Daily Mail, Jan. 27, 2023
The biggest winners in the latest BC experiment to decriminalize drugs are the pharmaceutical companies who can make “billions from producing their own ‘medical grade’ narcotics to be doled out to addicts,” as Vancouver expands on its failed harm reduction policies.
This is not ‘treatment’ and reinforces “two-tiered” options for those with means to purchase expensive rehabilitation programs while others are offered more harmful drugs, summarizes Dr. Julian Somers, one of Canada’s leading experts on drug addiction. He was recently interviewed for the UK newspaper The Daily Mail. You can view proven drug addiction treatments on this page of our site.
In that same interview, he said he also fears the number of young people tempted to try the newly decriminalized drugs will go up, adding to the chaos on our streets. As Global News reported recently, young people are buying so-called “safe supply” from addicts.
Excerpts from the Daily Mail article are below.
“Assaults by crazed addicts on random passers-by have become so common that even ambulance crews are now demanding special protection.
And, say Dr Somers and other experts, the crisis is about to get even worse thanks to the ruinously misguided, woke politics of Canada’s ruling class.
In its sheer radicalism, it’s a move without precedent anywhere in the world. And yet, in an almost laughable coincidence, the policy comes into force on Tuesday, just days after Canada’s ultra-progressive federal government recommended citizens have no more than two drinks a week under some of the strictest alcohol consumption guidelines in the West.
Canada… — is more than happy to stigmatize drinkers, smokers and obese people in the interest of improving their health.
But, bizarrely, hardcore drug use — with all its attendant crime and squalor — seems to be an entirely different matter.
A major report by the Stanford-Lancet Commission, formed in response to the opioid crisis in the U.S. and Canada, has warned against the influence of the pharmaceutical industry, highlighting its cosy links with politicians and officials determining drug policies.
Drug users have been pouring in to Vancouver from across Canada, with decriminalization likely to attract even more.
Giuseppe Ganci, a former addict who now helps run a drug rehabilitation centre outside Vancouver, feels the same.
On the contrary, his own experience and that of many others has taught him that addicts need to experience some sort of stigma and discover that their dependency has consequences before they can sober up, he said.”
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