2023-10-29 07:52:45
The project of Government of Canada on the euthanasia law It has created a great controversy in the North American country. The Government of Justin Trudeau intends expand the law and allow people with drug addiction to request medically assisted death. Inclusion in the so-called medical assistance in dying (MAID) law is scheduled for March 2024. In the same period, the legislation is expected to include people suffering from mental illnesses, an addition that had already been announced this year , but ended up being postponed.
According to the data provided by Cristina Serrano, Spanish journalist based in Vancouverstudies reveal that The average age of people who inject drugs is 28 to 35 years old, but in several places a large part of them are under 20 years old. Thus, a study carried out in Quebec in 1996 indicates that one in five of CVI consumers is a teenager. Although it is difficult to detect trends from the limited number of existing studies, the data seem to indicate a slight increase in the age of participants in syringe exchange programs. The average age of the five most recent investigations is 32 years, above the averages found in all previous studies.
The Canadian Government’s decision on the euthanasia law has sparked controversy. There are experts who advocate the inclusion of all people with mental illnesses in the assisted dying program, but there is no consensus.
The fact that people addicted to drugs will be included in the future has raised a wave of criticism and is being debated at the conference of the Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine in Victoria, British Columbia.
Some organizations of addicts and activists do not view the initiative favorably, as they believe that other public health measures, including better access to overdose prevention sites or opioid drugs such as morphine or methadone, are more needed. There are people who are really struggling and who are not getting the kind of support and help that they need. Addicts and NGOs call the measure “eugenic.”
Free public healthcare in Canada is reserved for citizens legally residing in Canada who meet certain criteria related to their employment and residence status. Therefore, neither tourists, nor irregular immigrants, nor residents with a work permit but not yet entitled to use Canada’s public health system have the right to it.
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This debate occurs in the midst of the crisis over fentanyl consumption in Canada, where the so-called zombie drug is wreaking havoc on all age groups.
“Addicts receive $600 a month to buy drugs and thus avoid crime,” says Cristina Serrano. “Things are getting ugly.”
“In Vancouver, in the province of British Columbia in Canada, deaths from Fentanyl overdoses have doubled year after year” and “could go higher.” The Spanish journalist is scandalized by the Government’s intention to legalize euthanasia for drug addicts. “They have intact organs”, says. And this drug does not distinguish between ages, social classes or purchasing power. “There are more and more normal people hooked on fentanyl,” she insists.
The Canadian province of British Columbia began this year a pilot program unprecedented in that country that decriminalizes the possession of small amounts of hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin. Adults can possess up to 2.5 g of those drugs, as well as methamphetamine, fentanyl and morphine. This is an experiment lasting three years that has the purpose, according to the Canadian Government, of treating the problem as a health alarm and not a police one.
In the United States and Canada, overdose deaths, driven primarily by the epidemic of non-medical use of fentanyl, continue to break records. Preliminary estimates in the United States point to more than 107,000 overdose deaths in 2021, up from about 92,000 in 2020, according to El World Drug Report 2022.
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