XPost: can.politics, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   From: larryparker@alt.net   
      
   British Columbia ended its drug decriminalization “experiment” last   
   month after the liberal leaders of the west coast Canadian province were   
   forced to admit that the program had caused widespread chaos and failed   
   to alleviate the intensifying addiction crisis devastating communities.   
      
   The program “hasn’t delivered the results that we hoped for,” said Josie   
   Osborne, British Columbia’s Health Minister, in what could perhaps be   
   the understatement of the century. “At the end of the three-year pilot,   
   it is difficult, if not even possible, to attribute certain changes [in   
   the number of people accessing care] directly to decriminalization,” she   
   added.   
      
   This failure mirrors Oregon’s recent retreat from drug decriminalization   
   and strikes another blow to the insistence of American liberals that   
   allowing open use of hard drugs is a viable policy choice. In 2024, the   
   Beaver State’s Democrat-dominated legislature was forced to confront the   
   same reality as British Columbia, rolling back much of its   
   decriminalization policy after a surge in overdose deaths and worsening   
   public disorder.   
      
   The cases of Oregon and British Columbia teach the same hard lesson:   
   conservative warnings were right. Decriminalizing hard drugs does not   
   reduce harm. It multiplies death, erodes public safety, and negatively   
   impacts everyone, not just users.   
      
   Over the objections of Conservative Party lawmakers in 2022, Canada’s   
   Liberal–New Democratic governing coalition granted British Columbia a   
   first-of-its-kind exemption from the nation’s Controlled Drugs and   
   Substances Act. Then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau celebrated the move   
   as a “pilot” meant to be scaled nationwide. The exemption effectively   
   decriminalized hard-drug possession for adults, allowing individuals to   
   carry up to 2.5 grams of cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstasy, heroin, or   
   fentanyl without arrest or prosecution.   
      
   The results were predictably disastrous.   
      
   Canadian policymakers wagered that “destigmatizing” addiction by framing   
   it as a health matter rather than a criminal justice issue would steer   
   more users into treatment. But the policy had the exact opposite effect.   
   By imposing no accountability and requiring no recovery, it established   
   a permission structure for open, destructive drug use in public spaces.   
      
   Parents soon reported playgrounds littered with discarded syringes.   
   People began smoking fentanyl and meth openly inside hospitals. Within a   
   year, the Vancouver Police Department testified to Parliament that   
   officers were confronting “several high-profile instances of problematic   
   drug use” in parks, beaches, and transit corridors. Small businesses   
   suffered most, as families simply stopped going out, ceding public life   
   to the chaos the state had chosen to tolerate.   
      
   A comparative study examining British Columbia alongside several other   
   Canadian provinces found that leniency toward hard drug possession   
   coincided with a rise in opioid-related hospitalizations. The findings   
   punctured liberal claims that decriminalization would improve public   
   health, raising unavoidable questions about whether Parliament’s   
   progressive majority had recklessly conducted a social experiment on an   
   unwitting public.   
      
   But perhaps the greatest scandal of all in British Columbia’s fiasco is   
   how long it took the government to reverse itself. Back in 2024,   
   Canada’s Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, correctly described drug   
   decriminalization as “a wacko policy from a wacko PM that’s destroying   
   lives.”   
      
   Trudeau and his Liberal Party responded not by reckoning with the   
   policy’s failure, but by accusing Poilievre of courting “white   
   nationalist groups” and then kicking him out of the House of Commons for   
   the day.   
      
   Ultimately, it wasn’t rising deaths and public disorder that finally   
   moved Canada’s Liberal leadership to reverse course – it was politics.   
      
   As polling ahead of the 2024 election showed growing momentum for   
   Conservative challengers, Trudeau and his allies recriminalized the use   
   of hard drugs in public – a change designed not to actually stop the   
   harm, but to hide it from the view of voters.   
      
   But as the consequences of the policy got worse and worse, some Liberals   
   finally began to grow a conscience. Speaking at a Vancouver event in   
   late 2025, British Columbia Premier David Eby conceded, “I was wrong on   
   drug decriminalization and the effect it would have. It was not the   
   right policy.”   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)