Was Kanada aus der Entkriminalisierung von Drogen in Portugal nicht gelernt hat

>People caught with small amounts of drugs for personal use are not criminally charged, but their drug possession is still treated as an administrative offence. Police also confiscate drugs possessed for personal use, and refer the individuals to Dissuasion Commissions — administrative bodies that assess a person’s risk of problematic drug use, offer counselling and connect users to treatment

>Use of drugs in public also remains illegal, as does possession of amounts above a modest threshold. 

Yeah, as someone who lives very close to the DTES, it’s pretty obvious that while BC borrowed Portugal’s *language* of decriminalization, it adopted a very different policy in practice. Here, “decriminalization” has basically become shorthand for doing nothing.

Any decriminalization model that actually works includes mandatory treatment options and clear boundaries around possession and public use. In BC, it feels like the assumption was that if we just stopped enforcing the law, the problem would somehow resolve itself. That’s not how real life works.

Decriminalization *can* be effective, but only with serious investment. The NDP largely skipped that part. They seemed to think they could get the benefits without doing the hard work, have their cake and eat it too. In reality, there are very few situations where doing less leads to better outcomes.

The BC model is/was not decriminalization; it was full on legalization. 

They borrowed the language of decriminalization from what the Feds did with cannabis where they repealed the criminal regulation of cannabis and replaced it with a whole regulatory bureaucracy of licensing, taxation, regulatory offences, etc. For hard drugs they basically removed, or technically suspended the operation of sections of the *Controller Drugs and Substances Act* in British Columbia and replaced it with nothing.

It seems to be well established orthodoxy for addictive and socially harmful substances, e.g. alcohol and tobacco, that the state dissuades its use through regulation and taxation if not outright prohibition. Giving away free cigarettes and alcohol* seems like an insane approach to limiting the social and personal costs of alcohol and tobacco but somehow the Province of BC thought it would be a sensible thing to do for opioids. 

*There is a free alcohol harm reduction project in Vancouver’s downtown eastside. If I buy a beer and quietly drink it on a park bench in that park I am liable to get ticketed and hassled by police. Yet, if I am an unsheltered person with an extensive criminal history and problematic alcohol use I am allowed to drink in that same public park—and receive free alcohol through this harm reduction program. 

Quit babying people. Offer treatment alongside options for harm reduction. Arrest for criminal behaviour. Kick high and antisocial people out of the ER when they’re there for a better snooze than on the streets. Quit babying people who lean on the system to save them from themselves only when it’s convenient.

And quit disability funded supraphysiological/palliative daily doses of „take home“ dilaudid for people evidently on methadone or OAT. The pharmacist gets paid for the dispensing. The md gets paid for the prescribing. The patient gets paid and the taxpayer perpetuates the disease when they’re guy at the door of the clinic pays for the goods