Canadian court says drug users have ‘constitutional right’ to get high in children’s playgrounds

BC Supreme Court Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson ruled that it would cause “irreparable harm” to prevent drug addicts from using public places – even children’s playgrounds – to ingest their narcotics, the National Post reports.

The judge was ruling in favor of a “harm reduction” group that was seeking to stop the BC government from limiting in any way the widespread use of drugs for personal use in public places.

The provincial government passed the “playground” amendment on Sept. 18, 2023 after decriminalizing the personal use of fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, meth, and MDMA.

After receiving an exemption from the federal government, BC passed a law to allow anyone in the province to legally possess 2.5 grams of these potentially lethal substances.

The playground amendment was a reluctant effort by BC’s woke New Democratic Party government to compromise with recovery groups and parents who did not want their children subjected to addicts shooting up or the health hazards of drug-related paraphernalia littering parks and playgrounds.

Hinkson acknowledged that public drug use might create potential danger, inconvenience, “social harms,” and even “unpredictable behavior” from addicts strung out on drugs.

“I … accept that the attendant public safety risks are particularly concerning given that many of the restricted areas and places in the Act are frequented by seniors, people with disabilities, and families with young children,” wrote Hinkson.

But the safety of the addicts comes first.

“I am satisfied that the suspension of the Act … can be properly characterized as a substantial public benefit,” he wrote.

Although this is a temporary injunction in effect until March 31, Hinkson had made it much more than that by tethering his judgment to Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As the National Post notes, Hinkson went so far as to say that any effort to stop drug use in public spaces violated “the right to life, liberty and security of the person.”

Hinkson also accepted the argument of the Harm Reduction Nurses Association – who led the legal objection to the playground amendment – that telling people they can’t use drugs in public would inevitably result in “lone drug use” and even more addicts dying from overdoses.

However, drug addicts in the province are already discouraged from using alone.

There are five so-called “safe injection sites” in Vancouver alone and 20 in BC, where heroin addicts have always been able to legally shoot up drugs legally and under the supervision of medical orderlies.

Vancouver opened the first such facility – Insite – in 2003. Harm reduction advocates argue that these sites save lives because addicts are being watched while they are present at the building. But they are under no obligation to return to the site.

These facilities, also called “safe consumption sites” by the Trudeau government that has greatly expanded the program across Canada since 2015, have failed to breach the escalating opioid overdoses in Vancouver and B.C., where the province continues to set record numbers of deaths. In October 2023, BC again surpassed 2,000 opioid overdose deaths.