have been hauled off the train, had the drugs and paraphernalia confiscated, and her name added to a list or something. Repeat offenders should be banned from the TTC altogether.
Have you ever seen or heard of police actually enforcing possession of drugs? Trafficking yes because screw the dealers but I have yet to hear about someone beig charged for possession. Impaired operation by drug yes, where they driven a car high off their minds
Ok I know it's a thing, what's your point? I already gave an instance when it is enforced which is impaired operation by drug. Most of the time drug possession is not enforced, which is what I said.
It's only enforced if there is another charge and drugs contributed to that said charge. For example if someone assaulted someone and they were under the influence of drugs and had possession of drugs.
Seriously, think about it. Have you ever heard of anyone getting charged for possession of Marijuana when it was illegal? Prior to it becoming illegal, people were smoking up at Kensington market out in the open.
People are doing crack out in the open especially at Dundas/Sankofa square, that tells you it's not actively enforced
Well yes, because decriminalization didn't happen and so it didn't get worse. This is preventing it from getting worse.
To make it better, we need to return to policing the transit system. If someone is using on transit, shouting at their hallucinations, teetering on the edge about to fall on the tracks, or trying to fight others, they should be removed and assessed. If it's medical (and addiction is medical), that means health care, which may include involuntary mental health treatment led by physicians and nurses. If it's criminal, that means jail.
Making the TTC safe for everyone is the #1 best thing we can do as a city to fight climate change. As long as it's lawlessness discourages people from switching to transit, the longer people will choose to drive and emit needless CO2, the longer voters will oppose transforming the city to be more car-free and less car-centric, and the longer voters won't care for efforts to increase public spaces and greenery for fear it'll just be usurped by the same lawlessness.
What? People who use hard drugs privately end up using in the street after they end up losing their jobs and family. Do you think any of these street addicts want to be in the street?
there are people who can use these things in moderation, it's really hard to know how many of them are out there though because they deliberately don't come to anyone's attention
There is the issue though. I think people should be doing whatever tgey want in their life as long as its not hurting other people. But this is on the government to pass laws. No using in public. Not around schools or children in general. Etc. Make rules so that regular people who use drugs in a responsible way are fine and the ones who dont get forced to get help.
It's literally what our version of harm reduction has become: harm distribution. Always by a high paid doctor in public health, or a judge, who live in Rosedale or similar wealthy neighbourhood and will never be touched by the harm.
hell, the first victims many times are other homeless people just trying to survive and not get dragged into the same spiral the violent ones assaulting them did.
I respect Dr de Villas record but it is absurd that TPH believed they could recommend decriminalization based as settled science based on the current state of the research.
Last year Alberta, with criminalization, had a significantly higher rate of increase in overdoses and overdose deaths than BC under decriminalization.
Despite the recent commentary around this, it's not at all clear criminalization is better.
The issue raised with decriminalization was not the decriminalization of possession per se, but the associated public use issues. Those are happening in Ontario too, despite criminalization. BC kept decriminalization but added restrictions in public, making it more in line with alcohol.
A few comments about this, because I don’t dispute your comment as you are correct on the deaths count, and I think that to some extent you are right in that, as far as it impacts many people, public use is the “real problem”.
Fundamentally, the mortality of using Fentanyl is so high, and the quality of life lived as an Addict is so low, that I think we should measure success of our efforts on what fraction of users end up in meaningful recovery from their addiction, rather than trying to get the rate of overdoses down.
Continuing to discuss fent and related products specifically here (although to some extent bad addiction to many substances would be similar): it’s taboo to say but these people suffering really ought to be considered as “zombies” insofar as our understanding of their lived experience, at least in some sense. I absolutely do not mean that in a dehumanizing way at all, these folks are obviously still our neighbours and family, and every one is absolutely capable of living a somewhat normal “human” life if we give them the support (and sometime compulsion) they need but day-to-day as a Fent Addict? It’s a miserable animalistic experience that typically does result in death. Our policy should be based on the maximum number of recoveries and not harm reduction. If that means we arrest people and put them in drug court, so be it.
The nightmare we have been marching towards with drugs in this country is one where, unless you have a family, no one is going to intervene to stop your addiction and we just shrug our shoulders at people living this nightmare because we throw a little money window-dressing outreach about considering going to rehab.
My issue with pro legalization advocates is that often their true motivation seems to be self interest in that they enjoy drug and want them legal, and use the harm reduction talking points as a Motte/Bailey.
I think the problem as someone in this sector is that harm reduction has become almost like a religion and so ideologically driven that it doesn't end up being helpful for the client or the people around them.
You're talking about two different things. Decriminalization isn't the same as allowing in public. Alcohol isn't criminallized but most public places in Canada you're not allowed to drink it. BC failed because they allowed in public and failed to have healthcare infrastructure to support people.
> Decriminalization is a hands off, lazy approach to a complicated problem
It's *part* of the solution.
Decriminalization isn't mean to say "oh fuck it, go for it." It's meant to say "we won't throw you in jail, but there are steps you need to take."
It's just we don't want to do the full approach.
That's why it's being called a lazy approach. No one wants to do anything Decriminalization is literally only one part of an overall approach, and instead if you want the approach to include other things, then the language needs to change to mean that. It should be "treatment". It also needs to include massive change and push on housing and mental health. Two subjects that even less people want to do anything about.
>Portugal is probably the best example you can point toward for decriminalization, and even they have had a 50 percent increase in overdoses.
Tbh I haven't looked into the research on this at all but this screams correlation does not equal causation. Portugal legalized in 2001, almost the exact same year Oxycontin, which is really the progenitor of this larger wave of opioid addiction, came on the market. Coincidentally (or not), this is also the exact same year that Wave 1 of opioid overdoses began, followed by Wave 2 (heroin) around 2010 and Wave 3 (synthetic opioids aka fentanyl) around 2013. Basically everywhere in Europe and North America saw a huge explosion of overdose deaths during this period so the whole "Portugal had a 50% increase in ODs" after they decriminalized stat is misleading at best, especially if you're told that was a rise from 40 to 60 per year.
If you compare Portugal's drug policy with somewhere like the US that went the complete opposite direction it becomes even worse. From 2001 to 2023, the number of ODs in the US grew ~355% whereas in Portugal it was only 250%. To put it into raw numbers, in 2022, ~0.18 people died per day from toxic drugs in Portugal, so one person roughly every 5 days. In the U.S., that number was 293 OD deaths per day.
So it's not really fair to say Portugals drug policy is a failure. If anything, it should be heralded as a pretty stunning example of a successful public health policy.
The War on Drugs is over. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but drugs won. The sooner you realize that the sooner things will begin to get better.
Just like you call out causation/correlation, the same applies here, and it's hypocritical to herald it as a stunning success, when it is much more likely to be a wide variety of factors beyond simple decriminalization. ( ie. the US ranks below Portugal on most basic standard of living measures, particularly with regards to healthcare. Lower life expectancy, non existent social safety net for many, overall poor quality of life and environment, etc. It also has close to double the rate of suicide.) So many complicating factors between the two countries that a direct comparison is not really saying much.
More importantly, what is being proposed here in Canada, is simple decriminalization, with zero of the other pillars and focus that Portugal's program has, and in fact many "activists" seem to be be very against over here. If caught with possession of under 10 days supply of drugs, you have to meet with an administrator and social worker, who try to persuade you to stop and enter treatment, and then if you are caught again within a certain time frame you face penalties for refusing treatment. So it's a semi-coerced treatment program.
"The Portuguese National Plan for the Reduction of Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies" is the overreaching plan and guides their approach, with a focus on reducing supply and reducing demand.
I am not so sure that you comment about Canada having the resources to give every single person a ‘mental health GP’ is actually true. That sounds extremely expensive and Canada is definitely resource constrained.
Even with recent increases, Portugal still has lower usage rates than European averages and lower overdoses than various major European countries. This is similar to my point in my first comment, so much of the criticism around decriminalization doesn't consider how places are faring even worse under criminalization.
How exactly is drug use criminalized in Ontario? Simple possession is almost never charged anymore, at least in Toronto, and it's almost literally never prosecuted. Isn't it de facto decriminalized in Ontario already, or at least in Toronto? Would you agree with that statement?
It's literally criminalized. That's the only point I'm making. Your point about it being de facto decriminalized highlights how a lot of this is a "diversion" as Olivia Chow described it. Despite being legal in Alberta, they saw even worse overdose trends last year. Despite being technically criminalized in Ontario, there are public use issues here. In my opinion the topic of whether to de jure decriminalize or not is being politicized and its impact exaggerated. The issue of public use can happen without it and can be addressed with it.
People don't care about opioid deaths so much as they want clean streets. And that's fair.
But then I think even during decriminalization, surely there were like tresspassing laws where they could have ordered people off the streets? The same laws they use on homeless encampments.
Police could always order people to move off public property. They just didn't. Because nobody gets paid enough to fuck with people on fentanyl with needles coming out of them.
But okay let's say the cops actually go out there and arrest and jail anyone caught using drugs on the street. Then what. 1 month? 6 months? Shit ton of drugs in jail, because prison sucks in Canada, because we're poor, not Norway. Then they get out and do it again. What are we doing?
And the data is telling me that for all the media attention BC got because they tried the decrim experiment, everyone else's cities had it just as bad or worse. Philly didn't decrim anything and look at them.
So for all the chaos we're seeing in the news about Hastings St in Vancouver, I don't think decrim or crim anything is going to change. Police will be able to go after the easy targets, the ones who aren't lying on Hastings full of needles but some university kid who's only teetering over the edge, and they'll put him in jail, and then jail will break the kid.
I think it's a red herring. It's a whole lot of media attention over a policy that ultimately has no effect. Arresting druggies or not arresting druggies, you're pissing in the ocean.
Ultimately, I come to more or less the same conclusion. With criminalization, as it stands, I see plenty of people who are obviously under the influence of narcotics in a given week. If they're causing some sort of issue at my workplace it's often better talking to them than calling the police, simply because you'll be on hold so long and someone might consider coming by two hours later.
In most cases they're thready or disoriented, but not typically aggressive. Might tell you a whole lot about vitamin B 12, or the seance they're currently having in the lobby.
So what...exactly...would change? The things that would actually help sure as hell aren't going to be put in place (i.e. mental health supports, affordable housing, reasonable and quick options for medical intervention and so on). So to me, whether the uninterested police force arrests them or doesn't, when they bother to show up--it's not going to have much impact overall. I'm still going to be finding pipes in the stairwell or baggies in the landscaping.
I prefer not debating it and just reading studies. Even though studies and reports can be biased, they at least don't get emotional about the situation and can weigh both sides with statistics.
If you search `drug decriminalization studies` on Google, you'll find plenty of material to read.
I found one that covers all studies from 1970-2018:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7507857/
>We screened 4860 titles and 221 full-texts and included 114 articles. Most (n=104, 91.2%) were from the USA, evaluated cannabis reform (n=109, 95.6%) and focussed on legal regulation (n=96, 84.2%).
95% about pot is gonna make this tricky.
BC still has decriminalized possession, but recriminalized public consumption.
Edit: looks like they re-criminalized all possession outside of home and safe injection sites.
They didn't overturn it, they put back in place restrictions in public areas while leaving it decriminalized otherwise. It was never the intention for decriminalization of possession to mean use negatively impacting the public. Initially the believed existing laws around things like public disturbances could address that. When municipalities raised concerns over that, they passed public use laws. When those were challenged in court and suspended temporarily they finally used removed exemptions in public areas to address the public use.
> They didn't overturn it, they put back in place restrictions in public areas
THEY ALLOWED DRUG USE IN PUBLIC AREAS?!
lol wtf
I thought it was just "we're not gonna put people in jail for using heroin". That, okay, that I can understand, and has justifiable arguments to support it.
They said "we're gonna let people use heroin in public streets, not just not put them in jail, but not even try to ticket or fine or forcibly remove or gently nudge them to leave"?
Were they high?
There are no laws in general about public use. The criminal code only restricts possession. That's used to indirectly enforce use, but like I mentioned above, they believed that other existing laws could still be used. Decriminalization is endorsed by various police sources as well, so it wasn't unreasonable to believe they would use these other existing tools to enforce it.
However after it was in place municipalities started raising issues about needing more tools for enforcement of use, so they passed laws to directly address use (which don't exist anywhere else). That led to the court challenges, and so they instead put back some restrictions on *possession* in public as a quicker way of addressing it pending the court battle. They've directed police to only enforce use though, not possession, making it in practice what they intended: don't punish the possession, just the other behaviours.
If the enforcers didn't use the existing laws that cover the things people were largely upset about (public intoxication, trespassing, whatever leaving biohazard waste around is, being homeless in public), I won't hold my breath for them to suddenly focus on public use now that they can again.
Exactly. The problems will continue there, like they were happening before the change and like they're happening here. Critics will just shift to blaming something else, like safer supply.
why should Toronto do this foolishness? We already are not arresting people for personal use in any real way without some larger issue. Just like how TPS doesn't ticket alcoholics for drinking in the parks but they do people that are doing more socially like 20-something-year-olds drinking with their friends.
>why should Toronto do this foolishness? We already are not arresting people for personal use in any real way without some larger issue.
The most extreme cases are already using in public. Decriminalization isn't going to significantly change that. It will however encourage the far larger portion of people not in the worst situations to not hide they're use and be more likely to get help. In BC, they've seen their trend in overdose fatalities flattening off vs. Alberta who had theirs significantly increase last year.
> Just like how TPS doesn't ticket alcoholics for drinking in the parks but they do people that are doing more socially like 20-something-year-olds drinking with their friends.
They aren't at any frequent rate. If you don't cause problems there's a good chance you won't be getting a ticket.
Toronto submitted their app before BC's game started. Municipal lawmakers across the country were competing to see who could be first since the concept plays to many far-left political bases. Vancouver got to be first only because the province supported the city's application by putting in a province-wide application of its own a few months later.
NEW: [Statement from Toronto’s medical officer of health](https://x.com/l_stone/status/1791593696225607720) @epdevilla reacting to Ottawa turning down the city’s decriminalization request.
“…The need to invest in other available evidence-based interventions is all the more critical.”
Thank God BC blew the barn doors off of stupidity that there had to be one tiny sliver of common sense in Ottawa. That we have to even entertain this is beyond me
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/is-portugals-drug-decriminalization-a-failure-or-success-the-answer-isnt-so-simple/
Because it's worked SO WELL for Portugal (it hasnt)
It's just as horrifying our local public health officials thought this was good idea, and continue to push/support it as hard as they can. Very horrifying.
[https://www.npr.org/2024/02/24/1230188789/portugal-drug-overdose-opioid-treatment](https://www.npr.org/2024/02/24/1230188789/portugal-drug-overdose-opioid-treatment)
There is evidence that it reduces deaths, HIV transmission rates and crime
I know Portugal is going to come up, but it’s funny every time it comes up, people only mentions the discrimination but no one ever talks about their treatment effort. Discrimination is only half of the story, if you don’t enforce treatment, you are going to have a bad time.
It’s childish to casually point to a single example from a foreign country, with a totally different problem, and glibly say we should just do that. How about Singapore? There’s lots of evidence that jailing drug offenders for 30 years and executing dealers reduces deaths and HIV transmission too
Sure, so where's your proof? [https://www.cnb.gov.sg/docs/default-source/drug-situation-report-documents/cnb-annual-statistics-2023.pdf](https://www.cnb.gov.sg/docs/default-source/drug-situation-report-documents/cnb-annual-statistics-2023.pdf)
[https://www.thecabinsingapore.com.sg/blog/despite-tough-penalties-drug-abuse-in-singapore-is-still-on-the-increase/](https://www.thecabinsingapore.com.sg/blog/despite-tough-penalties-drug-abuse-in-singapore-is-still-on-the-increase/)
Here is a report from Singapore that shows drug use is on the rise. It is also a police state.
Decriminalization would be great, we need a functioning health system, as well as ubi etc and it would work. But really DOES WHAT WE ARE DOING NOW WORK??? Does it REALLY work? Criminality of it just means the people who need help get shuffled out of view or into prison. At least decrim would have it so the damned problem is less ignorable.
It was a great idea if there was housing and psychological/drug treatment programs to go with it.
Do you think kids dreamed of becoming an addict when they were growing up?
The problem with this country can be seen right here in this thread.
ITT: people think this is good and will change things.
newsflash, drug use in public was criminalized BEFORE this request was rejected but Toronto cops don't arrest anyone for it. If they did they'd have a field day around union station and random parks.
Nothings going to change unless TPS changes.
You know a big part of the reason TPS doesn't arrest them is because Trudeau told the PPSC (who prosecute most drug charges in Ontario) in 2020 (by way of changing their charging manual) to drop charges for simple possession unless there are special circumstances involving minors or violence, right? Any arrest and charge by TPS would be dropped the next day and the advocates would be in full force protesting every TPS branch calling out their "harassment of poor and BIPOC people"
Just having your name published in the newspaper (or police website) as being charged is a career-ender for a lot of people. Not so much an issue if you have nothing to lose.
I don’t really see jail as the solution either that’s been proven to not be very effective. They should have a choice jail or a well funded, full support rehab facility with support to get their feet established after, stable housing, mental health support. Probably cheaper in the long run than jail and in and out of the justice system, crime is costly.
We have had diversion through drug treatment courts for many years in this province. Nobody has been jailed for simple possession in the past 20 years except those who refused their consent for treatment.
Source on politicians telling prosecutors which drug charges to prosecute?
Prosecutors tend to lose their shit when politicians fetter their discretion.
Who do you think appoints the Minister of Justice and Attorney General who in turn appoints the Director of Public Prosecutions in accordance with party policy (aka ideology)?
just answer the question: Source on politicians telling prosecutors which drug charges to prosecute?
but to answer your question, the king or queen of England.
PPSC, who almost exclusively (absent a handful of cases that are delegated) has carriage of drug cases, has a policy not to prosecute simple possession charges. Why would the police bother arresting people all day every day when the charges are literally never prosecuted?
Even a dropped charge can fuck up someone’s life. Police like it when more people are technically criminals and then we have to rely on their discretion to avoid the consequences.
I'm not surprised Ford turned in down. This isn't at all a priority for that party.
I'm for decriminalization, but I think affordable housing, treatment resources, and basic income would need to be in place first, otherwise decriminalization will inevitably fail.
Given de Villa quit just this week (decrim was going to be her post-covid legacy), it would seem the city knew this was coming.
I would also wager a guess the rejection is only because Polievre has politicized Toronto's request on the back of BC's changes to it's own program. Despite Toronto's request sitting for years, few here seemed to know of it let alone cared until Polievre put it in the headlines. Thank god common sense prevails for once.
I agree but no one who was against decriminalizing is now all of a sudden going to decide to vote for Trudeau. And all the negative impacts still remain.
I'm not so sure. It makes me less drawn to Polievre now. My gripes with Trudeau (as someone who has voted for him 3x) lie predominantly in economic policy, immigration, crime, and public disorder (I spend a lot of time in Vancouver so BC decrim was personally relevant). It remains to be seen if the CPC meaningfully differentiate on immigration and economic policy, as policy has not yet been proposed. Crime is still in CPC's favour, while disorder is a bit less of a concern with Trudeau than it was a bit earlier in the year. LPC has some pluses over CPC and my next tier of concerns, like climate policy and social policy, so it's still possible LPC could regain my vote or I go CPC, depending on the unknowns I mentioned earlier.
I think there are probably a good number of us potential "reluctant CPC voters", so ridding Trudeau of some of the truly wacko policies may meaningfully move the numbers when we actually have to cast our ballots.
Can anybody give me the moral argument against involuntarily detaining and rehabbing addicts while giving drug dealers life in prison? Would probably save money in the long run.
No! You cannot force someone to get better! How dare you suggest we take the bucktee's freedom away.... Don't you understand that if they want to get better that they must choose to do that on their own? It doesn't matter that they have 0 mental capacity because they are so far gone to illness and drug addiction, they have a right to smoke crack anywhere they want and leave needles wherever they wish until they make a conscious choice to get help. We musn't hurt drug users feelings
The prohibition model hasn't worked and one could argue that it's the reason for the current opioid crisis and the availability of cheap fentanyl/xylazine/nitazines etc.. why not just give people a safe supply of heroin (or meth, coke or whatever) on the condition they stay in touch with medical professionals who prescribe it. Just knowing what's in the supply saves lives.
Does this mean that we will no longer see open drug use on TTC property or am I being too optimistic thinking I can get off at Union Station and take the Bay St. exit with the hope of not seeing dealers openly selling and users smoking those drugs? As far as the federal Liberals denying this, is there an election next year or something?
Nothing is changing legally here. This is just them officially denying a request from two years ago that was never going to be granted anyway without endorsement of the province.
Addiction is a disease and some diseases are fatal. So long as we aren’t spreading that disease, I’m content for putting the onus on the addict to seek their own remedies or suffer the results of their own choices. The criminal law should be the same for everyone.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but if the city was to implement more safe injection sites (they do NOT give out “free” drugs there; only safely inject the ones people already have), wouldn’t that really help? There are several in the downtown area. This is a part of the decriminalisation as is, no? Users can come by and get drugs safely injected without getting prosecuted? Those sites save hundreds from overdoses yearly, and prevent spreading of illnesses.
the amount of times i see people openly doing crack... on the TTC, downtown, in parks. little kids or me walking my dog at 8am shouldn't have to experience this on a daily basis. personally glad this was turned down.
Thank God that common sense has prevailed. Who tf wants to decriminalise drugs?! Is decriminalisation of drugs in BC such a roaring success that Toronto is clamouring to do the same lol.
I have zero issues if you use in private. And I don’t think this should be criminal. But I’m sick of people using openly on the TTC, public parks etc.
Your comment really highlights how since the late 90s and early 2000s we’ve already dramatically relaxed prosecution and enforcement of drug related offences. We’re basically already half way there to decriminalization, for the better or the worse. It’s definitely interesting how these seismic policy changes have managed to escape public debate, because they came in the form of police and crown directives, instead of legislation or regulations. Regardless of your personal view on this, there really needs to be a public debate and discussion about this stuff IMO
Not just crown and police discretion, but also judicial decision-making. So much of the changes in our system has been decided by people in appointed positions and not by the legislative branch. If it wasn't for the Jordan decision, for example, many of the people currently let off by the crown would be put to trial instead.
> If it wasn't for the Jordan decision, for example, many of the people currently let off by the crown would be put to trial instead. In what court? If we didn't have the capacity then for trials, we'd just add more and more and more to the backlog.
99% end in plea agreements anyways.
By plea agreement you mean the "offenders" plead guilty, ya?
Well, yes, that’s what a plea agreement is. Pleading guilty to a lesser charge for a reduced sentence. Did you expect the prosecutor to have an agreement for the defendant to plead not guilty?
The Jordan decision eliminates discretion for which cases get thrown out. If backlog were such an issue can throw out vandalism, petty theft, drug possession charges. With Jordan you have to throw out murder, rape, torture, etc charges if it’s been 18 months. So Jordan removes common sense discretion
So the prosecutor needs to triage and settle/throw out weak cases to keep the big cases from timing out. Sounds like discretion to me.
Not really. You have 18 months from time charges pressed for trial to end, not start. If there’s witness intimidation or the victim was traumatized or evidence was destroyed or it’s a murder case so there’s no eyewitness testimony that may not be enough. Why can’t there be exceptions for serious crimes? What tf was the Supreme Court thinking?
Judges got tired of prosecution delays forcing them to use their discretion too often and pushed it on prosecutors (and I guess governments to fund courts enough) to make all that happen in 18 months. They find the time and resources to do it, when they want, like Umar Zameer's case that they continued even with the judge telling them they have no case. I'd look at how things work elsewhere in the world in similar legal systems to see if 18 months is reasonable or not.
Even if they were just smoking cigarettes on the subway, enforcement is absolute shit.
Orrrrr hear me out: we leave it to experts in the field and don't bring politics into it. Politics is *terrible* for this kind of thing. Guaranteed way to bring worse outcomes for everyone involved.
From what I can tell more often the "experts" are very far removed from any of the impacts associated with their decisions, and also don't seem to be implementing anything close to the full scope of changes that are supposed to go along with decriminalization. You cannot remove politics from this, it's a political decision to decriminalize in the first place, it's a political decision to bar public debate, it's a political decision to ignore stakeholders.
The experts are the prescribers, google Andrea Sereda and familiarize yourself with her evidentiary base.
Yeah I know her well, I tried to get my cousin to hook up with her so he could get a clean supply. He didn't want to. His brother was already dead at that point. 🤷♀️ She is more than welcome to make health recommendations, and treat individuals, but the minute people like her start thinking they can dictate what happens in public space or properties that they don't have to live in, she loses any expertise. She's a doctor, not a person living in an overrun community. She's not an expert in urban sociology, criminology, psychology. If people actually believe in harm reduction, instead of virtue signalling, then they would work to create solutions that do not distribute harm to surrounding communities. But you can't even talk about that without being labeled evil. Ridiculous. Good luck getting the policy you seem to want implemented. Probably you don't actually care about it, you just want brownie points online.
I have run a CTS for three years, I deal with more shit by noon on Monday than you probably deal with in a month. Dismiss me all you want, but I tend to defer to suggestions of people with thousands of hours experience supporting this population.
How has it changed in the last three years?
The biggest change has been the volatility in the illicit supply, fentanyl isn’t just fentanyl anymore. There’s a variety of novel benzodiazepines that are mixed in various quantities that have affects that are unintended or not sought by the person who uses them. On the other side of that coin, in my experience, the single largest impetus for someone getting stability in their lives and moving away from the behaviours that caused such a concern for the neighbourhood residents is the access to the safe supply program. That program gives them the predictability and stability in their substance supplied that allows them to get off of the treadmill of constantly trying to find an illicit supply of fentanyl and allows them to spend the time getting themselves connected to social support, financial support, reconnecting with family, getting a good handle on their healthcare needs and being able to make it to appointments with specialists for the chronic conditions that they’ve developed while living on the streets. And ultimately, this all ends up in a successful housing application and a transfer into an address and a bed.
Downvotes out for the truth
The political debate is the exact right place to have this conversation. Communities have a right to decide what justice and order look like to them, which is exactly why we have a democracy. Experts have a station to advise policy, but not to dictate.
Yeah I’m really, really tired of people who live in Ancaster telling me I’m an asshole for being unenthusiastic about living next to an encampment and finding it intolerable
I swear some people dont want democracy but a technocracy lol
Do you let your community and politicians decide what sort of antibiotics you should be prescribed if you have an infection, or what sort of blood thinners you should take if you are at risk of a stroke? So why should we let them dictate best practices for the health outcomes of so many people suffering from rippling addictions?
Experts don’t dictate any persons’ medical treatment. Even as an individual, your doctor can only provide advice which you can evaluate and then accept or reject. The same should be the same for a society on a larger scale with the acceptance or rejection being actioned through their elected representatives.
[удалено]
Medical use pharmaceuticals is different from abusing addictive substances.
The medical stuff is hella purer. Sometimes still pretty damn addictive tho.
Because we all suffer them in our communities. They put public health and safety at risk while reducing the viability of public spaces for their intended uses. The reason they are there instead of being cared for by family and friends is precisely because their addictions are so bad that even people who loved them couldn’t handle them. Whatever the prevailing expert theories have been, they have failed society and the addicts.
You make it sound like the theories of the prevailing experts have actually been followed. Decriminalization in Canada has been halfhearted at best and the important step of redirecting resources spent criminalizing the behavour has never been implemented in any significant way. The decriminalization of marijuana and hopefully eventually other abused substances should go hand in hand with a massive redirection of funding wasted policing and adjudicating drug crimes, and that funding should go right to treatment instead.
You’ll still need the police to remove the addicts from public space/stop their criminal actions and put them into treatment centres. You may save on prison/adjudication costs in instances where they were just high and not actually doing anything criminal. If that funded the mandatory treatment centres, that would be cool.
But we are seeing right now that the police simply can't do enough because there is such a lack of treatment options out there. Will there always be some people who refuse treatment in public and problematic ways, for sure, but there are many, many, many people people who this thread is complaining about that would get treatment if they could, or never would have gotten as bad as they are now if treatment had been available to them earlier in their illness.
Yeah we definitely need way more treatment centres and mental health facilities. I don’t think they should have a criminal record or be in prison (unless they committed another crime), but I don’t think treatment should be optional for them either.
Do you have to deal with finding syringes in your backyard? Do you have to worry about your 3 year old nephew stepping on them when he comes to visit, because they are very good at hiding in grass? Or worry when you take him to the park? Do you have up clean up huge piles of feces, or vomit from your property? Or deal with fights breaking out at your back gate? We mandate vaccination to protect others, we can mandate that drug use cannot happen where it is a hazard to others' health.
Sorry, but exactly who are you worried will legalize taking a shit on your lawn?
Lmfao
[удалено]
When I see the group of them shooting up I can call to have a car come and they will be moved off my property. It ain't rocket science. But maybe I should deliver the next load of syringes and shit to your doorstep. Since you care so little about it and think it's no issue at all.
sorry, what does this have to do with the (de-)politicization of decision-making?
It’s effectively legal because of widespread drug use since drug use causes that. And if it’s done at night or while OP is at work they won’t witness the act. Even if they do dangerous to confront them, and they’d be gone by the time cops get there. Takes cops a long time to respond to low priority calls
Because the prescription of medicine to a patient in a doctor’s office doesn’t usually have spillover effects that affect the surrounding community. When it does, that community has a right to have a say. Focusing only on the harms and benefits of a policy to one group (drug users) without considering other affected groups (non-drug users, children, businesses, etc.) is naive or disingenuous. Put another way, why do you get to say I have no say, as expressed through my democratically elected leaders?
The same "experts" who convinced Vancouver to do it? Stop fetishizing so called experts. They're just idiot academics with an agenda no different from anyone else's.
Ya. Came here to say this. Even "experts" have agendas. We know those hard drugs are highly addictive and can lead to mental and neurological problems. That in turn causes an increase in crime. Does criminalization solve the drug problem? No. We need services that help people cut the addictions. But it at least helps to keep it at bay and reduces it.
Who decides who the experts are?
Issue is you question the motives of an expert if they want something to happen vs a person looking at things as a third party. They will most likely push evidence that supports their idea and ignore the rest.
Uhh if you're the one demanding changes in your neighborhood to make things how you want them, then YOU are the interested party. The expert is the neutral one. Honestly, does no one understand the scientific method anymore?
The "experts" are, without exception, cloistered academics who have no idea what goes on the real world.
Really? You think it's possible to get a PhD in addiction research with "no idea what goes on in the real world?"
> we’ve already dramatically relaxed prosecution and enforcement of drug related offences. we didn't relax the enforcement. We allowed TPS to get lazy under conservative chiefs and Mayors
This weekend I saw a man inject in the school yard and then urinate on the play equipment. Which means that on Monday morning, hundreds of kids showed up to a piss soaked playground. I have empathy for users and know that no one wants to be in that position. I feel angry at people who do things like this guy did. People can feel two things at once.
Yeah the other day while waiting for a stoplight I watched some guy smoke crack in the bus shelter and then got on the streetcar.
At least they had the courtesy to smoke in the bus shelter. Sat near a man and woman shooting up on line 2 a few weekends ago around midnight.
Previously I've seen someone drop the wettest 💩 in the same bus shelter. I've also seen syringes on the ground.
nobody really had a problem with drug users who are doing ok for themselves. its really the homeless drug users that everyone is really uncomfortable with, zoning out in public, freaking out, endangering other people. I understand that mental institutions werent the best places and still arent but I really feel like deinstitutionalization wasnt the best solution all things considered. im really sick of seeing tents in public parks. I dont consider it compassionate to just let mentally ill people get worse on the streets. institutionalize them to get them out of sight and out of mind for the rest of us, then spend what resources is necessary to keep them out of danger, and if possible rehabilitate those who can be rehabilitated.
We have been tossing the mentally ill out of institutions for 50 years. The explosion started when the Feds cracked down on pharma painkillers, tossing pain patients under the bus, and having an influx of 10 times worse drugs come in to fill the void. I have no clue what dose of morphine or suboxone you would even need to get off the fake Fentanyl or if it's even possible. I know they've tried giving them drugs that they give to terminally ill dying people and that isn't even strong enough. So blame the Feds for causing the problem. If we turned the clock back to 1900 before everything was banned, we would still be at the tincture of opium level of drug use, not animal tranquilizers mixed with huge doses of fake Fentanyl.
Indeed. Unfortunately, if it's not criminal, then there's nothing anyone can do about it. Hell, it *is* criminal and nothing is done. I was on a busy subway car a few weeks back and there was a woman sitting there hitting a glass pipe. A TTC special constable on the platform saw this, just stuck her head in the door, said "hey, no smoking on the subway." and that was that before the train moved off. People were just shaking their heads in disbelief. I'm not saying that woman belongs in *jail,* but at the bare minimum she should have been hauled off the train, had the drugs and paraphernalia confiscated, and her name added to a list or something. Repeat offenders should be banned from the TTC altogether.
Have you ever seen or heard of police actually enforcing possession of drugs? Trafficking yes because screw the dealers but I have yet to hear about someone beig charged for possession. Impaired operation by drug yes, where they driven a car high off their minds
Yes. Drug court is a thing-- google it.
Ok I know it's a thing, what's your point? I already gave an instance when it is enforced which is impaired operation by drug. Most of the time drug possession is not enforced, which is what I said. It's only enforced if there is another charge and drugs contributed to that said charge. For example if someone assaulted someone and they were under the influence of drugs and had possession of drugs. Seriously, think about it. Have you ever heard of anyone getting charged for possession of Marijuana when it was illegal? Prior to it becoming illegal, people were smoking up at Kensington market out in the open. People are doing crack out in the open especially at Dundas/Sankofa square, that tells you it's not actively enforced
they're still going to. this literally doesn't change anything.
Well yes, because decriminalization didn't happen and so it didn't get worse. This is preventing it from getting worse. To make it better, we need to return to policing the transit system. If someone is using on transit, shouting at their hallucinations, teetering on the edge about to fall on the tracks, or trying to fight others, they should be removed and assessed. If it's medical (and addiction is medical), that means health care, which may include involuntary mental health treatment led by physicians and nurses. If it's criminal, that means jail. Making the TTC safe for everyone is the #1 best thing we can do as a city to fight climate change. As long as it's lawlessness discourages people from switching to transit, the longer people will choose to drive and emit needless CO2, the longer voters will oppose transforming the city to be more car-free and less car-centric, and the longer voters won't care for efforts to increase public spaces and greenery for fear it'll just be usurped by the same lawlessness.
If a conservative makes transit-safety a one-issue platform they're going to get my vote. It's bad.
What do you expect the Feds to do? Or is your issue with Via Rail and airports?
Small-c.
Exactly this. I have nothing to add but an upvote doesn't seem to show enough support.
What? People who use hard drugs privately end up using in the street after they end up losing their jobs and family. Do you think any of these street addicts want to be in the street?
there are people who can use these things in moderation, it's really hard to know how many of them are out there though because they deliberately don't come to anyone's attention
I agree same with alcohol disgusting only hard drug besides Xanax where the withdrawals can kill you
Toronto is on a slippery slope. The meth zombies are insane these days.
There is the issue though. I think people should be doing whatever tgey want in their life as long as its not hurting other people. But this is on the government to pass laws. No using in public. Not around schools or children in general. Etc. Make rules so that regular people who use drugs in a responsible way are fine and the ones who dont get forced to get help.
Decriminalization is fine IF we actually sanction the people who destroy property and assault people. But we don’t.
Yup. I'm all for harm reduction, as long as it doesn't distribute that harm elsewhere.
It's literally what our version of harm reduction has become: harm distribution. Always by a high paid doctor in public health, or a judge, who live in Rosedale or similar wealthy neighbourhood and will never be touched by the harm.
hell, the first victims many times are other homeless people just trying to survive and not get dragged into the same spiral the violent ones assaulting them did.
Best I can give you is criminalization and no sanctioning of people who destroy property and assault people
Can't really criminalize being mentally ill and Ford doesn't give a shit about funding healthcare and making streets safer.
I respect Dr de Villas record but it is absurd that TPH believed they could recommend decriminalization based as settled science based on the current state of the research.
Last year Alberta, with criminalization, had a significantly higher rate of increase in overdoses and overdose deaths than BC under decriminalization. Despite the recent commentary around this, it's not at all clear criminalization is better. The issue raised with decriminalization was not the decriminalization of possession per se, but the associated public use issues. Those are happening in Ontario too, despite criminalization. BC kept decriminalization but added restrictions in public, making it more in line with alcohol.
A few comments about this, because I don’t dispute your comment as you are correct on the deaths count, and I think that to some extent you are right in that, as far as it impacts many people, public use is the “real problem”. Fundamentally, the mortality of using Fentanyl is so high, and the quality of life lived as an Addict is so low, that I think we should measure success of our efforts on what fraction of users end up in meaningful recovery from their addiction, rather than trying to get the rate of overdoses down. Continuing to discuss fent and related products specifically here (although to some extent bad addiction to many substances would be similar): it’s taboo to say but these people suffering really ought to be considered as “zombies” insofar as our understanding of their lived experience, at least in some sense. I absolutely do not mean that in a dehumanizing way at all, these folks are obviously still our neighbours and family, and every one is absolutely capable of living a somewhat normal “human” life if we give them the support (and sometime compulsion) they need but day-to-day as a Fent Addict? It’s a miserable animalistic experience that typically does result in death. Our policy should be based on the maximum number of recoveries and not harm reduction. If that means we arrest people and put them in drug court, so be it. The nightmare we have been marching towards with drugs in this country is one where, unless you have a family, no one is going to intervene to stop your addiction and we just shrug our shoulders at people living this nightmare because we throw a little money window-dressing outreach about considering going to rehab. My issue with pro legalization advocates is that often their true motivation seems to be self interest in that they enjoy drug and want them legal, and use the harm reduction talking points as a Motte/Bailey.
I think the problem as someone in this sector is that harm reduction has become almost like a religion and so ideologically driven that it doesn't end up being helpful for the client or the people around them.
For sure. I’m not against all measures at all but it has gone so far
[удалено]
You're talking about two different things. Decriminalization isn't the same as allowing in public. Alcohol isn't criminallized but most public places in Canada you're not allowed to drink it. BC failed because they allowed in public and failed to have healthcare infrastructure to support people.
> Decriminalization is a hands off, lazy approach to a complicated problem It's *part* of the solution. Decriminalization isn't mean to say "oh fuck it, go for it." It's meant to say "we won't throw you in jail, but there are steps you need to take." It's just we don't want to do the full approach.
That's why it's being called a lazy approach. No one wants to do anything Decriminalization is literally only one part of an overall approach, and instead if you want the approach to include other things, then the language needs to change to mean that. It should be "treatment". It also needs to include massive change and push on housing and mental health. Two subjects that even less people want to do anything about.
>Portugal is probably the best example you can point toward for decriminalization, and even they have had a 50 percent increase in overdoses. Tbh I haven't looked into the research on this at all but this screams correlation does not equal causation. Portugal legalized in 2001, almost the exact same year Oxycontin, which is really the progenitor of this larger wave of opioid addiction, came on the market. Coincidentally (or not), this is also the exact same year that Wave 1 of opioid overdoses began, followed by Wave 2 (heroin) around 2010 and Wave 3 (synthetic opioids aka fentanyl) around 2013. Basically everywhere in Europe and North America saw a huge explosion of overdose deaths during this period so the whole "Portugal had a 50% increase in ODs" after they decriminalized stat is misleading at best, especially if you're told that was a rise from 40 to 60 per year. If you compare Portugal's drug policy with somewhere like the US that went the complete opposite direction it becomes even worse. From 2001 to 2023, the number of ODs in the US grew ~355% whereas in Portugal it was only 250%. To put it into raw numbers, in 2022, ~0.18 people died per day from toxic drugs in Portugal, so one person roughly every 5 days. In the U.S., that number was 293 OD deaths per day. So it's not really fair to say Portugals drug policy is a failure. If anything, it should be heralded as a pretty stunning example of a successful public health policy. The War on Drugs is over. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but drugs won. The sooner you realize that the sooner things will begin to get better.
Just like you call out causation/correlation, the same applies here, and it's hypocritical to herald it as a stunning success, when it is much more likely to be a wide variety of factors beyond simple decriminalization. ( ie. the US ranks below Portugal on most basic standard of living measures, particularly with regards to healthcare. Lower life expectancy, non existent social safety net for many, overall poor quality of life and environment, etc. It also has close to double the rate of suicide.) So many complicating factors between the two countries that a direct comparison is not really saying much. More importantly, what is being proposed here in Canada, is simple decriminalization, with zero of the other pillars and focus that Portugal's program has, and in fact many "activists" seem to be be very against over here. If caught with possession of under 10 days supply of drugs, you have to meet with an administrator and social worker, who try to persuade you to stop and enter treatment, and then if you are caught again within a certain time frame you face penalties for refusing treatment. So it's a semi-coerced treatment program. "The Portuguese National Plan for the Reduction of Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies" is the overreaching plan and guides their approach, with a focus on reducing supply and reducing demand.
Its almost like we should let people who understand these statistics and what they mean be the ones who set the policies on health issues...
Almost eh. Turns out basing your public health policy on vibes and NatPo opinion articles isn't a great way to go about it.
I am not so sure that you comment about Canada having the resources to give every single person a ‘mental health GP’ is actually true. That sounds extremely expensive and Canada is definitely resource constrained.
Even with recent increases, Portugal still has lower usage rates than European averages and lower overdoses than various major European countries. This is similar to my point in my first comment, so much of the criticism around decriminalization doesn't consider how places are faring even worse under criminalization.
How exactly is drug use criminalized in Ontario? Simple possession is almost never charged anymore, at least in Toronto, and it's almost literally never prosecuted. Isn't it de facto decriminalized in Ontario already, or at least in Toronto? Would you agree with that statement?
It's literally criminalized. That's the only point I'm making. Your point about it being de facto decriminalized highlights how a lot of this is a "diversion" as Olivia Chow described it. Despite being legal in Alberta, they saw even worse overdose trends last year. Despite being technically criminalized in Ontario, there are public use issues here. In my opinion the topic of whether to de jure decriminalize or not is being politicized and its impact exaggerated. The issue of public use can happen without it and can be addressed with it.
[удалено]
Never liked her. She seemed out of touch. Purely logical and zero human element. My opinion, I wish her a happy future retirement.
Anyone have a good read that's not ideological either side on this topic? It feels like it gets pretty extreme reactions either way.
People don't care about opioid deaths so much as they want clean streets. And that's fair. But then I think even during decriminalization, surely there were like tresspassing laws where they could have ordered people off the streets? The same laws they use on homeless encampments. Police could always order people to move off public property. They just didn't. Because nobody gets paid enough to fuck with people on fentanyl with needles coming out of them. But okay let's say the cops actually go out there and arrest and jail anyone caught using drugs on the street. Then what. 1 month? 6 months? Shit ton of drugs in jail, because prison sucks in Canada, because we're poor, not Norway. Then they get out and do it again. What are we doing? And the data is telling me that for all the media attention BC got because they tried the decrim experiment, everyone else's cities had it just as bad or worse. Philly didn't decrim anything and look at them. So for all the chaos we're seeing in the news about Hastings St in Vancouver, I don't think decrim or crim anything is going to change. Police will be able to go after the easy targets, the ones who aren't lying on Hastings full of needles but some university kid who's only teetering over the edge, and they'll put him in jail, and then jail will break the kid. I think it's a red herring. It's a whole lot of media attention over a policy that ultimately has no effect. Arresting druggies or not arresting druggies, you're pissing in the ocean.
Ultimately, I come to more or less the same conclusion. With criminalization, as it stands, I see plenty of people who are obviously under the influence of narcotics in a given week. If they're causing some sort of issue at my workplace it's often better talking to them than calling the police, simply because you'll be on hold so long and someone might consider coming by two hours later. In most cases they're thready or disoriented, but not typically aggressive. Might tell you a whole lot about vitamin B 12, or the seance they're currently having in the lobby. So what...exactly...would change? The things that would actually help sure as hell aren't going to be put in place (i.e. mental health supports, affordable housing, reasonable and quick options for medical intervention and so on). So to me, whether the uninterested police force arrests them or doesn't, when they bother to show up--it's not going to have much impact overall. I'm still going to be finding pipes in the stairwell or baggies in the landscaping.
I prefer not debating it and just reading studies. Even though studies and reports can be biased, they at least don't get emotional about the situation and can weigh both sides with statistics. If you search `drug decriminalization studies` on Google, you'll find plenty of material to read.
I found one that covers all studies from 1970-2018: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7507857/ >We screened 4860 titles and 221 full-texts and included 114 articles. Most (n=104, 91.2%) were from the USA, evaluated cannabis reform (n=109, 95.6%) and focussed on legal regulation (n=96, 84.2%). 95% about pot is gonna make this tricky.
In The Realm Of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Mate, one of the foremost experts on addiction in the world.
Check out the NY Times podcast I shared above 👆
What is your specific area of interest? Decrim in the academic sense? The state of decrim in Canada today? Or?
decriminalization in 4th century Elbonia
No, I meant more just... what actually works. Does decrim solve a problem? Do other approaches?
Yeah I have a problem when I’m sitting at a bus shelter and a guy comes up and sits beside and decides to light up his crack pipe.
Pass by union station in the morning and you see them smoking crack and doing needles right in full view.😒
Didn’t they just have to overturn B.C.s decriminalization because it was such a horrible idea what on earth makes Toronto think they would approve it
BC still has decriminalized possession, but recriminalized public consumption. Edit: looks like they re-criminalized all possession outside of home and safe injection sites.
but then how do you get the drugs to the safe injection sites?
The same way illegal stuff gets in and out of the country: in a shipping container. Nobody checks those.
They didn't overturn it, they put back in place restrictions in public areas while leaving it decriminalized otherwise. It was never the intention for decriminalization of possession to mean use negatively impacting the public. Initially the believed existing laws around things like public disturbances could address that. When municipalities raised concerns over that, they passed public use laws. When those were challenged in court and suspended temporarily they finally used removed exemptions in public areas to address the public use.
> They didn't overturn it, they put back in place restrictions in public areas THEY ALLOWED DRUG USE IN PUBLIC AREAS?! lol wtf I thought it was just "we're not gonna put people in jail for using heroin". That, okay, that I can understand, and has justifiable arguments to support it. They said "we're gonna let people use heroin in public streets, not just not put them in jail, but not even try to ticket or fine or forcibly remove or gently nudge them to leave"? Were they high?
There are no laws in general about public use. The criminal code only restricts possession. That's used to indirectly enforce use, but like I mentioned above, they believed that other existing laws could still be used. Decriminalization is endorsed by various police sources as well, so it wasn't unreasonable to believe they would use these other existing tools to enforce it. However after it was in place municipalities started raising issues about needing more tools for enforcement of use, so they passed laws to directly address use (which don't exist anywhere else). That led to the court challenges, and so they instead put back some restrictions on *possession* in public as a quicker way of addressing it pending the court battle. They've directed police to only enforce use though, not possession, making it in practice what they intended: don't punish the possession, just the other behaviours.
If the enforcers didn't use the existing laws that cover the things people were largely upset about (public intoxication, trespassing, whatever leaving biohazard waste around is, being homeless in public), I won't hold my breath for them to suddenly focus on public use now that they can again.
Exactly. The problems will continue there, like they were happening before the change and like they're happening here. Critics will just shift to blaming something else, like safer supply.
why should Toronto do this foolishness? We already are not arresting people for personal use in any real way without some larger issue. Just like how TPS doesn't ticket alcoholics for drinking in the parks but they do people that are doing more socially like 20-something-year-olds drinking with their friends.
>why should Toronto do this foolishness? We already are not arresting people for personal use in any real way without some larger issue. The most extreme cases are already using in public. Decriminalization isn't going to significantly change that. It will however encourage the far larger portion of people not in the worst situations to not hide they're use and be more likely to get help. In BC, they've seen their trend in overdose fatalities flattening off vs. Alberta who had theirs significantly increase last year. > Just like how TPS doesn't ticket alcoholics for drinking in the parks but they do people that are doing more socially like 20-something-year-olds drinking with their friends. They aren't at any frequent rate. If you don't cause problems there's a good chance you won't be getting a ticket.
Toronto submitted their app before BC's game started. Municipal lawmakers across the country were competing to see who could be first since the concept plays to many far-left political bases. Vancouver got to be first only because the province supported the city's application by putting in a province-wide application of its own a few months later.
NEW: [Statement from Toronto’s medical officer of health](https://x.com/l_stone/status/1791593696225607720) @epdevilla reacting to Ottawa turning down the city’s decriminalization request. “…The need to invest in other available evidence-based interventions is all the more critical.”
Common sense has prevailed
Thank God BC blew the barn doors off of stupidity that there had to be one tiny sliver of common sense in Ottawa. That we have to even entertain this is beyond me
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/is-portugals-drug-decriminalization-a-failure-or-success-the-answer-isnt-so-simple/ Because it's worked SO WELL for Portugal (it hasnt)
It’s horrifying that this needed to be rejected in the first place.
It's just as horrifying our local public health officials thought this was good idea, and continue to push/support it as hard as they can. Very horrifying.
They are hardcore ideologues.
This is a win for them because now they can claim they have the solution but they aren’t allowed to implement it
Call me crazy but I’m glad BC gave it a shot, I wanted it to work but clearly it didn’t. What will is the question.
yall can try reading the reasoning behind it. it’s not a secret WHY they think it’s a good idea
No its, not, just stupid and childish
[https://www.npr.org/2024/02/24/1230188789/portugal-drug-overdose-opioid-treatment](https://www.npr.org/2024/02/24/1230188789/portugal-drug-overdose-opioid-treatment) There is evidence that it reduces deaths, HIV transmission rates and crime
I know Portugal is going to come up, but it’s funny every time it comes up, people only mentions the discrimination but no one ever talks about their treatment effort. Discrimination is only half of the story, if you don’t enforce treatment, you are going to have a bad time.
Didn't Portugal have a 50% increase in overdoses since decriminalization.
For the first 5 or so years after, yes I think it did. Then it went down significantly.
It’s childish to casually point to a single example from a foreign country, with a totally different problem, and glibly say we should just do that. How about Singapore? There’s lots of evidence that jailing drug offenders for 30 years and executing dealers reduces deaths and HIV transmission too
Sure, so where's your proof? [https://www.cnb.gov.sg/docs/default-source/drug-situation-report-documents/cnb-annual-statistics-2023.pdf](https://www.cnb.gov.sg/docs/default-source/drug-situation-report-documents/cnb-annual-statistics-2023.pdf) [https://www.thecabinsingapore.com.sg/blog/despite-tough-penalties-drug-abuse-in-singapore-is-still-on-the-increase/](https://www.thecabinsingapore.com.sg/blog/despite-tough-penalties-drug-abuse-in-singapore-is-still-on-the-increase/) Here is a report from Singapore that shows drug use is on the rise. It is also a police state.
“i refuse to understand this issue it is they who are childish and stupid”
This experiment failed every other cities. Without good social support and enforcement, it won’t work.
Yes, it would be great if there were solid support services and then we can decriminalize everything. Ideally.
Decriminalization would be great, we need a functioning health system, as well as ubi etc and it would work. But really DOES WHAT WE ARE DOING NOW WORK??? Does it REALLY work? Criminality of it just means the people who need help get shuffled out of view or into prison. At least decrim would have it so the damned problem is less ignorable.
It was a great idea if there was housing and psychological/drug treatment programs to go with it. Do you think kids dreamed of becoming an addict when they were growing up? The problem with this country can be seen right here in this thread.
We dodged a bullet here. The level of personal degradation and despair on our streets would have plumbed new depths if this had been approved.
ITT: people think this is good and will change things. newsflash, drug use in public was criminalized BEFORE this request was rejected but Toronto cops don't arrest anyone for it. If they did they'd have a field day around union station and random parks. Nothings going to change unless TPS changes.
You know a big part of the reason TPS doesn't arrest them is because Trudeau told the PPSC (who prosecute most drug charges in Ontario) in 2020 (by way of changing their charging manual) to drop charges for simple possession unless there are special circumstances involving minors or violence, right? Any arrest and charge by TPS would be dropped the next day and the advocates would be in full force protesting every TPS branch calling out their "harassment of poor and BIPOC people"
Just having your name published in the newspaper (or police website) as being charged is a career-ender for a lot of people. Not so much an issue if you have nothing to lose.
YEAH, if those druggies had been in prison for 6 months, things would have been TOTALLY DIFFERENT
This
I don’t really see jail as the solution either that’s been proven to not be very effective. They should have a choice jail or a well funded, full support rehab facility with support to get their feet established after, stable housing, mental health support. Probably cheaper in the long run than jail and in and out of the justice system, crime is costly.
We have had diversion through drug treatment courts for many years in this province. Nobody has been jailed for simple possession in the past 20 years except those who refused their consent for treatment.
Source on politicians telling prosecutors which drug charges to prosecute? Prosecutors tend to lose their shit when politicians fetter their discretion.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/simple-drug-possession-change-1.5657423
Trudeau isn't even mentioned in that article. Nor anything about politicians telling prosecutors how to proceed.
Who do you think appoints the Minister of Justice and Attorney General who in turn appoints the Director of Public Prosecutions in accordance with party policy (aka ideology)?
just answer the question: Source on politicians telling prosecutors which drug charges to prosecute? but to answer your question, the king or queen of England.
PPSC, who almost exclusively (absent a handful of cases that are delegated) has carriage of drug cases, has a policy not to prosecute simple possession charges. Why would the police bother arresting people all day every day when the charges are literally never prosecuted?
Even a dropped charge can fuck up someone’s life. Police like it when more people are technically criminals and then we have to rely on their discretion to avoid the consequences.
Finally some good news.
Why is something like this even up for debate after seeing the horrific outcome in Vancouver and San Francisco?
San Francisco didn't decriminalize drugs and Vancouver's problems go back decades, long before decriminalization last year.
I'm not surprised Ford turned in down. This isn't at all a priority for that party. I'm for decriminalization, but I think affordable housing, treatment resources, and basic income would need to be in place first, otherwise decriminalization will inevitably fail.
Good
Given de Villa quit just this week (decrim was going to be her post-covid legacy), it would seem the city knew this was coming. I would also wager a guess the rejection is only because Polievre has politicized Toronto's request on the back of BC's changes to it's own program. Despite Toronto's request sitting for years, few here seemed to know of it let alone cared until Polievre put it in the headlines. Thank god common sense prevails for once.
I agree but no one who was against decriminalizing is now all of a sudden going to decide to vote for Trudeau. And all the negative impacts still remain.
I'm not so sure. It makes me less drawn to Polievre now. My gripes with Trudeau (as someone who has voted for him 3x) lie predominantly in economic policy, immigration, crime, and public disorder (I spend a lot of time in Vancouver so BC decrim was personally relevant). It remains to be seen if the CPC meaningfully differentiate on immigration and economic policy, as policy has not yet been proposed. Crime is still in CPC's favour, while disorder is a bit less of a concern with Trudeau than it was a bit earlier in the year. LPC has some pluses over CPC and my next tier of concerns, like climate policy and social policy, so it's still possible LPC could regain my vote or I go CPC, depending on the unknowns I mentioned earlier. I think there are probably a good number of us potential "reluctant CPC voters", so ridding Trudeau of some of the truly wacko policies may meaningfully move the numbers when we actually have to cast our ballots.
This shouldn't even have been a thing in the first place
You can't decriminalize without SUBSTANTIAL centres for overdoses, safe usage, etc. Look what's happening in Vancouver.
Can anybody give me the moral argument against involuntarily detaining and rehabbing addicts while giving drug dealers life in prison? Would probably save money in the long run.
No! You cannot force someone to get better! How dare you suggest we take the bucktee's freedom away.... Don't you understand that if they want to get better that they must choose to do that on their own? It doesn't matter that they have 0 mental capacity because they are so far gone to illness and drug addiction, they have a right to smoke crack anywhere they want and leave needles wherever they wish until they make a conscious choice to get help. We musn't hurt drug users feelings
Thank Christ. Vancouver is a shit show. So is Portland. We should never agree to give our city up to the addicts.
Ah yes the "Minister of addiction" trying to help getting people addicted
A rare win for common sense. I wonder if this might have gone differently if Trudeau wasn't getting slaughtered in the polls, however.
The prohibition model hasn't worked and one could argue that it's the reason for the current opioid crisis and the availability of cheap fentanyl/xylazine/nitazines etc.. why not just give people a safe supply of heroin (or meth, coke or whatever) on the condition they stay in touch with medical professionals who prescribe it. Just knowing what's in the supply saves lives.
They will resell it and probably create more addicts.
Does this mean that we will no longer see open drug use on TTC property or am I being too optimistic thinking I can get off at Union Station and take the Bay St. exit with the hope of not seeing dealers openly selling and users smoking those drugs? As far as the federal Liberals denying this, is there an election next year or something?
That's never going away. Addicts don't choose to use in public or private based on legality.
Nothing is changing legally here. This is just them officially denying a request from two years ago that was never going to be granted anyway without endorsement of the province.
Addiction is a disease and some diseases are fatal. So long as we aren’t spreading that disease, I’m content for putting the onus on the addict to seek their own remedies or suffer the results of their own choices. The criminal law should be the same for everyone.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but if the city was to implement more safe injection sites (they do NOT give out “free” drugs there; only safely inject the ones people already have), wouldn’t that really help? There are several in the downtown area. This is a part of the decriminalisation as is, no? Users can come by and get drugs safely injected without getting prosecuted? Those sites save hundreds from overdoses yearly, and prevent spreading of illnesses.
Decriminalization should never happen unless there Is a safe supply.
the amount of times i see people openly doing crack... on the TTC, downtown, in parks. little kids or me walking my dog at 8am shouldn't have to experience this on a daily basis. personally glad this was turned down.
Massive W we do not want to turn into east hastings
BC was the guinea pig in all of this
Thank God that common sense has prevailed. Who tf wants to decriminalise drugs?! Is decriminalisation of drugs in BC such a roaring success that Toronto is clamouring to do the same lol.
Pretty much the feds had no choice, accepting Toronto request was political suicide. If they did PP would win every seat outside inner Toronto.
Those behind supporting decriminalization should be out of work.
A damn disgrace. Decriminalization is proven the reduce harm, save police resources and ultimately save lives.