A Store Selling Heroin, Meth, and Cocaine Just Opened in Canada

[Josquius]

Sounds like a logical error to me to extrapolate cannabis trends to smack.

Cannabis is a drug a majority of people will have tried but only a minority like enough to make a habit of. I've done it on occasion but outside of one time when I lived in Amsterdam I've never especially gone out to buy it.
On the other hand if it was available on the high street... Then yes. Reasonable to see a few percent of people would be just on that line of liking it but not enough to be worth the effort of getting it when it's only obtainable from drug dealers.

Hard drugs on the other hand... Yeah. I'm not about to try shooting up just to see what it's like. It tends not to be something one can do in moderation.

In my ideal situation all drugs would be legal but whilst cannabis would be fairly widespread, hard drugs would only be available in rare government dispensaries. The two would be kept very much seperate to each other and treat very differently with cannabis beinng treat closer to alcohol than hard drugs.

Also worth noting the well known stats from European countries with more relaxed drug rules vs those which are stricter. They tend to fly against the idea that  legalise it and use goes up in the long term.

[Jacob]

Anyhow, the guy with the store has been arrested.

[Sheilbh]

Hard drugs on the other hand... Yeah. I'm not about to try shooting up just to see what it's like. It tends not to be something one can do in moderation.

Yeah although it's a little bit "there but for the grace of God go I". I've not been in those situations.

The thing I find odd with drugs and what are broadly "liberal" attitudes, is that there seem to be two tracks of increasingly negative and censorious attitudes to legal substances that are an issue from a public health perspective (tobacco, booze, sugar, fatty foods/processed foods) with an increasingly open attitude to other substances that I suspect are as capable of causing public health issues. It feels a little bit like it's maybe more about attitude/epater les bourgeois than anything else - but I say that as someone who is liberal on both.

Also worth noting the well known stats from European countries with more relaxed drug rules vs those which are stricter. They tend to fly against the idea that  legalise it and use goes up in the long term.

I'm not sure that's right.

UK, Nordics and Baltics have the highest rate of drug deaths in Europe In particular there is Scotland which has a rate of drug deaths is close to the US, while England, Wales and Northern Ireland are less than half of Canada's and around the rate of Sweden - and about four times lower than Scotland.

Then there's basically Germany, Netherlands, Austria and Spain at a middling rate within Europe (half the highest rates). Then Italy, France, Portugal, Belgium and Eastern Europe who all have the lowest rates (half again).

I think harm reduction/treatment is definitely part of it - personally I support more relaxed drug laws too - but all of those groups seem to me to have a pretty wide spread of policy mixes.

What I've read on Scotland flags how specific it can be and it sounds a bit like the opioid crisis in North America. From what I've read a big factor may be that the NHS in Scotland prescribed benzodiazepines far more regularly in the 80s and 90s than other areas of the country, this created a dependency issue so they started to restrict prescriptions and now there's legal and street benzos but they're a huge cause of overdoses in Scotland (and like in the opioid crisis, often taken with other drugs).

[Josquius]

Also on legal weed and kids using it...
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/teen-marijuana-use-has-been-declining-since-legal-dispensaries-started-opening-federal-cdc-study-shows/

I'm not sure that's right.

UK, Nordics and Baltics have the highest rate of drug deaths in Europe In particular there is Scotland which has a rate of drug deaths is close to the US, while England, Wales and Northern Ireland are less than half of Canada's and around the rate of Sweden - and about four times lower than Scotland.

Then there's basically Germany, Netherlands, Austria and Spain at a middling rate within Europe (half the highest rates). Then Italy, France, Portugal, Belgium and Eastern Europe who all have the lowest rates (half again).

I think harm reduction/treatment is definitely part of it - personally I support more relaxed drug laws too - but all of those groups seem to me to have a pretty wide spread of policy mixes.

What I've read on Scotland flags how specific it can be and it sounds a bit like the opioid crisis in North America. From what I've read a big factor may be that the NHS in Scotland prescribed benzodiazepines far more regularly in the 80s and 90s than other areas of the country, this created a dependency issue so they started to restrict prescriptions and now there's legal and street benzos but they're a huge cause of overdoses in Scotland (and like in the opioid crisis, often taken with other drugs).

An automatic legalise=less use is hard to draw. But then there'll be a variety of other factors at play as you say than just whether its legal or not.
It is notable Portugal is in the lower group and has the laxest laws and the Netherlands is fairly comparable to the UK in a lot of ways but shows up lower.

[Gups]

So here's the thing: we've already had this experiment in Canada.  We legalized cannabis about 5 years ago.  Legalization has had several positive effects: it's lead to the development of a thriving industry, it takes several cases out of the court system.

But it's also led to an increase in cannabis use.  From 2017 (the last year before legalization) to 2021 the number of Canadians who use cannabis increased from 22% to 27%.  You might say "well that's only a 5 point increase" - but actually it's a 20% increase in the number of Canadians who use cannabis - and the biggest increases have come from younger people.  And the number still seems to be ticking upwards.



So yes, having a safe, legal supply will definitely help to prevent overdoses and death.  But it's going to inevitably increase the amount of drugs available and the number of addicts.  I'm not sure that's a trade-off worth making.

Presumably those figures came from a survey. Did it adjust for people being less likely to admit committing a crime to a stranger in 2017?

 

[The Minsky Moment]

So sometimes slippery slopes are indeed slippery.  This is the next logical step after legalizing cannabis and decriminalizing hard drugs.

The same argument can be made about legalizing OTC pain killers, allergy medications etc.

The only way to be truly safe against the slippery slope is to ban all products and services.

Or . . . we could just stick to making decisions based on scientific evidence, judgment, and common sense.

[The Minsky Moment]

As for the stunt in the OP, this guy isn't trying to exploit a legal loophole; it is an act of performance advocacy presumably to highlight the alleged public health failures of current policy, and to line up a hail mary constitutional challenge.

[viper37]

Or we could just keep watching people die.

We legalized marijuana to keep it out of criminal hands.  Most of it is still being sold on the black market.  We fought for years against tobacco, then we just normalize a similarly dangerous product.

We created safe injection sites near public transit.  Public transit are dangerous, public are attacked by guns and knives to the point cities have heavily armed cops patrolling the areas now.  It's filled with discarded syringes.

Drug users are still dying, they are still stealing and killing.

We have solved nothing.

But let's make it bigger, broader.

Hasn't BC basically legalized all drugs.  It's not doing any miracle as much as I can see.

[viper37]

Having grown up around drinkers (both family drunks and parents owning a bar) alcohol appears a whole lot worse.

When you drink, you don't force everyone around you to drink with you.

[Sheilbh]

An automatic legalise=less use is hard to draw. But then there'll be a variety of other factors at play as you say than just whether its legal or not.
It is notable Portugal is in the lower group and has the laxest laws and the Netherlands is fairly comparable to the UK in a lot of ways but shows up lower.

Sure - I just would caution against hoping it's a silver bullet and even where it's decriminalised there is a separate issue around control, which I think is really flagged with the opioid epidemic (and possibly Scotland's experience with benzos). Interesting to see Spain have very different rates of death than Portugal or Italy - and I think I remember reading that in the 2000s/2010s there was a surge in opioid prescribing in Spain - I can't help but wonder if that's part of the link.

For me there's almost three points where there are basically policy decisions: criminalisation, treatment and control of medically helpful but highly addictive substances. I'm not sure any one of those points is necessarily particularly important on their own I think it might be how the three interact that's key.

The same argument can be made about legalizing OTC pain killers, allergy medications etc.

As a Brit going into any foreign pharmacy on holiday is always amazing for the strength of drugs you can get OTC. Things on the shelves that here you'd need at least to talk to the pharmacist about, stuff behind the counter that here you'd need a prescription etc.

That may just be my impression but it just feels like you can get far stronger painkillers and allergy medicine OTC everywhere else.

Or . . . we could just stick to making decisions based on scientific evidence, judgment, and common sense.

Yes but aware always that everyone from individuals, day to day clinicians up to drug regultors can get things wrong and some can be actively malicious/have the wrong motivation. This won't necessarily lead to the right answer, but it's probably the closest we can get to the right process.

[The Minsky Moment]

Yes but aware always that everyone from individuals, day to day clinicians up to drug regultors can get things wrong and some can be actively malicious/have the wrong motivation. This won't necessarily lead to the right answer, but it's probably the closest we can get to the right process.

That's always true on any matter touching public policy.

[Syt]

Meanwhile, some pharmacists here still treat me like a drug addled hobo when I show up with my prescription for Ritalin.  

Austria does electronic prescriptions these days where the pharmacy can just scan your insurance card which also has your photo on it (thus confirming your ID) ... but NOT for controlled substances like Methylphenidate (Ritalin) or Amphetamines (Adderall), where you still need a paper prescription that fulfills certain form requirements and needs a special little sticker with barcode from the city/government.

[HVC]

Having grown up around drinkers (both family drunks and parents owning a bar) alcohol appears a whole lot worse.

When you drink, you don't force everyone around you to drink with you.

No, but you force those around you to be with a drunk and what that  entails (violence most of the time)

And you don't have to hot box other people if you smoke pot

[Duque de Bragança]

Having grown up around drinkers (both family drunks and parents owning a bar) alcohol appears a whole lot worse.

When you drink, you don't force everyone around you to drink with you.

No, but you force those around you to be with a drunk and what that  entails (violence most of the time)

And you don't have to hot box other people if you smoke pot

You still get second hand smoking effects however. 

[Josquius]

I will say the smell of weed is the main thing that bothers me about it.
In Switzerland you absolutely get some parts of town which have a permanent wiff of the stuff, and I've a neighbour here who you have to be alert for- when he smokes in the garden close your windows or its filling the house.
As much as I'm all for the legalisation of weed I would setup some decent nuisance laws around inconsiderate usage.