say yes to drugs

I know this title shocks. But follow me…

British Columbia will decriminalize the simple possession of so-called hard drugs (in limited quantities). Amphetamines, cocaine, fentanyl, heroin. A three-year pilot project, in agreement with the federal¹.

It strikes the imagination.

It strikes the imagination because the demonization of drugs is in the culture. In the 1980s, anti-drug ads were utterly stupid, reflecting a society that thought it was enough to “say no to drugs² so that this scourge disappears.

It strikes the imagination, too, because we all know someone who has “fallen into the hell of drugs”…

We know the devastation, we know the pain.

For families who have seen a son, a daughter sink, for families who have lost a loved one in the turbulent waves of addiction, the idea that drugs can be decriminalized may seem unnatural.

I understand. And these people have a right to their anger.

But anger is rarely a good basis for public policy. Decades of repression have not eradicated drugs, nor have they cured those who are ill with them.

British Columbia is facing a major public health crisis, that of opioids. We are talking about six deaths a day. In 2016, in the face of this disaster, the province declared a state of health emergency.³. This crisis also hits Quebec, less strongly. But she knocks.

People with addictions to hard drugs are not morally corrupt. They are sick. Point.

These patients are slaves to an addiction to a poison. You don’t stop taking heroin like you would stop drinking Pepsi. On the contrary, the effects of an abrupt cessation of use of these types of drugs can kill these people, outright.

And prosecuting these people for possession and consumption offenses is a form of cruelty that does nothing to improve public safety.

Decriminalization is an important step to help them not sink further. When you’re enslaved to a poison, the last thing you need is to be sent to prison for an offense related to that enslavement.

But if we look at it from a moral angle, the issue is simple: drugs are bad, period.

The issue is of course a thousand times more complex than that. Take supervised injection sites: morally, it’s mind-boggling to think that the state provides facilities for patients to inject drugs…

But from a social point of view, it is a lesser evil. From a public health point of view, we reduce harm and damage. Patients can inject in a clean place, where they can talk to experts if they want help coping. By injecting with clean syringes, they limit the risk of contracting diseases such as hepatitis B.

In doing so, they protect themselves. But they also protect others, you and me: we break the chains of transmission of hepatitis B, for example, an infectious disease that ends up affecting people who don’t inject themselves… like you and me.

I was talking about cruelty above. I think that’s the right word. Last year, I told you about the story of André Lapierre, a heroin user⁴. Mr. Lapierre was functional, productive, loving and loved. He had a blonde. He watched over his girlfriend’s son. He was working. But he had been in prison for drug-related offences.

One of his conditions of parole: not to use drugs. A random drug test came back positive. Mr. Lapierre had used heroin shortly before the test.

If you say to yourself, “Yes, but he just had to not consume”, I respectfully submit to you that you are in the field. It’s not a question of willpower, it’s not like quitting drinking Pepsi.

André Lapierre was therefore returned to prison. Breach of condition.

It was beneficial for what or for whom?

It helped him, how?

Sending André Lapierre back to prison when he had committed no offense was absurdly cruel.

But the sequel is heartbreaking: Mr. Lapierre was locked up in a cell with Ali Ngarukiye, who is accused of having tried to kill a police officer whom he allegedly disarmed, in January 2021, in Montreal.

And on the night of June 17, 2021, Ali Ngarukiye killed André Lapierre.

André Lapierre died of having been a slave to a poison, basically.

This is one example among many of the evils of the criminalization of people who are dependent on these drugs.

Criminalize producers, importers, drug traffickers? Sure. And the British Columbia project does not give gifts to those.

What I am saying here about the evils of the criminalization of drug addicts is not revolutionary. Public health experts have advocated this approach for years. Canadian police chiefs support decriminalization⁵. And Portugal did it, in 2001, with spectacular effects⁶.

Why isn’t it implemented everywhere?

Because part of the public, in our democracies, still thinks that it is enough to “say no to drugs”, to repeat that “drugs are bad”, for this scourge to disappear.

So it’s not very commercial politically and, during this time, people are dying.