Category: Regulation

One year of decriminalization in BC: What’s really going on?

A misinformation campaign around public use legislation distracts from real solutions

January 31, 2024 | One year ago today, British Columbia decriminalized personal possession of small amounts of some drugs in limited locations in a three-year pilot project. Since then, an organized political campaign has spent time and money to cloud public perception and discredit evidence-based efforts. Let’s cut through the rhetoric and talk about what is and isn’t working with decriminalization, and what a better way forward could be.

It’s understandable people are concerned, as drug poisoning deaths reach their highest-ever levels: with 2511 deaths last year alone, communities across B.C. feel the impact of this crisis. Under decriminalization, adults carrying up to 2.5 grams of opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA in specific places will not be subject to criminal charges: police cannot seize their drugs, arrest or charge them for simple possession. Instead, they are directed to services. The pilot excludes schools, childcare facilities, playgrounds, splash pads and skate parks, among other locations. Decriminalization has support amongst public health and policy experts, including B.C.’s provincial health officer and chief coroner.

Decriminalization reduces incarceration, police involvement, stigma, and disconnection from services – all of which drive harm and overdose. In that regard, it is working. From February to June 2023, B.C. possession offences fell 76 per cent, diverting hundreds of people from the criminal justice system. But decriminalization is just one tool, and the driving forces behind overdose, homelessness and public use remain unaddressed. Critically, decriminalization does not address the toxicity of the unregulated drug market repeatedly recommended by experts, including the BC Coroners Service Death Review Panel. Waits for detox remain weeks-long and gold standard substitution options remain widely inaccessible. To top it off, actors within the unregulated private treatment industry continue to evade accountability for their response to allegations of misconduct, deaths and political scandal.

If you think you are seeing more unhoused people than ever, you’re right – but not because of decriminalization. While drug use rates remain stable, homelessness has risen considerably: up 32 per cent across 11 Lower Mainland communities and 65 per cent in Surrey. Some critics wrongly attribute these worsening social issues to decriminalization. Content creators, treatment industry lobbyists and municipal mayors alike have blamed the policy for alleged spikes in public drug use, fuel for a politicized assault.

But decriminalization cannot build homes; open supervised consumption sites; undo decades of housing divestment; reverse generational traumas of colonization; create responsive health care systems; or influence the unregulated drug market. If the government was serious about tackling the drug poisoning crisis and finding solutions to public drug use, there are clear places to start. Scaling up permanent welfare-rate housing and renewing modular housing leases would reduce visible poverty. Opening overdose prevention services in every community, per the still-unfulfilled 2016 Ministerial Order, would create safer indoor spaces for use while facilitating access to healthcare and treatment, reducing emergency costs, and improving neighbourhood cleanliness. Most importantly, B.C. could prevent deaths by responsibly regulating the drug supply to standardize content, access and use, all while increasing tax revenue and diverting hundreds of millions of dollars of profit from organized crime.

Although evidence-based solutions exist, the government is choosing reactionary politics to push the poorest people in society out of voters’ line of vision. Despite existing limits on decriminalization, the Province introduced Bill 34, which encourages racist and anti-poor stereotyping, ordering police to remove people from public spaces based on suspected rather than observed drug use. Pushing unhoused people into isolation will increase overdose deaths and countless other social harms. So if you are upset about rising poverty and death despite decriminalization, please redirect your anger toward the politicians who care more about getting re-elected than building healthy, happy communities.

Authors: Anmol Swaich, SUDU (Surrey Union of Drug Users) Sarah Lovegrove, the EIDGE (Eastside Illicit Drinkers Group for Education) and Aaron Bailey

Anmol Swaich is a MSc student and Research Assistant in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University and a Community Organizer with Surrey Union of Drug Users.

Sarah Lovegrove is a registered nurse and member of the Harm Reduction Nurses Association.

Aaron Bailey holds a Master of Science in Health Promotion from Queen’s University, serves as Program Coordinator at the Eastside Illicit Drinkers Group for Education (EIDGE) and supports operations of the VANDU Overdose Prevention Site.

January 31, 2024
When law and policy is unjust, communities have no choice but to act.

The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) arrest of Drug User Liberation Front (DULF) founders on October 25^th, 2023 is an act of political and moral cowardice.

In the context of unrelenting loss driven by the unregulated drug market, DULF has taken courageous and ethical action to supply safety-tested substances to people who use drugs at great personal risk of arrest under Canada’s controlled substances laws.

DULF’s work saves lives. Through their small, community-led model of safe supply, they have demonstrated how access to safety-tested drugs of known potency and contents can reduce overdose, keep people alive, reduce hospitalizations and stabilize lives. DULF’s work has support from leading researchers, physicians and health care providers, public health officials, and community groups.

DULF has been transparent and communicative about their actions. They have made every effort to proceed legally, including by applying for an exemption from Health Canada which was denied last year. In the midst of the ongoing unregulated drug crisis, DULF made the ethical choice to proceed without formal approval.

The VPD chose to enforce these unjust laws after more than a year of DULF’s compassion club operating in plain sight. There is no conceivable possibility that the VPD, the City of Vancouver, the Province of BC or any other public or private actor with any familiarity with the drug policy landscape in Canada has been unaware of DULF’s actions since their first action. Police have discretion as to when, where and how to enforce the law — they chose the path of harm, and they did not have to.

When law and policy is unjust, communities have no choice but to act. The VPD themselves agree that their actions could “absolutely” result in drug users who rely on the compassion club’s services consuming more dangerous substances. Premier David Eby said earlier this week that while DULF is doing life-saving work, the government cannot tolerate illegal activity. The BC government and the VPD are using the law as a shield to justify what even the VPD admit is a dangerous and harmful act.

People who use drugs have long known they must take care of each other in the face of government violence and neglect. Sterile needle distribution was once illegal; Insite, Canada’s first legal safe injection site, overcame multiple legal challenges to exist. History has demonstrated that drug law and policy change lag far behind need, and that governments will eventually adopt the lifesaving responses that communities of drug users initiate. We believe this pattern will be replicated, and that history will once again vindicate DULF’s actions.

Until then, we unequivocally assert our support for DULF founders and their life-saving work. Inspired by them, we will continue to advocate for urgent and vital reforms to drug law and policy with every tool we have.

October 27, 2023
A Roadmap for Canada’s Drug Policy Future: The Peter Wall International Research Roundtable
The first steps for systemic change are usually the hardest. But thanks to an international community of experts, including and especially those with lived expertise on the frontlines of Canada’s drug policy crisis, we’ve surmounted that hurdle.

Last month, over 40 researchers, frontline advocates, policymakers, and other experts convened in Vancouver for the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies International Research Roundtable. The end vision of our collaboration is at once simple and dauntingly complex: to realize legal regulation of drugs in Canada to stem the tide of fatalities crippling communities across the country and end the ongoing harms of prohibition. A regulated legal supply of drugs would mean a safer supply of drugs to those who use them, elimination of the toxic drug market controlled by organized crime groups, and financial resources to invest in people who need access to health, housing, and social services.

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Peter Wall International Research Roundtable (April 2019)

We began this task by tapping into the collective expertise and wisdom of the people in the room, workshopping ideas, brainstorming solutions, and refining tactics that will bring us to our end goal. It was just a start, but critical if we are to realize the systemic change Canada needs, where principles of human rights and public health that are informed by evidence guide policy decisions—not public sentiment and the moralization of behaviour.

We as a collective began several important initiatives during our four days together:
- developing a strategic road map—with concrete steps—for Canada to shift away from the policies of prohibition towards those that promote public health, human rights, and social inclusion based on the legal regulation of currently illegal substances;
- outlining areas of further research to inform this strategy and identify regulatory models for the Canadian context;
- outlining a knowledge translation strategy aimed at building momentum for policy change; and
- identifying opportunities for international collaborations that will support our goals.
From left to right: Steve Rolles, Garth Mullins, Zara Snapp, Scott Bernstein, Suzanne Fraser, Akwasi Owusu-Bempah

Many important advocates and international experts generously offered their insight, and their involvement was critical in shaping the contours of important discussions over the four days:
- Zoë Dodd, a passionate long-time human rights and harm reduction leader in Toronto who has for years stood on the frontlines of a grassroots lifesaving efforts
- Steve Rolles, an expert in substances regulation from the UK who advised the Canadian government on its cannabis regulatory framework
- Dr. Debra Meness, a skilled physician trained in both Western and traditional Ojibwe medicine from the Kitigan Zibi Anishinaabeg First Nation
- Paul Salembier, a legal mind skilled at crafting laws and precise legal language that could save lives
There were many, many more, and we thank them all.

Audience members during Peter Wall International Research Roundtable public event (April 2019)

The Research Roundtable culminated in a public forum at SFU Woodward’s, Systems Change: Envisioning a Canada Beyond Prohibition, where activist and award-winning broadcaster Garth Mullins guided our imaginations toward a world where prohibition was a thing of the past. What would that world look like? What would it take to get us there?

Peter Wall International Research Roundtable public event (April 2019)

The event was recorded as an episode of the Crackdown podcast and featured Akwasi Owusu-Bempah (University of Toronto); Steve Rolles (Transform Drug Policy Foundation, UK); Zara Snapp (Instituto RIA, Mexico); and Suzanne Fraser (Curtin University, Australia).

There are mountains of evidence that the ill-conceived “war on drugs” (prohibition) has had significant negative impacts on individuals, families and communities around the world. Far from making citizens safer, prohibition and a criminal justice approach has spawned an illegal market flush with toxic drugs that kills indiscriminately (over 10,000 in Canada in the less than three years).

Prohibition has also needlessly criminalized and ruined the lives of vulnerable people who should have never seen the inside of a jail cell. It forces individuals to turn to more dangerous methods of consumption and dissuades those who want help from accessing it. In short: it has been an abysmal failure.

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(Interactive Graph)

But one area of hope was a more clearly-defined path toward the future: creating regulatory models for opioids, stimulants, sedatives and psychedelics. Tapping into the collective knowledge in the room, we workshopped models of how four drugs might be available to consumers in a post-prohibition world, considering questions such as:
- who might have access to drugs;
- how would they access them;
- how much can they get, and
- where can they consume them.
This focus group was only the first of what we anticipate will be up to 20 focus groups across Canada to gather feedback about what Canadians would imagine a legal system would look like. With the online platform we are developing, we hope to engage an additional 40,000 Canadians in these decisions over the next two years!

Scott Bernstein, Canadian Drug Policy Coalition Director of Policy (April 2019)

Politicians with the power to enact life-saving changes to drug policy have long argued that the lack of viable models for legal regulation were a barrier to action. This project will describe a way forward to legal regulation of all drugs and no longer will they have an excuse for inaction.

Peter Wall International Research Roundtable breakout session (April 2019)

Over the four days, we explored three themes in service of our mission to advance the legal regulation of all drugs in Canada: the regulation of opioids as a response to the overdose crisis; the impact of criminal justice policies on people who use drugs; and the intersections of drug policy and the social determinants of health, including poverty, housing, stigma, income, access to healthcare.

It was from these vantage points the wealth of knowledge in the room surfaced solutions and strategies to make our shared vision a reality. The Roundtable engendered many important discussions over the four days.

It is now time to turn words into action.

The Peter Wall International Research Roundtable was supported by the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, Community Action Initiative, BCCDC Foundation for Public Health, and SFU Woodward’s.
June 4, 2019
Canadian Drug Policy Coalition/Canadian HIV / AIDS Legal Network Policy Briefs

Harm Reduction Brief

Canada is known around the world as a leader in harm reduction. It is host to the first, and only supervised consumption site in North America, Insite, which has saved lives and helped to build a healthier community in one of the most at-risk neighbourhoods in the county. Unfortunately, the federal government has moved away from harm reduction and more towards a criminal approach to drugs. Of course, there is a way forward. In our policy brief, we make the case that not only should the federal government restore the harm reduction model, but expand upon what is already in place. Please click and read below.

CDPC-HarmReduction-Brief English

CDPC-HarmReduction-Brief Français

Overdose Brief

The tragedy of drug overdose has increased dramatically in recent years. The rise of fentanyl, an extremely potent opioid, has dramatically increased overdose deaths in recent months. Policy change at the federal level is urgently needed. Fortunately, overdoses are preventable. From allowing for easier access to lifesaving medication such as naloxone, to testing the purity level of street drugs, there are several actions the government can take right now to put an end to these avoidable deaths. Our policy brief contains many commonsense policy solutions that the government can enact immediately. Please click and read.

CDPC-Overdose-Brief English

CDPC-Overdose-Brief Français

Cannabis Brief

Cannabis law is changing around the world. From the United States to Latin America, a wider consensus is growing that cannabis prohibition has failed to prevent both the sale and consumption of the plant for non-medicinal purposes. Public opinion in Canada and worldwide is experiencing a paradigm shift, and the mindset of policymakers needs to change with it. Clearly, an alternative strategy to this broken system needs to be taken seriously. In the following brief, we outline our strategic recommendations on how the federal government can end prohibition, and use its power to begin the process to create a regulatory system that works.

CDPC-Cannabis-Brief English

CDPC-Cannabis-Brief Français

October 9, 2015
Taking Control: Pathways to Drug Policies that Work
Today, the Global Commission on Drug Policy releases Taking Control: Pathways to Drug Policies that Work. The report calls on governments to rethink global drug policy, to take some immediate measures to address drug problems, and not to shy away from the transformative potential of responsible regulation as a longer term solution.

The recommendations come at a time when more and more governments are recognizing the conventional “war on drugs” approach is a failure, and that new approaches are necessary. As part of this recognition, the UN General Assembly has called for a Special Session (UNGASS) in 2016 to discuss solutions to the global drug problem. At UNGASS and other diplomatic gatherings, this report encourages UN delegates to recall the mandate of the United Nations, not least to ensure security, human rights and development.

Members of the Commission include, former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, former Colombian President César Gaviria, former Swiss President Ruth Dreifuss, Richard Branson and others. As part of the release, the Commissioners are meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and UN Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson to present the recommendations in the report.

Their recommendations are as follows:
- Putting health and community safety first requires a fundamental reorientation of policy priorities and resources, from failed punitive enforcement to proven health and social interventions.
- Ensure equitable access to essential medicines, in particular opiate- based medications for pain.
- Stop criminalizing people for drug use and possession – and stop imposing “compulsory treatment” on people whose only offense is drug use or possession.
- Rely on alternatives to incarceration for non-violent, low-level participants in illicit drug markets such as farmers, couriers and others involved in the production, transport and sale of illicit drugs.
- Focus on reducing the power of criminal organizations as well as the violence and insecurity that result from their competition with both one another and the state.
- Allow and encourage diverse experiments in legally regulating markets in currently illicit drugs, beginning with but not limited to cannabis, coca leaf and certain novel psychoactive substances.
- Take advantage of the opportunity presented by the upcoming UNGASS in 2016 to reform the global drug policy regime.
You can view the entire report here.
September 9, 2014
To ticket or not to ticket – Conservatives take a tiny step on cannabis

For a split second, the door to drug policy reform in Canada opened ever so slightly. But then Justice Minister Peter MacKay was quick to slam it shut: “We’re not talking about decriminalization or legalization.”

On March 5th, MacKay announced that the federal government is looking at changes to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that would make it possible for police to issues tickets for possession of small amounts of cannabis.

The announcement follows last summer’s resolution from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police asking the federal government to consider ticketing options. But it also follows Justin Trudeau’s considerably bolder endorsement of cannabis legalization. So I can’t help but wonder if this is a move to stem the Liberals’ rise in the polls.

MacKay’s proposal would allow police to issue tickets to people possessing less than 3 grams of cannabis. It’s a positive move in one way, because it means these cases will no longer be sent to criminal court. So otherwise law-abiding citizens will not be burdened with a record of criminal conviction, which can have serious implications for travel and employment.

But it also comes with the potential of a significant downside. In Australia, for example, similar measures resulted in a “net-widening” effect. That is, because it was easier for police to process minor cannabis offences, individual officers shifted away from using case-by-case discretion in giving informal cautions, to a process of formally recording all minor offences. The result was a significant increase in formal infractions, but no change in the pattern of cannabis use.

Still even if we assume MacKay’s changes hold promise, we need to be clear that these modest steps are not the endgame to a much needed overhaul to drug laws in this country – especially considering that jurisdictions bordering Canada are moving toward legalization. Is this is best Canada can do given the momentous changes taking place around the world?

Critics of legalization take pains to point out that cannabis can harm the health of its users. Of course it can! So can alcohol, but the lesson of alcohol prohibition is that an underground market is an unsafe market. The purpose of a legally regulated cannabis market is to ensure that we use the painful mistakes of alcohol and tobacco regulation to create the best possible approach to cannabis. Regulation rather than prohibition will make this substance safer, control its production and distribution, and ensure that at least some of the profits go to the public coffers.

The other problem with cannabis prohibition is that the effects of drug laws are inequitably applied to poor and Indigenous Canadians. And prohibition doesn’t keep cannabis out of the hands of kids. As Unicef’s 2013 report on the well-being of children in rich countries reveals, Canadian youth use the most marijuana compared to our economic counterparts around the world. Yet they use the third least amount of tobacco. What accounts for this second stat? A solid, legally regulated market that relies on stringent controls and education about the harms of tobacco.

It’s great that MacKay has taken a first step, but we need to keep moving toward a saner, safer approach to cannabis use. The CDPC is committed to talking with Canadians about the possibilities of cannabis regulation. To that end, in the coming months we’ll unveil proposals to help to build a regulatory framework that takes into consideration what we’ve learned from public health approaches to alcohol and tobacco. Canada can do better.

April 17, 2014
Cannabis regulation is by no means a simple matter, but it can be done

At the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition (CDPC) one of things we’ve noticed is that any blog we publish on cannabis regulation attracts more attention than any other topic. This is because there’s widespread interest in any discussion of changes to the laws that govern cannabis. Unfortunately when it comes to the nuts and bolts of cannabis regulation – in other words – the how of regulation, interest tends to drop off. This is because regulation is actually rather tedious. This claim is borne out by the length of the proposed regulations for legal recreational cannabis markets in the U.S. states of Washington and Colorado. That’s why I’m going to make a special plea to you our dear readers to stay with me as I say a few words about what regulation might actually entail.

I think it’s fair to suggest that the CDPC favours a model of regulation that draws on the best evidence from public health regulation of alcohol and tobacco. But when it comes to cannabis regulation the devil really is in the details.

There’s no magic bullet that will make all the current problems with cannabis prohibition disappear. But thanks to the Health Officer’s Council of BC, some of the heavy lifting when it comes to creating models for drug regulation has been done. If you’re curious, check out their 2011 report. As you can see from the diagram drawn from their 2011 report, regulations for cannabis should not be so loose that they create a free and unregulated market for cannabis; nor should regulations be so overly restrictive that we end up reproducing the negative aspects of the current underground economy (control by organized crime, etc.).

At the same time we need to be clear about the goals we hope to achieve with a legal regulated market for cannabis. Ideally our regulations will help protect and improve public health, reduce drug related crime, protect the young and vulnerable, protect human rights and provide good value for money. So what are some of the things we’ll need to consider? How about we start with the basics.

Presumably legalization would entail the removal of cannabis from Schedule 2 of the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, followed by its inclusion in the Food and Drug Act. It seems like the next logical thing to do would be to then turn over the regulation of cannabis to the provinces, in the same way that alcohol is currently regulated. We would want to ensure that there is at least some consistency across the provinces so that means somebody at the federal level will have to oversee the regulations as they emerge. That’s the easy part because legalization would ALSO entail consideration of at least the following issues: production, product, packaging, vendor and outlet controls, marketing controls, creation of a system of regulators and inspectors as well as on-going research and monitoring.

For this blog post, I want to focus on production and product controls. Future blogs may consider the other items on the already long list noted above. My comments are phrased as questions to stimulate discussion of regulation rather than to propose firm rules for how a legal recreational cannabis market might operate.

In Canada, marijuana is currently produced in one of two ways – under existing legal medical marijuana guidelines or in illegal circumstances. Growing marijuana takes places in a vast array of situations ranging from a few plants grown for personal use all the way to large-scale industrial size operations with 100’s of plants.

Thus regulating the growth of marijuana for a legal recreational market will not be simple. Many people are very attached to their small-scale gardens and it would be difficult to impossible (as well as undesirable) to eliminate growing marijuana for personal use. At the same time it’s important not to turn the whole thing over to heavily capitalized large scale commercial producers whose main motivation is profit, especially since the range of available strains of marijuana has been the result of innovation by many small-scale growers. Thus, we need to ensure that the best practices in indoor, outdoor, personal, commercial production are preserved while ensuring that cannabis is produced in safe and clean facilities. We will also need to decide who is the appropriate authority for regulating growing operations: municipalities or provinces or some combination of both. Neither seem overly keen on this role so they will require some convincing.

Okay, if your head doesn’t hurt yet lets turn our attention to product controls. Product controls include issues like price, age limits, potency, permissible preparations (edibles, tinctures, etc.), quality control, and labeling and packaging requirements. Price is a key issue when it comes to meeting public health goals. Price can help shape sales and thus use of cannabis, so we want to ensure that pricing reflects what we’ve learned from alcohol – namely that alcohol consumption is sensitive to price and that price must in some way be related to potency. Related to price is taxation – at what point in the chain from seed to sale will cannabis be taxed and at what rate? And what preparations will cannabis regulations allow; plant materials, tinctures and oils, edibles? Right now Canada’s medical marijuana access program only allows for the distribution of plant material. Clearly this is a very limited approach given that the medical cannabis dispensaries have created a range of edible and other products that eliminate the necessity of smoking cannabis. We will also need to decide where we stand on potency: in other words will we put limits on how potent products can be, and given that there are over 100 cannabinoids, how will we decide which ones we want to measure and regulate.

Okay so I haven’t covered other essential issues like vendor controls, marketing and evaluation and monitoring but I think you get the picture. Regulation is by no means a simple matter, but it can be done. In fact, experience from legal recreational markets in Washington and Colorado will provide valuable insights that can inform Canada’s approach. And regulation has the potential to create conditions where cannabis production and use is a whole lot safer than the current approach – prohibition.

November 20, 2013
Did You Know that Marijuana is Illegal in Canada?

The idea that marijuana is legal in this country is one of the persistent myths about this substance. In fact, marijuana is still illegal and is listed in Schedule 2 of the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. This means that unless you have authorization to use medical marijuana, you cannot possess, sell or produce marijuana without risking a criminal penalty. In fact, under 2012 revisions to the law, you could receive a mandatory minimum prison sentence for growing just six plants if any of a number of “aggravating factors” are present (such as being near a school or having children at the same place as the plants).

Another persistent myth is that police don’t bother to enforce cannabis laws especially possession. It’s true that some police forces have de-prioritized enforcement of possession, but certainly not all.

According to Statistics Canada, in 2012, there were 57,429 police reported incidents of cannabis possession. This number represents police resources that could be better spent elsewhere and this number also represents a ridiculous incursion on the civil liberties of far too many Canadians.

Prohibition of cannabis seems even more regressive when we consider that legal recreational marijuana will soon be available in the U.S. states of Colorado and Washington. In the aftermath of successful 2012 ballot initiative campaigns, both states have released draft regulations to govern the production and sale of recreational cannabis. Changes in these U.S. states were a hot topic at the recent International Drug Policy Reform conference in Denver where speakers from Colorado and Washington outlined the rules for “tightly controlled” markets for recreational cannabis.

Both models of regulation draw on experience with regulating alcohol, although regulations for recreational cannabis will be far more stringent. Both states require numerous controls including age limits, packaging information, and closely controlled documenting of wholesale and retail sales of cannabis to recreational users. Some of the proceeds of taxation will be directed to public health and educational goals.

In Colorado the legalization of cannabis builds on a successful model of medical cannabis developed in that state over a number of years. In fact, during the three-day conference I had an opportunity to visit two medical cannabis dispensaries and an industrial size cannabis garden. Good Medicine and River Rock Medical Cannabis are just two of the companies in Denver that offer patients an array of medical cannabis products ranging from raw plant materials, to oils, and edibles in a myriad of forms. Lessons learned from these operations will be transferred to recreational cannabis when it becomes available for sale on January 1, 2014.

What’s remarkable about the changes taking place in these two states is that they employ full legal regulation, not the models of decriminalization already in operation in other parts of the world. Decriminalization involves reducing or eliminating penalties for possession while still keeping production and sales illegal. Though an important step in the right direction, decriminalization still leaves cannabis in an unregulated market of producers and sellers.

It was clear from visiting the two medical cannabis dispensaries that legalization makes this substance available in a variety of well-labeled forms and gives consumers the option to choose organic products. Security cameras that feed back to state regulators in real-time, monitor the dispensaries and the gardens. The people working in these operations are clearly knowledgeable and professional in the care they take with their products and their customers. Not only does this model work for consumers, but it also provides badly needed jobs.

The scientific evidence suggests that cannabis has a smaller public health impact than alcohol. It seems that the real crime is staying a course that actually makes us less safe and less healthy because right now, marijuana is only available in Canada in an unregulated market. So what’s holding us back in this country? Maybe it’s that drugs are still politically expedient and some politicians don’t seem to have any qualms about using fears about drugs to get votes. At the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition we think it’s time for change and it’s time to challenge regressive and uninformed policies on cannabis. What do you think?

October 29, 2013
Illegal Drugs Get Cheaper, More Potent

Sometimes my work as a drug policy analyst is really hard to explain to my non-drug policy friends. Most of the research findings about drug policy that I deal with on a daily basis fly in the face of conventional wisdom about drugs, drug users and drug laws. One of these pieces of conventional wisdom taught routinely to Canadian high school students is that drug law enforcement is necessary to keep the supply of illegal drug under control, and to discourage young people especially, from using these drugs.

Change in estimated heroin price and purity in the context of the annual drug control budget in the United States. Source: Global Commission on Drug Policy

As any of you in the field of drug policy reform know, despite the claims by police, drugs are now more available, higher purity and more potent than they were 20 years ago. So says a recent publication in the British Journal of Medicine Open, entitled, “The temporal relationship between drug supply indicators: An audit of international government surveillance systems.” Whew that’s mouthful. Authors of this study at the BC based International Centre for Science in Drug Policy culled from two decades (1990 to 2010) of government databases on illegal drug supply, and found the supply of major illegal drugs has (with a few exceptions) increased. With the exception of powder cocaine, the purity and/or potency of illegal drugs in the U.S. generally increased. Their findings also confirm that the price of illegal drugs generally decreased.

These findings once again throw into question the effectiveness of current government drug policies that emphasize supply reduction at the expense of other goals. These deficiencies are aptly illustrated by the World Drug Report, an annual publication of the United Nations Office on drugs and Crime that relies on reports of police drug seizures (i.e. size and estimates of drugs found in raids) along with police-based estimates of crop size (i.e. for cannabis and coca) to evaluate the effectiveness of drug policies. The larger the seizure, the more enforcement officials assert the effectiveness of their approaches. But the findings described above suggest that no matter how hard we try to apply supply-side drug enforcement, drugs are still widely available, cheap and increasingly potent.

As the authors of this study suggest, new measures of the success of drug policies are urgently needed. Rather than using measures of drug supply, its time for governments to assess the effectiveness of their drug policies by using indicators of drug-related harm like overdoses, rates of blood-borne disease transmission (i.e. HIV or Hep C) and emergency room visits…you get the picture. And as the Global Commission on Drug Policy reports, supply-side drug enforcement actually exacerbates the problem of drugs by driving people away from supports and services, at the same time as it creates a growing underground market in drugs.

Sounds sensible, but Canada has poor quality data for measuring the health of people who use drugs. The Canadian Alcohol and Drug Use Monitoring Survey is small and relies on the use of land-lines. There’s no national level data on drug overdoses like there is in the U.S. This lack of data seemingly reinforces the proposition that if you can’t count it, it’s not a problem.

We do know how many people are arrested for drug crimes (57,000 plus for cannabis possession in 2012). But these measures only tell us about police priorities, though they do suggest that the criminalization of people who use drugs is a major way Canada attempts to limit drug use – an approach shown to be less than effective at stopping drug use and a key driver of stigma and discrimination.

So it’s time for all of us to sit down with our friends and family and explain that the conventional maxims of drug policy fail to keep us safe, do not limit the supply of drugs and overlook the health and other needs of people who use drugs. Clearly it’s time for a new approach.

October 10, 2013