getting a little tired of the crack/meth heads

[you&me]

It seems that battle against production may never be won, but what about a focus on distribution? Make dealing drugs just not worth it... Like, get caught selling fentanyl and get 1 year in prison for every pill.

I know we're trying to cut down on prison populations, but I have to imagine if you make the penalty severe enough, rather than end up in jail, most dealers just don't do it in the first place.

I'm sure this sounds incredibly naive and will be shot down by those more familiar than me...

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

A new residential treatment centre recently opened in Red Deer. Two more to follow in Lethbridge and the Blood Reserve.

https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/...marshall-smith

Haven’t heard any NIMBY outrage about them, right-wing or otherwise.

Did you read the first sentence?

Sitting on the north edge of Red Deer, Alta., where industrial land meets farmland,

This is not in a community as described by marsplasticeraser and is essentially where I suggested, outside of town. I'm not sure where the others are, but I'd guess they are also in more isolated areas.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by cam_wmh

You mean, like hmm, wage a battle on the producers and suppliers?
I bet that would totally work. Actually wait, even better - like elect a former charismatic leader type from Hollywood to lead us to victory. I just can't think of what to name it, I mean this war.

We're a big country, we should consider rural enclaves to house these individuals. Preferably far up North away from the normal population, you know, 'out of sight, out of mind?'

We could call them 'Gulags.'

And then we could help these poor folks kick their habit by making big rocks into smaller rocks!

They'd have a place to sleep, 3 meals a day, we could even offer Art Therapy through fence-painting?

Just...ignore all the barbed-wire and men with dogs and guns.

[activeStick]

BC is the first in Canada to provide universal coverage for opioid treatments to its residents.

https://ground.news/article/bc-becom...atments_c98f48

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

That kind of naiveté seems to be a part of it. Intelligent, self-disciplined, well-intentioned university graduates imagine how they’d behave if they were on the street - I’d seek out a safe supply of drugs, use them in a monitored place, and then I’d enrol in a treatment program - and assume that’s how homeless addicts should behave when offered those resources. They can’t put themselves in the mindset of someone who simply wants to get as wasted as they can, right now, and #### everything else.

I hear your point, but I think in these discussions our mental pictures tend to skew too much to the 'total lost-cause' individuals we see on the streets.

A lot of these resources are directed to catch people before they reach that lost-cause stage. For example:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...tion-1.6733433

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

That may have been the case 6 or 8 years ago. No longer. Public lawlessness has been a major issue in recent elections in San Francisco, LA, New York, etc. In most cases, progressive candidates are losing to law and order types.

Fair. I suppose my question would be: is Calgary currently going from say 3/10 to 6/10 on the social disorder scale, whereas those cities are going from a 6/10 to 9/10?

Probably a better way to articulate that, but my argument is that this probably won't improve very much, but we will get used to it and start to generally accept it as inevitable.

Originally Posted by you&me

Americans never swept anything under the rug, unless you want to consider the "rug" the other side of the tracks, wrong side of town, etc.

That's exactly what I meant.

Random example would be visiting Austin, TX, and going from one vibrant district to another about a 10 minute walk away...but the walk involved going under a freeway. It didn't cross my naive Canadian mind to do anything other than walk, but after passing through and sitting on a patio nearby I realized that there was basically zero other pedestrian traffic coming from there.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by blankall

Based on my own observations from clients, many get totally clean in jail. You can visibly see it, as they often put on considerable weight.

The problem is that as soon as they get out, they fall into the same patterns. Except now it's worse as they have a criminal record, no savings, no house, no connections, etc...They often go directly back to the street they were on and resume drug use and petty crime. When you're in jail, you become even more isolated and the world passes you by. What few positive connections you had can disappear while in jail pretty easily.

Just spitballing, but based on this - What about a system where we offer a way to an actual life after completing a prison sentence? Maybe you have a forced detox by being in prison but instead of saying "great work on not doing drugs when drugs weren't available, now go back and see your same friends and do drugs again and come back in 2 months" - we say "here's a place to stay, some job training, food etc"?

[jayswin]

The cynical side of me says that the same middle to upper class citizens that cry for change and help for the addict situation (or more importantly to get it out of their way/site) would oppose money paid into prison releases because ultimately they oppose their money going to those who didn't earn it like me. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm probably not.

[Goriders]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

I would call it providing a safe, free, drug supply.

Promotion implies some sort of persuasion.

You’re ok with the government being a drug dealer and enabler for addicts then.

If so why?

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by Goriders

You’re ok with the government being a drug dealer and enabler for addicts then.

If so why?

That’s a gross simplification.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by Goriders

You’re ok with the government being a drug dealer and enabler for addicts then.

If so why?

I will breakdown my position for you.

I have two fundamental assumptions. 1. Drug addiction is not a modern problem, it is a problem as old as drugs are, in other words, thousands of years. 2. We have agreed as a society that this is a problem and something needs to be done about it. Taking assumption number 1 under consideration it is very unlikely that drug addiction will ever disappear under any circumstance. There will always be a large portion of the society that is addicted to drugs, functioning or otherwise. If we accept that then we understand our best option is to try and mitigate the problem.


This is where the disagreement begins. there is a portion of the society who see this as a criminal problem, and another who sees this as a public health problem. ( this is obviously a gross over simplification, there are many people who see it as some balance of both).


The issue I have with viewing drug addition as a criminal problem is that 1. It is very expensive 2. It is not an effective means to end the root cause of the problem ( the reasons some one is addicted). In fact I would go as far as to say that more people go to prison sober and leave addicts than people enter prison addicted and leave recovered. With that in mind, at some point people are breaking the law to feed their addiction, in that case prison is always the best option.

The things I like about the public health approach is that it focuses on the upstream determinants of health. Trying to reduce the reasons people have for using drugs. A part of the way they do this is by interacting and communicating with addicts in good faith. That is to say collection important public health information that can be applied to future strategies. the intent is to create a dynamic approach that targets multiple intersections of a persons life in hopes of finding them a path forward. This is obviously idyllic so I will end with the most pragmatic reason why there is societal benefit to the public health approach. Supplying opiates and other drugs that are free of contaminates is cheaper than sending first responders out to take people who overdosed to the hospitals. It also helps reduce hospital emergency wait times.

[cam_wmh]

Originally Posted by Locke

We're a big country, we should consider rural enclaves to house these individuals. Preferably far up North away from the normal population, you know, 'out of sight, out of mind?'

We could call them 'Gulags.'

And then we could help these poor folks kick their habit by making big rocks into smaller rocks!

They'd have a place to sleep, 3 meals a day, we could even offer Art Therapy through fence-painting?

Just...ignore all the barbed-wire and men with dogs and guns.

You could've just wrote Edmonton, and saved the keystrokes.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

This is where the disagreement begins. there is a portion of the society who see this as a criminal problem, and another who sees this as a public health problem. ( this is obviously a gross over simplification, there are many people who see it as some balance of both).

I don’t think many people regard addiction itself as a criminal problem. Rather, it’s the things addicts sometimes do - steal, scream at people, piss and #### in public, assault people, drive cars while wasted - that can’t be dealt with as strictly health care issues.

This behaviour can be rooted in addiction, but how much allowance should we make for that?

An alcoholic gets in a car drunk, drives, and hits a cyclist. Do we make allowances for addiction and treat this as a health care issue, or do we prosecute them with the full force of the justice system?

A fentanyl addict gets on a C-Train car, screams threats at passengers, and then pisses in the aisle. Do we make allowances for addiction and treat this as a health care issue, or do we prosecute them with the full force of the justice system?

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

I don’t think many people regard addiction itself as a criminal problem. Rather, it’s the things addicts sometimes do - steal, scream at people, piss and #### in public, assault people, drive cars while wasted - that can’t be dealt with as strictly health care issues.

This behaviour can be rooted in addiction, but how much allowance should we make for that?

An alcoholic gets in a car drunk, drives, and hits a cyclist. Do we make allowances for addiction and treat this as a health care issue, or do we prosecute them with the full force of the justice system?

A fentanyl addict gets on a C-Train car, screams threats at passengers, and then pisses in the aisle. Do we make allowances for addiction and treat this as a health care issue, or do we prosecute them with the full force of the justice system?

Is anyone suggesting that we don't stop criminal activity or public harm? Public disturbances should be persecuted by the full extent of the law.

What I am talking about is the pysical act of buying and doing the drug, not the activity that happens there after.

or like I said in my post.

at some point people are breaking the law to feed their addiction, in that case prison is always the best option.

Though I admit that there is a whole lot of gray area. No less, safe supply allows us to put these people into a system so that their behavior is monitored.

There is some balance to be struck between criminal persecution and public health intervention. The exact balance of which will continually need to be negotiated.

[Fuzz]

Perhaps a good angle would be that if they commit non-violent property crimes, they have a choice of one of these treatment centres, or prison. Rather than the person committing strings of crimes getting off light each time, you make even the small offenses a 1 month minimum or something. Violent crime would possibly be left up to a judge to decide.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

I don’t think many people regard addiction itself as a criminal problem. Rather, it’s the things addicts sometimes do - steal, scream at people, piss and #### in public, assault people, drive cars while wasted - that can’t be dealt with as strictly health care issues.

This behaviour can be rooted in addiction, but how much allowance should we make for that?

An alcoholic gets in a car drunk, drives, and hits a cyclist. Do we make allowances for addiction and treat this as a health care issue, or do we prosecute them with the full force of the justice system?

A fentanyl addict gets on a C-Train car, screams threats at passengers, and then pisses in the aisle. Do we make allowances for addiction and treat this as a health care issue, or do we prosecute them with the full force of the justice system?

I believe thats considered a valued Public Service and you can get a medal for that.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

Is anyone suggesting that we don't stop criminal activity or public harm? Public disturbances should be persecuted by the full extent of the law.

But that’s the thing - the approach that was adopted in many North American cities in the last decade was to not treat anti-social behaviour with policing.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

But that’s the thing - the approach that was adopted in many North American cities in the last decade was to not treat anti-social behaviour with policing.

I am not sure I understand what you mean by policing anti social behavior.

[CliffFletcher]

There are all sorts of laws on the book about disorderly conduct, public urination, building encampments, etc. that have been ignored in many cities in recent years in the face of the opioid epidemic, and then covid. This was a deliberate change in tack from traditional policy. Part of it driven by new approaches to addiction and mental health, part driven by the de-policing movement.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by you&me

It seems that battle against production may never be won, but what about a focus on distribution? Make dealing drugs just not worth it... Like, get caught selling fentanyl and get 1 year in prison for every pill.

I know we're trying to cut down on prison populations, but I have to imagine if you make the penalty severe enough, rather than end up in jail, most dealers just don't do it in the first place.

I'm sure this sounds incredibly naive and will be shot down by those more familiar than me...

The issue is that Fentanyl is so easy to get right now, and the demand is always there. Someone will supply it. You can order it online to a PO Box. It's not like heroin or cocaine, where you need an intricate network of criminals.

If push comes to shove, the addicts themselves will order it.

Also, as it stands now, penalties for non-addicts dealing Fentanyl are already quite high.

In the USA, the average sentence for knowingly trafficking Fentanyl is 74 months:

https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/f...tanyl_FY18.pdf

In Canada, the first time sentence begins at 18 months, which is many times higher than other drugs:

https://www.provincialcourt.bc.ca/en...ews-15-08-2017

The profit from Fentanyl is just so high and the barriers to entry are so low that no matter what you do to deter dealing, it's going to happen.

[DownInFlames]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Perhaps a good angle would be that if they commit non-violent property crimes, they have a choice of one of these treatment centres, or prison. Rather than the person committing strings of crimes getting off light each time, you make even the small offenses a 1 month minimum or something. Violent crime would possibly be left up to a judge to decide.

Isn't that what drug court is supposed to be?

https://calgarydrugtreatmentcourt.org/