The government refuses to talk about legalization: it is a three-year “legal exemption”, first tested around Vancouver
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This is an almost unprecedented decision in the world: in Canada, holders of small quantities of hard drugs will no longer end up in prison. A decriminalization which will be applied first at the request of British Columbia, in the west of the country, and in particular around the city of Vancouver. This exception will concern heroin, cocaine, opiates and other hard drugs.
Thus, in concrete terms, adults may have on them up to 2.5 grams of heroin or cocaine, drugs that cause strong addiction. This decision will be applied from January 31, 2023, for a period of three years. If they do not end up in prison, adults caught in the act of possessing narcotics will receive medical information to fight against addictions. So far, the most serious cases of possession of hard drugs carry fines and imprisonment.
This decision by the Canadian government was made to “but also so that people who take drugs regain their dignity and their right to choose“. And, be careful, officially, the government explains it clearly: “This is not a legalization“but of one”legal exemption“.
For the moment, therefore, a measure applied only at the local level. And for good reason: in British Columbia, 2,200 people died of opiate-related overdoses, or six people a day, in 2021. This is more than the deaths of Covid-19, at the peak of the epidemic there. two years old. In total, from January 2016 to September 2021, Canada has recorded nearly 27,000 deaths and more than 29,000 hospitalizations for opiate-related overdoses, according to government figures. Other major Canadian cities have already expressed their interest in this decriminalization, including Montreal and Toronto in the east of the country.