A British Columbia Supreme Court Justice has granted a temporary injunction against the B.C. NDP government’s legislation banning all drug use in a wide range of public spaces, pausing the law three days before it was set to come into force.
The B.C. Restricting Public Consumption of Illegal Substances Act passed in early November and was set to become law on Jan. 1. However, it would not have immediately impacted people’s lives because cabinet has not yet approved regulations to implement it.
The proposed changes would ban illegal substance use from all public parks to sports fields and beaches, as well as close to any workplaces, skate parks, pools, transit stops, residences or playgrounds — including within six metres of “a place to which the public has access” and “a prescribed place.”
But on Friday, B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson ordered the law paused until March 31, ruling it would likely result in more deaths, displacement and criminalization of people who use drugs.
I don’t really get the purpose of this law, “drugs that are illegal are now more illegal”.
In politics, looking like you are doing something is often just as good as actually doing something.
They can round up all the addicts in Vancouver and give themselves a high five at their fantastically stupid policy.
Good. If people don’t want to see reality then start supporting consumption sights and safe supply. No one wants needles in the playground, but I also don’t want people dying because of an out of control addiction.
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Do we have enough? Because there were an awful lot of deaths last year. That’s a lot of people who will never have the opportunity to go to rehab.
But yes we also need more rehab.
Edit: a quick Google search tells me that there is 1 safe consumption location in Prince George, it is only open 6 days a week and only from 9 am to 6:30 pm and there is a mobile service apparently but I don’t know of many unhoused people who are able to just whip out a phone and call them up whenever they find a fix.
And when something is for “Prince George”, you know they mean it is for the entire Northern region.
Rehab doesn’t help if nothing is being done to deal with the underlying issues - a lack of stability and on-going trauma. A fair number of the homeless take drugs to escape the pain and trauma of being homeless in the first place.
And it doesn’t help that with or without drugs, nothing would change on that front no matter how hard they try – getting into permanent shelter is just too expensive for the homeless. Even the gainfully employed with full time jobs are having one hell of a time keeping a roof over their heads.
Without permanent, stable shelter that they can call their own, rehab is less effective than trying to bail out a boat with a cannon-hole below the waterline using nothing but a colander.
We need supervised designated sites if we’re going to outright ban it everywhere.
