Search results for: “driving ”
-
Budget 2025 Withdraws Public Money from Canadians’ Health and Well-being, Deposits it in the Pockets of Military and Policing
This week’s federal budget commits billions to US-style policies that will make the unregulated drug market more profitable and less predictable, harming the health and well-being of communities. In the weeks and months leading up to Budget 2025, Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke of a pivotal national moment, emphasizing how Canadians must be ready to…
-
Unpacking Police Statements on Drug Seizures: What Do We Know?
Police communications about drug seizures vary widely in their accuracy. These statements rarely share specific evidence or data sources and sometimes contain errors or overstatements, as in the recent case in Belleville, Ontario and emerging information on Prince George. Police announcing large seizures of prescribed alternatives to the unregulated drug supply as Prince George RCMP…
-
IGNORING ITS OWN DATA, B.C. REVIVES CRIMINALIZATION
On January 14, 2026, the province of B.C. announced it would end its limited decriminalization policy and reinstate criminal penalties for personal drug possession.1 The province’s decision not to renew its decriminalization policy appears to have been informed – not by the province’s own data indicators, not by public health and safety experts, not by…
-
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Grieving mother urges honesty and action at federal toxic drug crisis committee
Ottawa, ON | April 29, 2024 – On the eve of the tenth anniversary of her son Danny’s death from unregulated drugs, Petra Schulz, co-founder of Moms Stop the Harm (MSTH), will testify before the federal Standing Committee on Health (HESA) today on the “Opioid Epidemic and Toxic Drug Crisis.” Since MSTH’s founding in 2016,…
-
Why Canada is no longer a leader in global drug policy
Co-authored with Jenna Valleriani, director of Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy. This op-ed first appeared in the Globe and Mail, Feb. 27, 2015 Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s statement about the failures of our existing drug policy is mostly on point. It’s just the last bit he gets wrong: “I think what everyone believes and…
-
World Aids Day 2013: If our goal is zero, drug policy reform is crucial
Zero New HIV Infections. Zero Discrimination and Zero AIDS-related deaths. That is the goal set by UNAIDS over the next two years. But when it comes to stopping HIV transmission associated injection drug use, we have a long way to go. “An effective AIDS response among people who inject drugs is undermined by punitive policy frameworks…
-
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…
-
10 Years in Crisis: B.C.’s Decade-Long Public Health Emergency
April 14, 2026 marks the 10th anniversary of the declaration of a public health emergency in the province of B.C. following an unprecedented increase in drug-related harms.1 Then provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall “served notice under the Public Health Act to exercise emergency powers” after 76 deaths in January 2016, which at the time…
-
The Global Commission on the war on drugs and HIV/AIDS
On June 26th, the Global Commission on Drug Policy released a groundbreaking report on the war on drugs and its failures. Titled “The war on drugs and HIV/AIDS: How the criminalization of drugs fuels the global pandemic”, the report focuses on the relationship between drug policy and the spread of HIV. Covering a range of…