This Tuesday an exemption to the federal law for allow possession for personal use of small amounts of drugs like how cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin or fentanyl, by persons over the age of 18 in the Canadian province of british columbia. The measure, which is part of a pilot program, will last until 2026 and has been possible thanks to the authorization granted by the Canadian Government to the British Columbia authorities.
Under the exemption approved by the Canadian Department of Health, possession of up to 2.5 grams of this type of drugs but both the traffic as the sale of illegal substances remain penalized in the province. Likewise, the possession of drugs in schools, day care centers or airports continues to be illegal. With this measure, the provincial government intends to change the focus of penalizing drug addiction for one more directed towards awareness and public health.
Information and assistance
“Instead of treating these people like criminals, they will be given care and compassion. will have access to information”, explained this Monday at a press conference Jennifer Whiteside, Minister of Mental Health and Dependencies of British Columbia. Whiteside explained that people in possession of up to 2.5 grams of drugs will be expelled from the establishments but they will not be charged with any crime. In exchange, they will receive information about a range of social and health resources for detoxification at your disposal.
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In this way, the province of British Columbia, on the Pacific coast of Canada, intends to stop being one of the most affected in the North American country by the crisis of opioids and other illicit drugs. Only in 2022, 2,272 people died in the province from overdoses, the second deadliest year in its history, a report from the province’s Forensic Office revealed on Tuesday. In 2021, the record number of 2,306 deaths was reached in a province with a population of just over 5 million people compared to the 2,668 overdose deaths recorded in the US city of New York, with an official population of 8.4 million. people in 2021.
The pilot program has been criticized by user groups and activists as saying that the 2.5 gram limit is too small. The lack of safe access to drugs has also been pointed out as one of the problems of the program, whose objective is to reduce the number of deaths.