Trudeau pressured to decriminalize illegal drugs amid rise in opioid deaths across Canada

With the opioid crisis wreaking havoc across Canada, many groups are urging prime minister Trudeau to remedy the situation by re-centring addiction and drug use as health issues, rather than criminal.

In Canada, thousands of people lose their lives every year due to drug overdoses, and addiction remains a huge problem in many regions. Despite efforts by governments and organizations at all levels, the crisis has shown few signs of letting up any time soon.

As Global News reports, nearly 70 organizations from across Canada penned a letter to Justin Trudeau asking him to include drug policy reform as a priority for his new term as prime minister. Among them are the HIV Legal Network, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, and the National Association of Women and the Law, all of whom share the common goal of eliminating penalties for drug possession and use.

While the idea of decriminalizing all drugs strikes many as foolhardy, the policy has been quite effective in Portugal, who in the span of less than 20 years went from being the heroin and HIV capital of Europe, to a nation others look to as inspiration. Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 1999, and in 2001 they introduced laws that send drug dealers to prison, while providing those who are found to be possessing drugs with a doctor, a lawyer, and a social worker. The goal was to treat substance abuse as a health issue, not criminal.

In Canada, while such policies seem a long way off, steps have been taken to conquer one of the leading causes of drug-related death, unsafe supply. Vancouver, whose downtown eastside is infamous for its drug problem, opened North America's first supervised drug injection site in 2003, and the practice has been emulated elsewhere in the country with promising results.

According to Global News, the Trudeau Liberals did at one point introduce legislation to treat drug use as a health issue, however the bill died when the election was called in August.

The organizations who wrote the aforementioned letter to Trudeau say his government has not done enough. "Each day that goes by under a regime of criminal prohibition is a day in which government policy contributes to the often-deadly stigma surrounding drug use," they stated. "The time to decriminalize drugs is long overdue … There is no time to waste as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to exacerbate the ongoing public health crises of drug toxicity injuries and deaths."

The goal, according to the letter, is to decriminalize all drugs, and remove all criminal penalties related to possession and use. These changes, which have shown success in Portugal, have yet to be accepted by the vast majority of Canadians.