Time to take drugs away from dealers

Rob MacIsaac on why decriminalization and regulation could save others

Human beings have been beer drinkers for 13,000 years, and wine drinkers for 8,000 years. Humans have chewed coca leaves for 8,000 years, smoked opium for 5,500 years and smoked cannabis for at least 5,000 years.

I get it, I do. None of us much likes the thought of our kids taking drugs. But drugs have long been part of the human experience, and they can appeal to someone’s sense of adventure, exploration, or a desire for escape.

Certainly, drug use can be problematic. Intoxication can be an issue, as can addiction. This has led to laws prohibiting drugs, mainly in the last hundred years or so.

Drug prohibition laws would never have stopped Archie, if and when he decided that he wanted to try these things for himself.

The effect of these laws has been two-fold. It’s made it more difficult to purchase and use drugs, but at the same time, it has given control of drug distribution over to criminal enterprises, and criminalized the behaviour of drug users.

Criminalization of drug production, distribution and consumption has led to our current situation, where there is no effective control over the surprisingly persistent supply of recreational drugs.

In Archie’s case, that led to a situation where be bought something that we suspect he thought was cocaine, but which tested positive for fentanyl and nothing else. We don’t know where he got it, because there are no receipts for this sort of thing. And he locked himself away in a bathroom stall to use it, because use is illegal. And that is where he died.

Archie was interested in human history. He was interested in the physiology of the brain. He was interested in anesthesiology and the various compounds that have effects on our brains and nervous systems. Drug prohibition laws would never have stopped Archie, if and when he decided that he wanted to try these things for himself.

Archie wasn’t an addict. He wasn’t living on the street. He was a good student, a good employee, with a large group of friends, and his drug use wasn’t the cornerstone of his life. It was one interest, among a great many. Treatment for addictions, treatment for mental health problems, programs to combat homelessness can be of use to a great many people, but they would not have touched Archie.

What would have saved Archie is a regimen of recreational drug production and distribution parallel to what we’re doing with cannabis now in Canada, where there is a safe, controlled, regulated supply.

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What would have saved Archie is a regimen of recreational drug production and distribution parallel to what we’re doing with cannabis now in Canada, where there is a safe, controlled, regulated supply.

Four out of five drug overdoses in Canada are due to fentanyl. 80%. Four times as many people are dying from fentanyl in the drug supply than are dying from taking too much heroin or too much cocaine. Fentanyl allows unscrupulous dealers to put a little cheap powder in a bag with a lot of inert filler, and the user will still get some kind of a hit. Sometimes a fatal hit. As with Archie.

What Canada needs to do in order to stop the opioid crisis dead in its tracks is to take the recreational drug trade out of the hands of unscrupulous dealers. Take the mystery out of it, take the intrigue out of it, and sell it through bland government outlets, where buyers know exactly what they’re getting.

An available supply of untainted drugs won’t bring Archie back. He made his choices, and we’re all suffering for it. But about 300 Canadians die every month from fentanyl in their drug supply. That’s about a thousand Canadians that have died more-or-less like Archie did, taking something that they didn’t want to take, didn’t plan to take, between the time Archie died and the time I’m writing this. And twelve more will have died by the time you read this tomorrow.

This is a crisis. These people are not expendable. Recreational drug use, however problematic and whatever the issues, should not be fatal, not in these numbers, not in these circumstances.

There’s a federal election underway. Ask your candidates what their position is regarding the fentanyl crisis in Canada, what they plan to do. And ask yourself, what would that have done for Archie?