No. It. Did. Not. Work.
I dunno, it didn’t work but it didn’t not work either to address the toxic drug crisis on its own either. Just having decriminalization and safe supply only, without proper rehabilitation standards, with a lack of ample housing and support to get people’s life together after drugs causing long waitlists to receive longer-term support, means that these just kept the status quo. We need a Manitoba style “Your Way Home” (PDF link) program, wrap-around individualized treatments for both homelessness and addiction, neither of which should be crimes.
I agree that criminalization wastes space in jails and taxpayer money, and puts up more barriers and hardship on people who already are having a rough stretch of life. I personally don’t care because 99.9% of addicts in Gastown largely mind their own business, but I acknowledge that open drug use does make others uncomfortable and that 1 in 1000 has led to stabbings and other harmful behaviours to the public.
I personally support decriminalization but given the greater context I completely understand why the public perception of this program was utter failure.
Right now a very small minority of repeat offenders are acting with impunity. The courts fail to deny these individuals bail, thus substantiating the accusations of “catch and release”.
The fact is that drugs damage peoples mind to the point that they will steal/do whatever they must in order to fund their addiction. And the courts just keep letting them walk free.
Pretty much, you need to invest in all the pillars to deal with the drug addiction epidemic. Just decriminalizing doesn’t solve the problem for society as a whole, the non-drug using public also needs to see a marked decrease in drug users on the street and reduced crime for a program to be a true success.
I said from say one that this was doomed to fail because they weren’t primarily investing in mental health and addiction treatment that was sorely needed. Of course that is the expensive and hardest part. Decriminalizing drugs is the “quick and easy” part.
Yup. Really this is all just a vain attempt to avoid the unavoidable. Either we house the homeless or we’re just paying more to put them up in prisons and psych wards.
I say “them,” but >50% of Canadians are living paycheque to paycheque and would be homeless within 3 months if they lost their jobs. So it’s us.
Either we guarentee housing for us all or we pay more today to throw ourselves in jail/nuthouse tomorrow.
The problem I think is these are drug addicts.
How do you safely maintain the housing, what do the contractors do when they’re doing meth as the pipes are flooding?
Its like taking care of violent mentally handicapped adults, or like pitbulls.
Yes that happens but ratios matter. Apply the 80:20 rule and you find that 80% of incidents are perpetrated by the top 20% of perpetrators.
Invert that and you find that 80% of incidents are perpetrated by people with a higher aptitude for intervention.
Than you also need to appreciate that there is an underlying, over arching, and penetrating, theme of “too little too late” in our welfare system.
Yes, this exactly.
So many proponents of decriminalization point to Portugal, but Portugal also put massive effort into the other infrastructures required to make addiction a health problem instead of a crime problem. Clinics, destigmatization through education, recovery programs, these are all needed for this to have been successful.
My wife is a nurse in BC, and she said in this hellish year, addicts were demanding a “space to use” right in the hospital. No additional security, no training on handling addiction, nothing.
