Last week the head of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) called on this country’s lawmakers to decriminalize the possession of illegal drugs for personal use.
CACP leader Adam Palmer also called for the . . .
creation of a national task force to research drug policy reform.
“The bottom line is that addiction issues should best be handled through a health care system and not a criminal justice system,” he said during a press conference last Thursday.
When you hear this type of rhetoric from the law and order types, you get the feeling that the way Canada has been responding to addiction and drug use has been woefully wrongheaded. Palmer also serves as the chief of police in Vancouver, a city that was being ravaged by an epidemic of opioid overdoses long before COVID-19 turned our world upside down. In May of this year alone, 170 people died in B.C. from overdoses, a toll that rivalled the province’s coronavirus deaths at the time.
It’s likely that the added isolation and economic downturn caused by the viral pandemic has contributed to this swell in deaths, and there will be hundreds more across the country before the end of the summer.
Dr. Gabor Maté, who worked with addicted people in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside for years, wrote in a recently added introduction to his 2008 bestseller “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: close encounters with addiction” that this issue has been swept under the rug for too long:
“For all the genuine alarm and grief over this carnage, it is too easily comforting for us to believe that these deaths are due only to individual predilections or habits. On social and political levels they represent human sacrifices. People are falling victim to our society’s long-term disinclination to come to terms with the realities and root causes of addiction, especially of substance use. Over the decades, in the face of all evidence, we have refused to demand or embrace policies that would prevent or properly address the ravages of addiction.”
Decriminalizing the personal possession of hard drugs like cocaine or heroin isn’t unheard of and there’s mounting evidence from other jurisdictions that a softer touch is more effective when it comes to these issues.
For starters, only small amounts would be permitted, which could free up police forces to more aggressively pursue traffickers. Our overburdened criminal justice system could focus from more pressing issues than someone looking for an escape from their worldly pain.
Furthermore, it’s been tried before, and the results look promising. Back in the 80s and 90s, Portugal had one of, if not the worst drug problem in Europe. Around one per cent of the population was addicted to heroin. In 2000, their HIV infection rates peaked at 104.2 new cases per million (it’s estimated that roughly half were caused by injection drug use).
But in 2001, they decriminalized possession and consumption of illicit substances, a fairly radical idea at the time. Those caught with illegal drugs had to appear before a regional tribunal, which typically consisted of a doctor, a lawyer and a social worker, who directed them to treatment and support services.
The results they saw over the following years, under both right- and left-wing governments, were enormous. HIV infection rates plummeted, as did drug-related deaths, drug-related crimes and rates of adolescent drug users.
Decriminalization alone isn’t a panacea, rather an important first step that should be combined with increased funding for front-line medical and social services.
Additionally, as Dr. Maté wrote, there needs to be a change in how our society views people with addictions, particularly substance use. It’s an issue that affects every strata of society, even (or perhaps especially) small, rural communities like the Pontiac.
Compulsive gambling, tobacco use and alcoholism are all incredibly destructive behaviours that are not only decriminalized, but are huge cash cows for our provincial governments. It’s likely that you interact with people dealing with an addiction every day, though it’s rarely something that comes up in conversation.
In the past few decades, North America’s leaders have done their best to declare war on inanimate subjects like drugs or terror, but there has to be a more compassionate approach to dealing with addiction than incarceration.
Caleb Nickerson
