How Canada tackles the drug problem is ‘insanity’
By Letter to the Editor on January 10, 2020.
This week I’ve been following the reports from Thunder Bay on The Current. Of course Thunder Bay is not the only community with a drug problem. The problem is here, too! Have you heard that insanity is defined as keeping on doing the same thing hoping for a different outcome? That is how drug policy works in Canada. We keep using the criminal justice system to address a social problem. This is making us all crazy. I live two blocks from where our supervised infection site was supposed to go. I go to church every week with people who have lost loved ones to street drugs. One of the obstacles is that in Canada the Criminal Code comes under the federal government. Social policy comes under the provinces. As long as the feds keep on using the criminal code to address the drug problem the province doesn’t have to use social policy to address what is clearly a social issue. It is time to drop the insanity. Other jurisdictions are trying various forms of legalization and decriminalization. It is time for us to do so as well. Jim Hillson Medicine Hat 8-7
Yes it is time to decriminalize drugs and remove the police from social issues. Unless some person is committing a crime while on drugs, police should not be involved.
Several European countries have made drugs a social problem and not a criminal problem. Trafficking drugs are still against the law but using is not.
What they found by doing so is addiction rates fell considerably and the so called “junkies” started to seek treatment that was not offered to them while in jail under the old system. It is a win win but as long as we have a Conservative government in Alberta, it will never happen. Look at the old proposed safe injection site, the cons cried and cried about having one in our city.