Canada’s ‘Wacko’ Drug Policy

On April 26 the province said it wants the federal government to “recriminalize” drug consumption in public spaces such as in hospitals, parks and buses. In his intervention from the floor Mr. Poilievre blamed the Trudeau government’s drug decriminalization last year in British Columbia for feeding a crisis and linked it to the 2,500 drug deaths annually in the province. In particular Mr. Poilievre was upset about the deterioration in the quality of life for children, families, hospital workers and anyone who uses public transit. Mr. Poilievre, a member of the Conservative Party, was voicing outrage that Ottawa isn’t acting.

The war on drugs, in the U.S. or in Canada, is a colossal failure because it’s aimed at interdicting supply even as demand remains robust. Among the unintended consequences of prohibition, when demand is inelastic, is that success in clamping down on supply makes the illegal narcotics business more profitable. Cartels corrupt law enforcement, hire mules, and purchase weapons, small planes, disposable submarines and high-tech equipment. Poor democracies with frail institutions are no match for well-funded organized crime.

Legalizers want to take the money out of the business. The temperance crowd argues that removing the prohibition will increase use. Decriminalization has been offered as a middle ground to keep addicts from going to jail where they’re unlikely to beat their problem. But the objective of decriminalization matters. If it’s merely to green-light use, it can make things worse.

O…  n a visit to Vancouver in 2007 I witnessed the deleterious effects of a provincial drug policy helping heroin users inject drugs with clean needles while ensuring that no one would “judge” their addiction. At the time, government-sponsored Insite, in the city’s Downtown East Side, was North America’s only legal injection clinic. Sidewalks in front of the clinic were “lined with addicts,” I wrote in a column headlined “Canada’s Shooting Gallery.” “For blocks in both directions, all humanity looked sick, drawn, impoverished and defeated. In the gloom of a drizzly, cloud-covered Sunday morning, I felt I had entered one of Dante’s inner circles of suffering,” where state resources were used to enable personal destruction. Things have gotten worse under decriminalization.