Think of it this way: decriminalization (like criminalization) is a process. Social change doesn’t occur instantaneously with an exemption from a section of legislation, that’s ridiculous.
And “decriminalization” is not the opposite of criminalization: its just the first step – the first awkward phase for people trying re-enter a world they haven’t part of for a long time, because they were rejected. This will go a lot better if we can recognize and talk about the fact that decriminalization applies to everyone, drug-using or not. We’re rebuilding a society here, people could actually help. No exemptions.
“decriminalization” is an exemption under secret 56(1) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act so that adults in possession of 2.5g or less of certain drugs are not subject to criminal charges AND HAS NOTHING TO WITH PUBLIC DRUG USE WHICH IS NOT PROHIBITED BY THE ACT, as the CDSA is ostensibly intended to control substances not human behavior, individually or collectively (ie. economic or discriminatory).
Eby’s request exposes a gap (or more precisely a caesura) in the legislation that if exploited will cause the entire structure of drug prohibition in Canada to collapse. however, if the federal government ignores the text of the law and grants Eby’s request to do what a B.C supreme court considered likely to cause “irreparable harm” to already marginalized people by, in essence, criminalizing people deprived of housing, every province will “decriminalize” drugs in order to criminalize homelessness, poverty and visible public suffering.
I realize Eby’s reversal looks reactionary but it’s much worse than that: its the legislated disappearing of an already dehumanized population, people who have been thrust out of society because the rent is too high for them to afford.
An act that is criminalized only when its public and when a police officer has reasonable grounds to believe it has recently occurred is not about drugs but about who is and who isn’t the public: that is what our drug law is for, and has ever been.
Police officers will have reasonable grounds to believe that land defenders, climate justice activists, protestors for a free Palestine, people taking the streets because Black Lives Matter – that all of us recently consumed an illegal substance. because police believe.
Eby’s request exposes the futility of drug prohibition since having to NOW criminalize drug use (a ‘loophole’ indeed) would be admitting that prohibiting the manufacturing, trafficking and possession of certain drugs for more than a century has been not only a total failure but also an absurd lie.
As a result, Canada’s facade of progressive drug policy (safe consumption sites, safe supply) is predicated on EXEMPTIONS from the CDSA, a practice that surely indicates it’s a BAD LAW, as if the 8000 people who are killed every year by our drug law aren’t enough.
write a new drug law.
this is a good moment to look back at the letter that DULF received from Health Canada (April 2022) rejecting their application for a section 56 exemption because it is a brutal illustration of how governments use policy to commit mass murder.
This letter is being sent in response to your request for a subsection 56(1) exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA) to operate a Safe Supply Fulfillment Centre and Cocaine, Heroin, and Methamphetamine Compassion Clubs in Vancouver, British Columbia.
if exemptions to the law are in the public interest doesnt that mean its a bad law?
Under subsection 56(1) of the CDSA, the Minister of Health may grant an exemption from provisions of the Act or its regulations, if in the opinion of the Minister, it is necessary for a medical or scientific purpose, or it is otherwise in the public interest.
this is a WILD statement that raises a question we need to seriously consider. what is the purpose of canada’s drug policy? (its obviously not the maintenance of the health and safety of canadians. more than twenty die every day. as a result of this policy.)
In forming my opinion as to whether to grant the requested exemption, I have also considered the purposes of the CDSA, which are: the protection of public health and the maintenance of public safety.
you see what they did right here, they divide people who use drugs from Canadians whose health and safety the government must protect, oh we’re not human to them or included in the “public”
In assessing exemption requests, it is my duty to consider whether the exemption request before me would achieve this goal without posing unacceptable risks to the health and safety of Canadians.
there’s a long bit about International Drug Control Conventions (ie the war on drugs) and how canada has OBLIGATIONS and cannot break them and serious public safety risks and no alternatives (such as a domestic supply produced by a crown corporation) are offered so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
but by this refusal and failing to provide an alternative beyond a dozen Safe Supply pilot projects – the federal government is maintaining mass social murder and denying the constitutional rights of canadians who use drugs
After careful consideration, I intend to refuse your current request for a subsection 56(1) exemption, which would allow the purchase of illegally produced controlled substances from illegal vendors on darkweb markets. Supplying drugs from the dark web is not a viable option for advancing the objectives of the CDSA, namely the protection of public health and the maintenance of public safety.
the law requires them to compel our deaths, to keep you safe.
Of course there’s a way of being other than criminalized or decriminalized: that third thing is called liberated.
late to the apocalypse 