A store selling psychedelics in Windsor, Ont. Recent police raids on psychedelics stores in Vancouver reflect misplaced attitudes toward drug regulation.
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Psychedelics are an opportunity to do better than our past drug control strategies. Adults should be trusted to make the right decisions, but policymakers should ensure they do so fully informed.
People march to remember those who died during the drug poisoning crisis on International Overdose Awareness Day, in Vancouver, on Aug. 31, 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
A police policy of not making arrests for simple possession is a way to essentially decriminalize personal drug use. However, confiscating drugs — even without arrests — can be harmful in many ways.
Being in a legal grey area means sex workers are at a disadvantage when they have been the victim of a crime or defrauded.
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If sex workers have to pay taxes and have all the other burdens of business and employment, then surely their contracts must be honoured as well.
Members of the African Christian Democratic Party protesting against the decriminalisation of sex work in South Africa.
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The repeal of outdated apartheid-era laws would have a far-reaching, positive impact on individual sex workers’ health and well-being.
A man runs past shoes hung on the Burrard Bridge in Vancouver in remembrance of victims of illicit drug overdoses on International Overdose Awareness Day in August 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Decriminalization helps recharacterize drug addiction as a chronic health condition instead of a criminal activity, reduces the stigma associated with drug use and improves treatment options.
A supervised consumption site in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, in 2021. B.C. has decriminalized simple possession of drugs, including methamphetamines and opioids.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
As British Columbia begins a new era in drug policy, the drug poisoning crisis continues without an end in sight.
B.C. Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Sheila Malcolmson holds a copy of exemption documents that enable British Columbia to decriminalize possession of small amounts of ‘hard’ drugs for personal use. B.C.’s bold experiment will be closely watched as a comparator with other progressive jurisdictions.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
British Columbia’s bold experiment provides an opportunity to implement more balance in Canadian drug policy, and a more principled withdrawal from the war on drugs.
Youth in New Mexico used their own experiences with arrest and incarceration to advocate for others.
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Decriminalization is an important step in addressing the overdose crisis, but it is crucial that other approaches — like regulation — are also in place.
Marijuana decriminalization won’t end arrests.
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Research Scientist at the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use & St. Paul's Hospital Chair in Substance Use Research and Associate Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University