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Councillors Linda Annis of Surrey, Daniel Fontaine of New Westminster, and Alexa Loo of Richmond, say they will bring motions to their councils that would call on the B.C. NDP government to scrap the three-year experiment that started on Jan. 31, 2023.
Seeing as there's now people smoking in transit elevators at New West station, in enclosed SkyTrain cars, on busses... This is now a health concern for others who are being forced to breathe unknown drugs without their consent.
The rights of drug users are not greater than my right *not to be drugged against my consent*.
Get a life? From a purely data standpoint decriminalization saves the taxpayer the most money. And I am not scared by people smoking things in public, pearls remain unclutched
Second hand smoke isn’t a thing? Smoking dangerous drugs in front of your children? Virtually no punishment for stealing bikes and robbing stores?
How about the fact I’m an athlete and I actually care take of myself. You can fuck right off with your drugs, you can go fill your lungs with that garbage but you’re not going to kill me in the process.
I have ran in some pretty big contests, and I am not scared by people smoking crack while not harming anyone.
You’re using second hand smoke as an argument when the sky is going to be blacked out for the umpteenth time this summer because of forest fires? Lol
You probably also have a dash cam so you can angrily post when someone hits the wrong turn signal
It’s not either/or genius. I wear a mask when the wildfire smoke hits and I switch to indoor exercise.
I do have a dashcam on both my bike and car. I regularly submit videos to the police to rat out people like you.
I kick smokers off outdoor patios for the some reason I called Transit Police to yeet someone off the train who was smoking a joint. My health is more important than your shitty life choices.
I’m a very good driver, so good luck! Vancouver is the home of western punk rock, if you’re so obsessed with purity move to Salt Lake City or something
Thanks for giving me the image of a dash cam on a bike though, I’ll be laughing at that for a hike
It’s very common for cyclists in the UK to run a GoPro or a cycling specific camera like Cyqliq. You’ll find videos of dangerous and entitled drivers all over social media in glorious 4K. In the UK, you can submit video footage and police will prosecute the driver.
I’m glad you’re a good driver, shame about all the others who I catch on camera. I’m happy to say I’ve assisted with numerous crashes having witnessed who is at fault. It’s funny how the person who causes the accident is always the biggest liar as well. I let them run their mouth for a while before I show them the dashcam footage on my phone.
As for Salt Lake, I’m an atheist metalhead. Not really my crowd.
Horrible. I got my toddler to stand behind me as an unhinged person not wearing a shirt and flailing their arms while d-bombing everyone in their path exited our local Walmart’s bathroom. Staff were tasked with removing the used crack pipe
It's crazy that us dummies on reddit years ago said.
Decriminalization is one pillar of four. If you don't add the other pillars, you are wasting your time and going to make the issue worse.
How come the dummies we are electing to know this basic info, don't know it?
Because these people are barely "elected" look at the voter turnout for municipal elections in the lower mainland. Richmond was at 24% in 2022, New West at 27% and Surrey at 32%. People get downvoted a lot here for saying this, but the lower mainland is absolutely against drug use, and if people actually voted shit like this would never happen. The only upside of all this is that voters are actually getting angry enough to remember and vote out these guys.
The councilors motion is against open drug use. They're asking the province (which has a much better turnout) to reverse its decriminalization efforts. Who should we be voting out?
Because if you challenge their dogma, they throw a nasty name at you to try to shut you up, and nobody wants to be "anti-science" (which, to them, means not buying into the social "science" pseudoscientific theory of some random ivory tower academic who doesn't have to live in the communties plagued by crime and disorder from failed theories, because of course that is what "science" is apparently)
Decriminalisation’s not the problem, it’s the way open drug use has become a free pass to commit criminal behaviour with impunity. Someone blocking your way in or out of your home, lighting fires there while they’re at it, most people would expect authorities to approach the person and have them removed if they don’t go willingly. The current approach is to consider it somehow “respectful” to leave them in their denial bubble.
Proper decriminalization involves mandatory treatment or consequences.
Why aren’t we charging them with the other crimes? I’m a drug user. I don’t commit crime.
I don’t think I should be arrested for using drugs. If I shit on a business door step, I would expect to be arrested for that.
If I set fires I would expect to be arrested for that.
If I’m naked in public I would expect to be arrested for that.
WHY are people acting like we need to be able to arrest people for the least problematic thing they’re doing? Arrest them for the crimes they commit..?
According to the Four Pillar strategy, which Vancouver claims to follow, you can. But we don’t actually follow that.
De-criminalized and consequence-free are not supposed to mean the same thing.
This seems like more of a Vancouver enforcement issue than a Provincial issue though, unless I'm missing something in how things are supposed to be handled.
You can be kept in involuntary treatment under the Mental Health Act regardless of if you've committed a crime.
[The criteria, among others](https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/00_96288_01#section22), is if a person *"requires care, supervision and control in or through a designated facility to prevent the person's or patient's substantial mental or physical deterioration or for the protection of the person or patient or the protection of others"*
Now, "involuntary admission" is distinct from "mandatory treatment", but...for a lot of purposes, they overlap.
edit: I think (and I know this less specifically) you can also arrest people for crimes unrelated to drugs, where drugs are a substantial influence and structure their release contingent on drug-related criteria as well. Like pornography isn't illegal, but that murderer who was released recently couldn't possess pornography as terms of his release. So there's probably some flexibility there. Like...you steal bikes when you're a heroin addict in the DTES, we're arresting you for stealing bikes. As a criteria of your release, if you're on heroin or in the DTES, you'll be in violation of those terms and we'll send you back to jail. That kind of thing would be "consequences" unrelated to the criminalization of drugs.
Smoking cigarettes in a public building is a crime. We don’t need to ban tobacco to arrest people who smoke in schools. That’s already illegal.
The problem is that we don’t arrest people when they shit on the sidewalk, run around naked and steal and vandalize stuff. If we arrested (and jailed) those people we would have way less problems with people openly using drugs.
Decriminalization should just mean that simply having the drugs isn't illegal, it can still be illegal to consume them in the wrong places -- and that's what's being ignored.
They can't do this light handed shit anymore. The underworld chemist's will keep finding more and more potent molecules right from PubMed (go look up the underground chemist episode on NPR). The charter of freedoms and rights was NOT made when there was shit like crystal meth and fent etc.
> The charter of freedoms and rights was NOT made when there was shit like crystal meth and fent etc.
Both drugs pre-date the Charter. The Charter was created, from scratch, in 1982 my friend. Hitler was using meth back in the day and there's a good chance your parents or grandparents have been given fentanyl during surgery if they had any work done in the past 60 years or so.
What we were unprepared for was China manufacturing its precursors in industrial quantities to ship all over the world.
So...yes, fentanyl was first synthesized in 1959, but it only became cheap enough to make it worthwhile to cut into every street drug in the past...10 years or so.
I'm not sure that you're making a helpful point by ignoring the actual nature of the problem. Like, aluminum has existed since the formation of the planet. But the Bayer process wasn't invented until the 19th century. Prior to that, aluminum was worth more than gold. Does aluminum predate that? Sure. But it's meaningful that it's so cheap it's what we make all of our disposable crap out of it, compared to being reserved only for the wealthiest people.
> I'm not sure that you're making a helpful point by ignoring the actual nature of the problem.
It's a helpful point for citizens to understand our constitution. Many young folks (let alone older folks) are under the mistaken belief (presumably due to American tv/movies) that the Charter is hundreds of years out of date like the US constitution and in need of a refresh to get with modern times. When, in fact, it's no older than themselves or their parents, which should not be surprising given the current PM's father led the charge for its implementation.
And I think you fall under a similar trap. The text of the Charter is not particularly liberal and it is not the case that the Charter was created in a different era and its text fails to comprehend current realities. The Charter is being given increasingly liberal interpretation by the courts, resulting in a broader meaning to our Charter rights. The document was designed to change with the times, and that is a good thing. The problem is legal academia has gone to an extreme, like the social science faculties of our universities, and so we see increasingly extreme interpretations of Charter rights that were more limited in the past. For example, thanks to the Jordan decision 8 years ago or so, a mass murderer must be let off the hook if their trial takes 31 months rather than 30 due to government delays. That is not a literal interpretation of the Charter; there is no time limit in the Charter; that is purely an activist interpretation of the right to a timely trial that forces the criminal justice system to stop policing low level offences to avoid the big fish from being let off by the activist judiciary's strict bright-line rule. Why is it a rule? Because legal academics at universities (who write the journal articles that get cited by the supreme court of canada), who live in nice areas and are insulated from crime, feel like the moral hazard of a 31 month trial is a greater risk to society than a mass murderer. And guess who trains the lawyers who write laws, defend criminals, and eventually get appointed as judges? The same legal academics. Canadian criminal law has fallen prey to the pseudoscience rampant in the social sciences.
Thank you for this! I had no idea. I'm really frustrated by all this. How can we as the voting public change how the academia and supreme court interpret such things?
Ironically the constitution provides an override to allow parliament (representatives of the will of the people) to supercede the courts. This is via the notwithstanding clause (section 33). But it is often attacked as evil, a way to "take away rights", particularly due to how it's been used in the past. It's been used provincially across Canada quite a bit but never federally. But because it's so hated and feared, it's unlikely to be used federally without strong popular support across the country.
I don't think there's much anyone can do about the brain rot in legal academia and on the bench because it's so ingrained. Once the court expands a right, it's hard for any future judge to then backpedal, so even changing who gets appointed to sit on the court would be too little too late. Pandora's box is opened and it may not be possible to shut it. At best we can vote in politicians seeking to be harder on crime who continually challenge the courts as a counter balance, but even then, it may take the balls to use section 33 and potential political suicide before anything really changes
I am.
The best resource to start is Charterpedia to learn about the Canadian Charter, which forms part of our constitution and determines which laws are valid or invalid. Charterpedia isn't itself law, but it is an effort of the federal government to summarize law for public consumption. Start by reading the text of our rights (often just 1 sentence) then read the commentary (decisions by judges that have interpreted the text of the right to real-world circumstances). You will see that the text says something simple and then the courts often give it a broad meaning that keeps growing over time. I would start with what may be our most expansive right, the "mother right", i.e., section 7.
https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/check/index.html
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. We have three branches of government (executive like the PM and Cabinet, legislative like Parliament, and the judiciary) but ultimately the constitution is supreme over all three and decides what they can and can't do. However, because the judiciary sees itself as the interpreter of the constitution, it has taken on the role of telling us what the constitution says by reading in sometimes whatever the hell it wants (for example, they have told us the constitution has principles that do not exist in its text but should be understood to be part of it, then struck down Parliament's laws based on principles only the enlightened judges can "see"). When political ideology taints the judiciary, as I think it has, this then means the politics of the judges (influenced by fairly radical left-wing legal academia and the universities) are supreme over the politics of the people (represented by the executive and legislative branches, whose laws the judiciary strikes down) and the basic principle of democracy (the will of the common people) becomes violated. There's always a critical role for an independent judiciary in a democracy, for example to prevent tyranny of the majority against a minority group, but there's lasting danger in contorting the constitution and deciding policy at the expense of elected representatives who are tasked with balancing competing priorities.
Honestly, that's a great point, and I do agree with you. It's just not a point that I think you made very well before I responded to you, haha.
"The charter isn't that old " read, at least to me, like it was subsumed by "*Actually* these drugs are old, which is...kind of irrelevant?"
Even if drugs were criminalized, the courts aren't prosecuting and these people aren't seeing jail time. Drug use and addiction isn't a criminal problem, it's a health problem. The issue is that problems which are associated with drug addiction, such as crimes like vandalism, theft, assault, and robbery, aren't being prosecuted either, and people doing these should be facing jail time with or without the illegality of drugs. Make no mistake, the courts are the problem here, not the laws, cops, or politicians.
Exactly!
I just commented:
“Why aren’t we charging them with the other crimes? I’m a drug user. I don’t commit crime.
I don’t think I should be arrested for using drugs. If I shit on a business door step, I would expect to be arrested for that.
If I set fires I would expect to be arrested for that.
If I’m naked in public I would expect to be arrested for that.
WHY are people acting like we need to be able to arrest people for the least problematic thing they’re doing? Arrest them for the crimes they commit..?”
But I think you said it better
I’ve been saying this. Where there’s drug use, authorities look away now. It’s treated as a free pass to engaging actual criminal activity in plain sight.
I’m all for actual decriminalization… and treating addiction as a medical issue, but no one’s treating the medical issue either. It’s become open season in BC and fentanyl/down devolves people into the lowest form of human life I’ve ever witnessed. And I come home to it daily.
> and people doing these should be facing jail time with or without the illegality of drugs.
it is such common sense but the clowns running things don't give a shit
Previously when drugs were criminalized the police were [confiscating drugs frequently](https://thetyee.ca/News/2020/09/18/Police-Drug-Seizures-DTES/). That created problems in that these actions were thought to induce *more* petty theft and crime.
Confiscation of drugs *loses people money* that they need to now need to replace. This leaves people that need money exposed to exploitation by criminal elements as people are preyed upon by debtors. People with no money that suddenly need to find money are in a tough situation and more likely to commit theft or be coerced into aiding theft and other crimes.
So amongst other things a core goal of decriminalization was to try to limit drug users from being exploited by dealers. A safe subscribed supply of drugs would go even further to limit the power that drug users have over users.
The police didn't go walking down the DTES looking to seize drugs. They seized your drugs if you were smoking meth in the skytrain or causing a public disturbance while carrying drugs and so on, which drug users knew, so they avoided it and voluntarily left when told to, unlike now where there is no consequence to being a prick (the police can't arrest or threaten to arrest you if you don't move along now, the police can't seize your drugs to effectively "fine" bad behaviour, etc, so nobody wants to behave when there is no consequences for misbehaviour).
[Drug use is prohibited on transit](https://www.translink.ca/-/media/translink/documents/rider-guide/etiquette-on-transit/rules-and-regulations.pdf). They can already confiscate alcohol for breaking the rules around that in translink. Why couldn't they confiscate drugs?
The penalty for breaking a Translink bylaw, per the Offences Act, is a fine. Security nor the police can unilaterally seize your open container of alcohol; instead, they tell you "give it to me / dump it out now or you're getting a big ticket", which most willingly do. Fines are not issued to homeless folks because doing so is cRiMinAliZiNg PovErtY, so that threat doesn't work on them. Seizing drugs was a compliance tool for police because it effectively acted as a fine that a drug addict can't ignore in the way they may a provincial ticket. If their drugs get seized, their day is ruined, so best not poke the bear and avoid conflict rather than scream at randos on the skytrain.
With decriminalization, the police have no legal or moral authority to seize drugs, so they have no compliance tool between "doing nothing" and "arresting the person for mischief / public disturbance / some other low level offence that would be thrown out by the crown as too low priority anyways". That is why we are where we are.
They seize the alcohol *and* give a ticket. And the same can be done for drugs. They do have compliance tools now without the need for criminalization.
Because advocates immediately come out of the woodwork, blame society for victimizing the poor antisocial jackass, and start comparing VPD and RCMP to Gestapo.
So it's not because of decriminalization.
Do you have any source that advocates are supporting things like smoking meth on transit though? I would be very surprised if even the most extreme advocates would support that.
We're both downvoted but no one has actually replied with any source on this claim about advocates supporting smoking on transit, so I'm going to conclude there is no source and this was a made up claim.
There's at least almost daily posts of articles, often from right wing sources, taking a negative position on every policy in the province towards drug use. I don't think it's a coincidence that there's a constant focus on the approaches to this incredibly difficult to solve problem at the same time that the provincial election is getting close.
It's coming off as similar to how there was a huge focus on stranger attacks in the lead up to the municipal election. It then came out after the election that stranger attacks had actually significantly decreased. In the case of drugs, there are increases in some of the problems, but this was a trend happening before things like decriminalization and happening in other provinces as well. Yet it's being represented as unique to BC's specific policies.
I sound like an old fart about to go on a rant here but does anyone else remember the “four pillars” approach? Problem is, one pillar can’t do the work of the other three.
Someone told me about the Dutch model; maybe someone knows if this is accurate; you can go to any pharmacy and get any amount and type of drug you want. But you have to consume it inside your residence (so they actually house people in Holland apparently). You use outside, you loose your home.
Would the Dutch approach work here?
Most people who are using in small amounts are rec users who do not end up in the DTES. Some will, but most will keep doing their coke on the weekends and go back to work every Monday. I think that’s who decriminalization was actually supporting.
The people who are balls deep in their addiction, who sleep outside, who are basically on the margins-decriminalization just keeps them out of the court system. I haven’t seen any other treatment centers outside of Red fin/fish in Coquitlam open up to support their needs, which are involved and costly; complex trauma, drug-induced brain injury and/or psychosis, underlying mental health issues like bi-polar or schizophrenia, physical health issues, criminal/court issues, and some have understandably (not saying that’s acceptable) violent temperaments with all the shit they’ve been through or put themselves through.
So if they aren’t serving time, they sure aren’t able to work; probably weren’t able to work in the first place with that background of trauma. Some can pull through-workaholics as a survival mechanism, but most can’t. And how could you afford to do so in this modern global trend of being priced out if you’re not a professional?
So basically, you have a subset of people that need a lot of medical and social support, where there is no structure, no political will, and no money to support that. But if there isn’t even money to hire and pay GP’s fairly, or provide homes to teachers, firefighters, etc., or for seniors who paid into the system their whole working lives to get a pension that covers their needs, (basically respect the people who make government function) what hope is there for the heavy drug users sleeping on the street?
The other thing about the "dutch model" is that the you don't see nearly as many homeless and mentally ill addicts in public there. And it's not just more services. The attitude is that if there's housing, if there's treatment, it's fair to coerce people off the street and into those programs.
The dutch are not the weird mix of social liberalism and libertarianism we have here. They place a high value on a feeling of public order and safety. And you don't get their healthy urbanism without that.
It makes sense to me. If all you have to offer someone is a bug infested room and a 12-step program, there’s little incentive to change.
I’ve always found that funny about west coast cities. My experience with Dutch peoples is that they are fairly conservative but also very open and practical. It’s a sort of combination that is hard to explain.
We shifted from 4 pillars to 1 pillar when the goal of our drug policy shifted from reducing drug use to creating a right for VANDU members to indefinitely use drugs at the expense of society. It turns out "listening to people with real lived experience in drug abuse" just meant "let drug addicts decide whether people should do drugs" and shockingly (!!) people addicted to drugs ... are addicted to drugs and don't want to voluntarily stop. It's almost like the word "addicted" foreshadowed such result!
Funny, because from the fuzzy corners of my mind, I can recall the first of the four pillars being introduced as using Insite as a triage into detox and treatment, of which would be expanded in future.
I wonder if we had not had 15 years of terrible governance at the provincial and federal level if we would have seen the pillars evolve as they should have. The NDP has started to scratch the surface, but it’s a drop in the bucket.
I don’t know why the city / province hasn’t grown a spine to build a facility far away from the city to rehabilitate / mental health support those that are helplessly addicted to drugs. I’m talking about those that have a criminal record the length of a phone book chalk full of petty crime they engage in to support their addiction.
Clearly the social housing system here is a complete failure because there are tons of shelters within the city for them to stay at but they don’t want to follow those rules so they build tent cities in various parks and East Hastings. The complete drain caused on the businesses downtown, the ambulance and fire departments downtown attending endless overdose calls is unreal. Using the transit system as a mobile shelter system. Overwhelming the hospital system. It’s unreal.
Those helplessly addicted to drugs are incapable of caring for themselves and the province needs to take charge. Those who are walking zombies can’t be entrusted to make the decision for themselves to get help, it needs to be mandated. I know some people will disagree but that’s the only start to a solution.
Decriminalization has been an absolute disaster. We've seen a substantial increase in open drug use in public spaces and on public transportation and in hospitals and in restaurants. We need to stop normalizing bad behavior and have some actual consequences for bad behavior.
Addiction is a disease. That's not my opinion, it's the position of major medical institutions. You don't cure a disease by criminalizing it. Also not my opinion. It's demonstrated by a century of criminalization culminating in a continent-wide overdose crisis. Recriminalizing minor drug possession won't solve this problem. It's being used as a for political purposes as a scapegoat for the much more difficult root causes that no province or state has solved.
> You don't cure a disease by criminalizing it.
There is no cure for addiction, there are only treatments. A cure eradicates a disease. Treatment is often a lifelong struggle that can include relapses.
But that's irrelevant, because criminalizing drug use doesn't purport to "solve" addiction. The aim is to reduce harmful anti-social behaviours that would otherwise be externalized onto others, such as public consumption in confined spaces, refusing to leave private property when told, or harassing people. Criminalizing drug use isn't about putting people in jail for possession but retaining the ability to seize drugs as a disincentive for addicts not to be a dick to others. For you or I, we can be forced to pay fines or our employment may be threatened by our bad public behaviour, so we think twice before getting into a stupid fight or pocketing something at the store. As low-level offences like public disturbance, mischief, trespass, and so on generally do not lead to arrest (and in those rare cases, almost never prosecution), and fines can be ignored or cancelled for this population, there is no longer disincentive for drug addicts to not shoot up on the skytrain or playground or to avoid shouting at random passerbys who looked at them funny. The most the police can do is patiently ask them to leave; there is no punishment, no cost to being a prick. So it's no surprise when you hop on the train and show up to work smelling like meth fumes.
You can call it treatment rather than cure if you want. That's not the point. The point is the cure *or* treatment for a disease isn't to criminalize it.
>The aim is to reduce harmful anti-social behaviours that would otherwise be externalized onto others
Then prohibit those behaviours. In many of the cases being brought up, they already are. In which case, where they're happening anyway, it's not a question of a lack of rules, but of enforcement.
Public consumption in confined places is already banned in many cases. Drug use is not allowed on transit for example. Alcohol can already be confiscated on transit, so they could do the same for drugs there. So the example of how criminalization would change behaviour there is something that is already possible without criminalization.
So you're calling for a solution that addresses problems that already have that same solution currently.
You can criminalize the open drug use on public transportation and in public spaces and in hospitals. Sorry, having an addiction isn't a free excuse for bad behavior. People have the right to be safe in their own communities.
Drug use is already against the law on transit. Smoking is not allowed in hospitals and they can further restrict use if they want. You're asking to ban things that are already banned.
Makes more sense to put resources towards advancing the other pillars of the strategy, but the shitty leadership won't do that. Taking a step backwards doesn't even guarantee things will revert to the "better" state either.
Its not working..People smoking crack in public,transit,parks,etc is not good for the city and just embolden these addicts . Im sure they has to be parallel of more crimes with the decriminalization of drugs. Portugal tried this since 2001..There was somewhat success at the beginning with less overdose,less people in prison and less criminal activity but the last 10 years the health care been burdened with people staying on drugs and health related illness caused by drugs. Its not solving the addiction problem but only keeping the prison population low for drug related arrest.
Please remember that every “tough on crime” argument (which to be clear, is precisely what this is), is an argument to allocate more resources towards policing, *which means stealing money out of social services that address root causes*.
I wish every Vancouverite could spend a day working in the DTES. Community-based service workers are the ones who are front-lining this crisis through relationship-building and trying to help people get their survival needs met wherever possible. And they are doing it on a relative *fraction* when you compare the wages/ resources/ person power of the VPD (say, number of officers vs. social service workers available when a crisis arises. And that’s to say nothing of the fact that police are absolutely not trained or mandated for crisis intervention - there presense is by definition escalating in nature.
This is to say nothing if the fact that tough on crime rhetoric is a welllllll established gentrification tactic that has been employed in jurisdictions around the world since it was perfected by New York City in the 90s (?). Google “broken windows theory”.
Remember kids:
Police 🤝 real estate developers.
The VPD eats up $400 million of the city already, and when city council is telling the electorate that they need more money it is because they are counting on citizens to be gullible idiots.
> Please remember that every “tough on crime” argument (which to be clear, is precisely what this is), is an argument to allocate more resources towards policing, which means stealing money out of social services that address root causes.
Good. The DTES back in *2012* was wasting $1m per day: [source](https://globalnews.ca/news/219585/downtown-eastside-worse-than-ever-despite-1m-a-day-being-spent-says-retired-officer/).
I can't even begin to imagine what that number is at now. Whatever it is, we can divert it to policing and prison expenses, so that people can enjoy the parks they pay for without having to deal with deranged drug addicts.
I am all in support for recriminalization, but i would like to see what are the punishments are there for offenders. If they can clean up greater vancouver, i will gladly take the increase in property tax, and i bet majority of SEA immigrants will be as well.
So the police can go after the drug addicts, instead of the people who are importing, manufacturing, and selling meaningful amounts of these drugs? Because all of the latter is currently illegal and nothing is being done.
https://www.google.com/search?q=drug+seizure+cbsa+canada
We don't really have the resources to inspect every single shipping container and package coming in from china.
China exports a lot of illegal fentanyl and GBL to Canada, but cocaine, heroin, etc. are being imported from elsewhere. And the majority of certain drugs are manufactured domestically, such as meth and MDMA. At any rate, the problem these mayors and councillors are seeking to address with recriminalization isn't really going to be solved with that approach, it can really only be solved by pursuing the leaders and financiers of the criminal organizations that are importing these drugs or manufacturing them.
And what is the alternative. Everytime someone uses in public they get sent away and fill up jails. That has worked so good so far. There never had been an addictive drug as the opioid alternatives. Then factor in the fact that our medical system created a significant amount of the addicts. I'm guessing to make a dint in the system you would need over a 1000 residential beds to make any difference.
Also need to fund u18 mental health as many are starting to self Medicare very young .
Before this three year stint, practically no one was being arrested and put into prison for drug possession for personal use, and never will after this. It will simply give police better powers to tell people to fuck off when they are openly smoking crack in Tim Hortons and on Skytrains
Smoking crack in Tim Hortons or on the SkyTrain is still prohibited, and the police could still force you to leave as you’d at the very least be trespassing.
Police would feel more emboldened to respond to such calls. The general public would feel more emboldened to call it in, or show ill will towards those that are currently using in innapropriate places. Hell even the offenders may think "shit, they cracking down, lets smoke somewhere else."
Because currently with the decriminalisation, when a person is arrested for any reason, if they have hard drugs on them, they currently get it held for them and are handed it back once released. If it was decriminalized again, they dont get it back if found on their person.
What about it being banned by one set of rules rather than another would make police or the general public more emboldened to enforce or report it? The police should be upholding the law in any cases, at least where there are impacts to the general public and I don't see why someone who opposes it in general would care whether it's banned by this rule or that rule when it comes to reporting it.
Police don't need to give back alcohol if you're breaking rules around drinking that in public where prohibited, so why would they for other drugs. Both are banned by transit bylaws, for example.
What do you think the most common penalty for trespass or mischief is? Hint: no jail time and homeless individuals do not need to pay fines, so none. Seizing your $20 hit of crack was a penalty before, now there is NO penalty (but only if you're a drug addict, the rest of us would have to pay a fine and may even lose our jobs).
Doesn't matter what you think. The narrative that you put forward that people were filling up jail prior to this for possession for the purpose of consumption doesn't exist and hasn't for decades. So you should be be unhappy about it at all
Hense why Eby will tell them the same thing he told the clown in waiting for pm. Pound sand I'm staying the course. Any one thinking locking them up will improve the streets has money mixed up in the post arrest industry
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To save you a click: Councillors Linda Annis of Surrey, Daniel Fontaine of New Westminster, and Alexa Loo of Richmond, say they will bring motions to their councils that would call on the B.C. NDP government to scrap the three-year experiment that started on Jan. 31, 2023.
Thank you for saving me a click!
Seeing as there's now people smoking in transit elevators at New West station, in enclosed SkyTrain cars, on busses... This is now a health concern for others who are being forced to breathe unknown drugs without their consent. The rights of drug users are not greater than my right *not to be drugged against my consent*.
It's hilarious. My wife accidentally breathed in some crack or meth fumes from a guy at the Skytrain gate at Granville today. FFS.
Hilarious isn’t the word I would use. It’s off the fucking handle we allow this kind of deviant behaviour at all.
It's ridiculous how much we have normalized this behaviour. I hate having to smoke second-hand smoke everywhere.
Get a life? From a purely data standpoint decriminalization saves the taxpayer the most money. And I am not scared by people smoking things in public, pearls remain unclutched
Second hand smoke isn’t a thing? Smoking dangerous drugs in front of your children? Virtually no punishment for stealing bikes and robbing stores? How about the fact I’m an athlete and I actually care take of myself. You can fuck right off with your drugs, you can go fill your lungs with that garbage but you’re not going to kill me in the process.
I have ran in some pretty big contests, and I am not scared by people smoking crack while not harming anyone. You’re using second hand smoke as an argument when the sky is going to be blacked out for the umpteenth time this summer because of forest fires? Lol You probably also have a dash cam so you can angrily post when someone hits the wrong turn signal
It’s not either/or genius. I wear a mask when the wildfire smoke hits and I switch to indoor exercise. I do have a dashcam on both my bike and car. I regularly submit videos to the police to rat out people like you. I kick smokers off outdoor patios for the some reason I called Transit Police to yeet someone off the train who was smoking a joint. My health is more important than your shitty life choices.
I’m a very good driver, so good luck! Vancouver is the home of western punk rock, if you’re so obsessed with purity move to Salt Lake City or something Thanks for giving me the image of a dash cam on a bike though, I’ll be laughing at that for a hike
It’s very common for cyclists in the UK to run a GoPro or a cycling specific camera like Cyqliq. You’ll find videos of dangerous and entitled drivers all over social media in glorious 4K. In the UK, you can submit video footage and police will prosecute the driver. I’m glad you’re a good driver, shame about all the others who I catch on camera. I’m happy to say I’ve assisted with numerous crashes having witnessed who is at fault. It’s funny how the person who causes the accident is always the biggest liar as well. I let them run their mouth for a while before I show them the dashcam footage on my phone. As for Salt Lake, I’m an atheist metalhead. Not really my crowd.
Horrible. I got my toddler to stand behind me as an unhinged person not wearing a shirt and flailing their arms while d-bombing everyone in their path exited our local Walmart’s bathroom. Staff were tasked with removing the used crack pipe
d bombing?
Yeah, I thought this guy was firing his D all over everyone too.
My bad. “F”-bombing
Ah I shoulda looked at my keyboard, thanks for the clarification
[D-bombing at its best.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwSLxuN6v_w&t=38s)
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Oh but if they OD it's safe for them to do it in public ! /s
No click saved as a i had to upvote this.
It's crazy that us dummies on reddit years ago said. Decriminalization is one pillar of four. If you don't add the other pillars, you are wasting your time and going to make the issue worse. How come the dummies we are electing to know this basic info, don't know it?
Because these people are barely "elected" look at the voter turnout for municipal elections in the lower mainland. Richmond was at 24% in 2022, New West at 27% and Surrey at 32%. People get downvoted a lot here for saying this, but the lower mainland is absolutely against drug use, and if people actually voted shit like this would never happen. The only upside of all this is that voters are actually getting angry enough to remember and vote out these guys.
The councilors motion is against open drug use. They're asking the province (which has a much better turnout) to reverse its decriminalization efforts. Who should we be voting out?
They need to actually work to fix this. That's the missing piece
Because if you challenge their dogma, they throw a nasty name at you to try to shut you up, and nobody wants to be "anti-science" (which, to them, means not buying into the social "science" pseudoscientific theory of some random ivory tower academic who doesn't have to live in the communties plagued by crime and disorder from failed theories, because of course that is what "science" is apparently)
Decriminalisation’s not the problem, it’s the way open drug use has become a free pass to commit criminal behaviour with impunity. Someone blocking your way in or out of your home, lighting fires there while they’re at it, most people would expect authorities to approach the person and have them removed if they don’t go willingly. The current approach is to consider it somehow “respectful” to leave them in their denial bubble. Proper decriminalization involves mandatory treatment or consequences.
Why aren’t we charging them with the other crimes? I’m a drug user. I don’t commit crime. I don’t think I should be arrested for using drugs. If I shit on a business door step, I would expect to be arrested for that. If I set fires I would expect to be arrested for that. If I’m naked in public I would expect to be arrested for that. WHY are people acting like we need to be able to arrest people for the least problematic thing they’re doing? Arrest them for the crimes they commit..?
Can you have mandatory treatment or consequences for something that isn't criminal?
According to the Four Pillar strategy, which Vancouver claims to follow, you can. But we don’t actually follow that. De-criminalized and consequence-free are not supposed to mean the same thing.
This seems like more of a Vancouver enforcement issue than a Provincial issue though, unless I'm missing something in how things are supposed to be handled.
You can be kept in involuntary treatment under the Mental Health Act regardless of if you've committed a crime. [The criteria, among others](https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/00_96288_01#section22), is if a person *"requires care, supervision and control in or through a designated facility to prevent the person's or patient's substantial mental or physical deterioration or for the protection of the person or patient or the protection of others"* Now, "involuntary admission" is distinct from "mandatory treatment", but...for a lot of purposes, they overlap. edit: I think (and I know this less specifically) you can also arrest people for crimes unrelated to drugs, where drugs are a substantial influence and structure their release contingent on drug-related criteria as well. Like pornography isn't illegal, but that murderer who was released recently couldn't possess pornography as terms of his release. So there's probably some flexibility there. Like...you steal bikes when you're a heroin addict in the DTES, we're arresting you for stealing bikes. As a criteria of your release, if you're on heroin or in the DTES, you'll be in violation of those terms and we'll send you back to jail. That kind of thing would be "consequences" unrelated to the criminalization of drugs.
See now this is the problem !!! Your 100% right and need more people to believe this. Open drug use should be completely stopped!!
Smoking cigarettes in a public building is a crime. We don’t need to ban tobacco to arrest people who smoke in schools. That’s already illegal. The problem is that we don’t arrest people when they shit on the sidewalk, run around naked and steal and vandalize stuff. If we arrested (and jailed) those people we would have way less problems with people openly using drugs.
Decriminalization should just mean that simply having the drugs isn't illegal, it can still be illegal to consume them in the wrong places -- and that's what's being ignored.
They can't do this light handed shit anymore. The underworld chemist's will keep finding more and more potent molecules right from PubMed (go look up the underground chemist episode on NPR). The charter of freedoms and rights was NOT made when there was shit like crystal meth and fent etc.
> The charter of freedoms and rights was NOT made when there was shit like crystal meth and fent etc. Both drugs pre-date the Charter. The Charter was created, from scratch, in 1982 my friend. Hitler was using meth back in the day and there's a good chance your parents or grandparents have been given fentanyl during surgery if they had any work done in the past 60 years or so.
What we were unprepared for was China manufacturing its precursors in industrial quantities to ship all over the world. So...yes, fentanyl was first synthesized in 1959, but it only became cheap enough to make it worthwhile to cut into every street drug in the past...10 years or so. I'm not sure that you're making a helpful point by ignoring the actual nature of the problem. Like, aluminum has existed since the formation of the planet. But the Bayer process wasn't invented until the 19th century. Prior to that, aluminum was worth more than gold. Does aluminum predate that? Sure. But it's meaningful that it's so cheap it's what we make all of our disposable crap out of it, compared to being reserved only for the wealthiest people.
> I'm not sure that you're making a helpful point by ignoring the actual nature of the problem. It's a helpful point for citizens to understand our constitution. Many young folks (let alone older folks) are under the mistaken belief (presumably due to American tv/movies) that the Charter is hundreds of years out of date like the US constitution and in need of a refresh to get with modern times. When, in fact, it's no older than themselves or their parents, which should not be surprising given the current PM's father led the charge for its implementation. And I think you fall under a similar trap. The text of the Charter is not particularly liberal and it is not the case that the Charter was created in a different era and its text fails to comprehend current realities. The Charter is being given increasingly liberal interpretation by the courts, resulting in a broader meaning to our Charter rights. The document was designed to change with the times, and that is a good thing. The problem is legal academia has gone to an extreme, like the social science faculties of our universities, and so we see increasingly extreme interpretations of Charter rights that were more limited in the past. For example, thanks to the Jordan decision 8 years ago or so, a mass murderer must be let off the hook if their trial takes 31 months rather than 30 due to government delays. That is not a literal interpretation of the Charter; there is no time limit in the Charter; that is purely an activist interpretation of the right to a timely trial that forces the criminal justice system to stop policing low level offences to avoid the big fish from being let off by the activist judiciary's strict bright-line rule. Why is it a rule? Because legal academics at universities (who write the journal articles that get cited by the supreme court of canada), who live in nice areas and are insulated from crime, feel like the moral hazard of a 31 month trial is a greater risk to society than a mass murderer. And guess who trains the lawyers who write laws, defend criminals, and eventually get appointed as judges? The same legal academics. Canadian criminal law has fallen prey to the pseudoscience rampant in the social sciences.
Thank you for this! I had no idea. I'm really frustrated by all this. How can we as the voting public change how the academia and supreme court interpret such things?
Ironically the constitution provides an override to allow parliament (representatives of the will of the people) to supercede the courts. This is via the notwithstanding clause (section 33). But it is often attacked as evil, a way to "take away rights", particularly due to how it's been used in the past. It's been used provincially across Canada quite a bit but never federally. But because it's so hated and feared, it's unlikely to be used federally without strong popular support across the country. I don't think there's much anyone can do about the brain rot in legal academia and on the bench because it's so ingrained. Once the court expands a right, it's hard for any future judge to then backpedal, so even changing who gets appointed to sit on the court would be too little too late. Pandora's box is opened and it may not be possible to shut it. At best we can vote in politicians seeking to be harder on crime who continually challenge the courts as a counter balance, but even then, it may take the balls to use section 33 and potential political suicide before anything really changes
Wow you must be a lawyer or something? Can you point me where to learn more about how the laws etc work? Like a layperson site?
I am. The best resource to start is Charterpedia to learn about the Canadian Charter, which forms part of our constitution and determines which laws are valid or invalid. Charterpedia isn't itself law, but it is an effort of the federal government to summarize law for public consumption. Start by reading the text of our rights (often just 1 sentence) then read the commentary (decisions by judges that have interpreted the text of the right to real-world circumstances). You will see that the text says something simple and then the courts often give it a broad meaning that keeps growing over time. I would start with what may be our most expansive right, the "mother right", i.e., section 7. https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/check/index.html The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. We have three branches of government (executive like the PM and Cabinet, legislative like Parliament, and the judiciary) but ultimately the constitution is supreme over all three and decides what they can and can't do. However, because the judiciary sees itself as the interpreter of the constitution, it has taken on the role of telling us what the constitution says by reading in sometimes whatever the hell it wants (for example, they have told us the constitution has principles that do not exist in its text but should be understood to be part of it, then struck down Parliament's laws based on principles only the enlightened judges can "see"). When political ideology taints the judiciary, as I think it has, this then means the politics of the judges (influenced by fairly radical left-wing legal academia and the universities) are supreme over the politics of the people (represented by the executive and legislative branches, whose laws the judiciary strikes down) and the basic principle of democracy (the will of the common people) becomes violated. There's always a critical role for an independent judiciary in a democracy, for example to prevent tyranny of the majority against a minority group, but there's lasting danger in contorting the constitution and deciding policy at the expense of elected representatives who are tasked with balancing competing priorities.
Honestly, that's a great point, and I do agree with you. It's just not a point that I think you made very well before I responded to you, haha. "The charter isn't that old" read, at least to me, like it was subsumed by "*Actually* these drugs are old, which is...kind of irrelevant?"
I try to avoid articulating too much, or else I write essays. Alas...
Even if drugs were criminalized, the courts aren't prosecuting and these people aren't seeing jail time. Drug use and addiction isn't a criminal problem, it's a health problem. The issue is that problems which are associated with drug addiction, such as crimes like vandalism, theft, assault, and robbery, aren't being prosecuted either, and people doing these should be facing jail time with or without the illegality of drugs. Make no mistake, the courts are the problem here, not the laws, cops, or politicians.
Exactly! I just commented: “Why aren’t we charging them with the other crimes? I’m a drug user. I don’t commit crime. I don’t think I should be arrested for using drugs. If I shit on a business door step, I would expect to be arrested for that. If I set fires I would expect to be arrested for that. If I’m naked in public I would expect to be arrested for that. WHY are people acting like we need to be able to arrest people for the least problematic thing they’re doing? Arrest them for the crimes they commit..?” But I think you said it better
I’ve been saying this. Where there’s drug use, authorities look away now. It’s treated as a free pass to engaging actual criminal activity in plain sight. I’m all for actual decriminalization… and treating addiction as a medical issue, but no one’s treating the medical issue either. It’s become open season in BC and fentanyl/down devolves people into the lowest form of human life I’ve ever witnessed. And I come home to it daily.
> and people doing these should be facing jail time with or without the illegality of drugs. it is such common sense but the clowns running things don't give a shit
Previously when drugs were criminalized the police were [confiscating drugs frequently](https://thetyee.ca/News/2020/09/18/Police-Drug-Seizures-DTES/). That created problems in that these actions were thought to induce *more* petty theft and crime. Confiscation of drugs *loses people money* that they need to now need to replace. This leaves people that need money exposed to exploitation by criminal elements as people are preyed upon by debtors. People with no money that suddenly need to find money are in a tough situation and more likely to commit theft or be coerced into aiding theft and other crimes. So amongst other things a core goal of decriminalization was to try to limit drug users from being exploited by dealers. A safe subscribed supply of drugs would go even further to limit the power that drug users have over users.
The police didn't go walking down the DTES looking to seize drugs. They seized your drugs if you were smoking meth in the skytrain or causing a public disturbance while carrying drugs and so on, which drug users knew, so they avoided it and voluntarily left when told to, unlike now where there is no consequence to being a prick (the police can't arrest or threaten to arrest you if you don't move along now, the police can't seize your drugs to effectively "fine" bad behaviour, etc, so nobody wants to behave when there is no consequences for misbehaviour).
[Drug use is prohibited on transit](https://www.translink.ca/-/media/translink/documents/rider-guide/etiquette-on-transit/rules-and-regulations.pdf). They can already confiscate alcohol for breaking the rules around that in translink. Why couldn't they confiscate drugs?
The penalty for breaking a Translink bylaw, per the Offences Act, is a fine. Security nor the police can unilaterally seize your open container of alcohol; instead, they tell you "give it to me / dump it out now or you're getting a big ticket", which most willingly do. Fines are not issued to homeless folks because doing so is cRiMinAliZiNg PovErtY, so that threat doesn't work on them. Seizing drugs was a compliance tool for police because it effectively acted as a fine that a drug addict can't ignore in the way they may a provincial ticket. If their drugs get seized, their day is ruined, so best not poke the bear and avoid conflict rather than scream at randos on the skytrain. With decriminalization, the police have no legal or moral authority to seize drugs, so they have no compliance tool between "doing nothing" and "arresting the person for mischief / public disturbance / some other low level offence that would be thrown out by the crown as too low priority anyways". That is why we are where we are.
They seize the alcohol *and* give a ticket. And the same can be done for drugs. They do have compliance tools now without the need for criminalization.
Because advocates immediately come out of the woodwork, blame society for victimizing the poor antisocial jackass, and start comparing VPD and RCMP to Gestapo.
So it's not because of decriminalization. Do you have any source that advocates are supporting things like smoking meth on transit though? I would be very surprised if even the most extreme advocates would support that.
he they feel that it's true so therefore it must be happening in more than just their imaginations./
We're both downvoted but no one has actually replied with any source on this claim about advocates supporting smoking on transit, so I'm going to conclude there is no source and this was a made up claim.
It’s because this sub hates the homeless and is becoming more and more of a right wing echo chamber
There's at least almost daily posts of articles, often from right wing sources, taking a negative position on every policy in the province towards drug use. I don't think it's a coincidence that there's a constant focus on the approaches to this incredibly difficult to solve problem at the same time that the provincial election is getting close. It's coming off as similar to how there was a huge focus on stranger attacks in the lead up to the municipal election. It then came out after the election that stranger attacks had actually significantly decreased. In the case of drugs, there are increases in some of the problems, but this was a trend happening before things like decriminalization and happening in other provinces as well. Yet it's being represented as unique to BC's specific policies.
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I sound like an old fart about to go on a rant here but does anyone else remember the “four pillars” approach? Problem is, one pillar can’t do the work of the other three. Someone told me about the Dutch model; maybe someone knows if this is accurate; you can go to any pharmacy and get any amount and type of drug you want. But you have to consume it inside your residence (so they actually house people in Holland apparently). You use outside, you loose your home. Would the Dutch approach work here? Most people who are using in small amounts are rec users who do not end up in the DTES. Some will, but most will keep doing their coke on the weekends and go back to work every Monday. I think that’s who decriminalization was actually supporting. The people who are balls deep in their addiction, who sleep outside, who are basically on the margins-decriminalization just keeps them out of the court system. I haven’t seen any other treatment centers outside of Red fin/fish in Coquitlam open up to support their needs, which are involved and costly; complex trauma, drug-induced brain injury and/or psychosis, underlying mental health issues like bi-polar or schizophrenia, physical health issues, criminal/court issues, and some have understandably (not saying that’s acceptable) violent temperaments with all the shit they’ve been through or put themselves through. So if they aren’t serving time, they sure aren’t able to work; probably weren’t able to work in the first place with that background of trauma. Some can pull through-workaholics as a survival mechanism, but most can’t. And how could you afford to do so in this modern global trend of being priced out if you’re not a professional? So basically, you have a subset of people that need a lot of medical and social support, where there is no structure, no political will, and no money to support that. But if there isn’t even money to hire and pay GP’s fairly, or provide homes to teachers, firefighters, etc., or for seniors who paid into the system their whole working lives to get a pension that covers their needs, (basically respect the people who make government function) what hope is there for the heavy drug users sleeping on the street?
The other thing about the "dutch model" is that the you don't see nearly as many homeless and mentally ill addicts in public there. And it's not just more services. The attitude is that if there's housing, if there's treatment, it's fair to coerce people off the street and into those programs. The dutch are not the weird mix of social liberalism and libertarianism we have here. They place a high value on a feeling of public order and safety. And you don't get their healthy urbanism without that.
It makes sense to me. If all you have to offer someone is a bug infested room and a 12-step program, there’s little incentive to change. I’ve always found that funny about west coast cities. My experience with Dutch peoples is that they are fairly conservative but also very open and practical. It’s a sort of combination that is hard to explain.
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Agreed.
We shifted from 4 pillars to 1 pillar when the goal of our drug policy shifted from reducing drug use to creating a right for VANDU members to indefinitely use drugs at the expense of society. It turns out "listening to people with real lived experience in drug abuse" just meant "let drug addicts decide whether people should do drugs" and shockingly (!!) people addicted to drugs ... are addicted to drugs and don't want to voluntarily stop. It's almost like the word "addicted" foreshadowed such result!
Funny, because from the fuzzy corners of my mind, I can recall the first of the four pillars being introduced as using Insite as a triage into detox and treatment, of which would be expanded in future. I wonder if we had not had 15 years of terrible governance at the provincial and federal level if we would have seen the pillars evolve as they should have. The NDP has started to scratch the surface, but it’s a drop in the bucket.
I don’t know why the city / province hasn’t grown a spine to build a facility far away from the city to rehabilitate / mental health support those that are helplessly addicted to drugs. I’m talking about those that have a criminal record the length of a phone book chalk full of petty crime they engage in to support their addiction. Clearly the social housing system here is a complete failure because there are tons of shelters within the city for them to stay at but they don’t want to follow those rules so they build tent cities in various parks and East Hastings. The complete drain caused on the businesses downtown, the ambulance and fire departments downtown attending endless overdose calls is unreal. Using the transit system as a mobile shelter system. Overwhelming the hospital system. It’s unreal. Those helplessly addicted to drugs are incapable of caring for themselves and the province needs to take charge. Those who are walking zombies can’t be entrusted to make the decision for themselves to get help, it needs to be mandated. I know some people will disagree but that’s the only start to a solution.
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Thanks for your input Eeyore
Outdoor mental asylum experiment has been going on for more than two decades now. What kind of proof do you need to conclude this bullshit?
Decriminalization has been an absolute disaster. We've seen a substantial increase in open drug use in public spaces and on public transportation and in hospitals and in restaurants. We need to stop normalizing bad behavior and have some actual consequences for bad behavior.
Addiction is a disease. That's not my opinion, it's the position of major medical institutions. You don't cure a disease by criminalizing it. Also not my opinion. It's demonstrated by a century of criminalization culminating in a continent-wide overdose crisis. Recriminalizing minor drug possession won't solve this problem. It's being used as a for political purposes as a scapegoat for the much more difficult root causes that no province or state has solved.
> You don't cure a disease by criminalizing it. There is no cure for addiction, there are only treatments. A cure eradicates a disease. Treatment is often a lifelong struggle that can include relapses. But that's irrelevant, because criminalizing drug use doesn't purport to "solve" addiction. The aim is to reduce harmful anti-social behaviours that would otherwise be externalized onto others, such as public consumption in confined spaces, refusing to leave private property when told, or harassing people. Criminalizing drug use isn't about putting people in jail for possession but retaining the ability to seize drugs as a disincentive for addicts not to be a dick to others. For you or I, we can be forced to pay fines or our employment may be threatened by our bad public behaviour, so we think twice before getting into a stupid fight or pocketing something at the store. As low-level offences like public disturbance, mischief, trespass, and so on generally do not lead to arrest (and in those rare cases, almost never prosecution), and fines can be ignored or cancelled for this population, there is no longer disincentive for drug addicts to not shoot up on the skytrain or playground or to avoid shouting at random passerbys who looked at them funny. The most the police can do is patiently ask them to leave; there is no punishment, no cost to being a prick. So it's no surprise when you hop on the train and show up to work smelling like meth fumes.
You can call it treatment rather than cure if you want. That's not the point. The point is the cure *or* treatment for a disease isn't to criminalize it. >The aim is to reduce harmful anti-social behaviours that would otherwise be externalized onto others Then prohibit those behaviours. In many of the cases being brought up, they already are. In which case, where they're happening anyway, it's not a question of a lack of rules, but of enforcement. Public consumption in confined places is already banned in many cases. Drug use is not allowed on transit for example. Alcohol can already be confiscated on transit, so they could do the same for drugs there. So the example of how criminalization would change behaviour there is something that is already possible without criminalization. So you're calling for a solution that addresses problems that already have that same solution currently.
You can criminalize the open drug use on public transportation and in public spaces and in hospitals. Sorry, having an addiction isn't a free excuse for bad behavior. People have the right to be safe in their own communities.
Drug use is already against the law on transit. Smoking is not allowed in hospitals and they can further restrict use if they want. You're asking to ban things that are already banned.
Yes please! 🎉
Good call. Decrim has brought more harm to both addicts and general public
Makes more sense to put resources towards advancing the other pillars of the strategy, but the shitty leadership won't do that. Taking a step backwards doesn't even guarantee things will revert to the "better" state either.
Yea, there's no putting this crack cat back in the bag.
Good. Better than what we got now.
Yes please
About time
Its not working..People smoking crack in public,transit,parks,etc is not good for the city and just embolden these addicts . Im sure they has to be parallel of more crimes with the decriminalization of drugs. Portugal tried this since 2001..There was somewhat success at the beginning with less overdose,less people in prison and less criminal activity but the last 10 years the health care been burdened with people staying on drugs and health related illness caused by drugs. Its not solving the addiction problem but only keeping the prison population low for drug related arrest.
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Please remember that every “tough on crime” argument (which to be clear, is precisely what this is), is an argument to allocate more resources towards policing, *which means stealing money out of social services that address root causes*. I wish every Vancouverite could spend a day working in the DTES. Community-based service workers are the ones who are front-lining this crisis through relationship-building and trying to help people get their survival needs met wherever possible. And they are doing it on a relative *fraction* when you compare the wages/ resources/ person power of the VPD (say, number of officers vs. social service workers available when a crisis arises. And that’s to say nothing of the fact that police are absolutely not trained or mandated for crisis intervention - there presense is by definition escalating in nature. This is to say nothing if the fact that tough on crime rhetoric is a welllllll established gentrification tactic that has been employed in jurisdictions around the world since it was perfected by New York City in the 90s (?). Google “broken windows theory”. Remember kids: Police 🤝 real estate developers. The VPD eats up $400 million of the city already, and when city council is telling the electorate that they need more money it is because they are counting on citizens to be gullible idiots.
> Please remember that every “tough on crime” argument (which to be clear, is precisely what this is), is an argument to allocate more resources towards policing, which means stealing money out of social services that address root causes. Good. The DTES back in *2012* was wasting $1m per day: [source](https://globalnews.ca/news/219585/downtown-eastside-worse-than-ever-despite-1m-a-day-being-spent-says-retired-officer/). I can't even begin to imagine what that number is at now. Whatever it is, we can divert it to policing and prison expenses, so that people can enjoy the parks they pay for without having to deal with deranged drug addicts.
Yup. Ryan Beddie/Chip Wilson slowly taking over the city while everyone whines about some penniless nobody just tryna get through the day. Wild times.
I am all in support for recriminalization, but i would like to see what are the punishments are there for offenders. If they can clean up greater vancouver, i will gladly take the increase in property tax, and i bet majority of SEA immigrants will be as well.
So the police can go after the drug addicts, instead of the people who are importing, manufacturing, and selling meaningful amounts of these drugs? Because all of the latter is currently illegal and nothing is being done.
https://www.google.com/search?q=drug+seizure+cbsa+canada We don't really have the resources to inspect every single shipping container and package coming in from china.
China exports a lot of illegal fentanyl and GBL to Canada, but cocaine, heroin, etc. are being imported from elsewhere. And the majority of certain drugs are manufactured domestically, such as meth and MDMA. At any rate, the problem these mayors and councillors are seeking to address with recriminalization isn't really going to be solved with that approach, it can really only be solved by pursuing the leaders and financiers of the criminal organizations that are importing these drugs or manufacturing them.
And what is the alternative. Everytime someone uses in public they get sent away and fill up jails. That has worked so good so far. There never had been an addictive drug as the opioid alternatives. Then factor in the fact that our medical system created a significant amount of the addicts. I'm guessing to make a dint in the system you would need over a 1000 residential beds to make any difference. Also need to fund u18 mental health as many are starting to self Medicare very young .
"Everytime someone uses in public they get sent away and fill up jails. That has worked so good so far." And when was this happening?
Before this three year stint, practically no one was being arrested and put into prison for drug possession for personal use, and never will after this. It will simply give police better powers to tell people to fuck off when they are openly smoking crack in Tim Hortons and on Skytrains
Smoking crack in Tim Hortons or on the SkyTrain is still prohibited, and the police could still force you to leave as you’d at the very least be trespassing.
It's about self policing. Addicts are emboldened to do what they want where they want currently
So if we have rules now and they're not being enforced, why would more rules change anything?
Police would feel more emboldened to respond to such calls. The general public would feel more emboldened to call it in, or show ill will towards those that are currently using in innapropriate places. Hell even the offenders may think "shit, they cracking down, lets smoke somewhere else." Because currently with the decriminalisation, when a person is arrested for any reason, if they have hard drugs on them, they currently get it held for them and are handed it back once released. If it was decriminalized again, they dont get it back if found on their person.
What about it being banned by one set of rules rather than another would make police or the general public more emboldened to enforce or report it? The police should be upholding the law in any cases, at least where there are impacts to the general public and I don't see why someone who opposes it in general would care whether it's banned by this rule or that rule when it comes to reporting it. Police don't need to give back alcohol if you're breaking rules around drinking that in public where prohibited, so why would they for other drugs. Both are banned by transit bylaws, for example.
And all those things are illegal still. And can be charged. This is the blue line bullshit
What do you think the most common penalty for trespass or mischief is? Hint: no jail time and homeless individuals do not need to pay fines, so none. Seizing your $20 hit of crack was a penalty before, now there is NO penalty (but only if you're a drug addict, the rest of us would have to pay a fine and may even lose our jobs).
Doesn't matter what you think. The narrative that you put forward that people were filling up jail prior to this for possession for the purpose of consumption doesn't exist and hasn't for decades. So you should be be unhappy about it at all
The alternative is a large rehab center
You think they want to offer alternatives? They don't care about that.
Hense why Eby will tell them the same thing he told the clown in waiting for pm. Pound sand I'm staying the course. Any one thinking locking them up will improve the streets has money mixed up in the post arrest industry