Three BC city councils asked to seek the recriminalization of drugs

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Three Metro Vancouver city councilors have come together to call on the province to end its “failed” drug decriminalization experiment.

They are joining the voices of municipal politicians and opposition MLAs who are frustrated by rampant public drug use and are urging Premier David Eby to follow Oregon’s lead and reverse course on drug decriminalization. hard drugs.

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Councilors Linda Annis of Surrey, Daniel Fontaine of New Westminster and Alexa Loo of Richmond say they will bring motions to their councils that would ask the BC NDP government to scrap the three-year experiment that began on Jan. 31, 2023.

The three councilors hired a public relations firm with their own money and on Monday issued a joint press release that said: “The legalization of deadly drugs has killed users, harmed neighborhoods and harmed communities in British Columbia. ”.

“People are completely tired of having to see such a lack of investment in terms of drug rehab, drug treatment, mental health,” Fontaine told Postmedia News on Monday. “This type of decriminalization cannot be implemented without these supports. And in fact, I would say, given what we’ve seen in Oregon and now what we’re seeing in British Columbia, those supports should come first.”

Facing public backlash, Oregon recriminalized hard drugs on April 1, just three years after the state eliminated penalties for drug possession.

Fontaine said “the police are completely handcuffed” when it comes to open drug use, which makes people feel unsafe.

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This was confirmed last week by Fiona Wilson, deputy chief of police in Vancouver and president of the British Columbia Police Chiefs Association, who told a House of Commons health committee that because of decriminalization, police has no authority to address problematic drug use.

Fontaine said he knows he will have the support of opposition councilor Paul Minhas to introduce the motion that will likely be debated at the May 6 council meeting.

Annis said the three councilors came together to “show that it’s not unique to one city, it’s a province-wide problem. “We have heard time and time again from concerned residents and citizens that this problem is getting worse.”

Annis, an opposition councillor, said she is confident another Surrey councilor will support the motion, in which case it will be debated in council on May 27.

In an opinion piece published in The Vancouver Sun, Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto and Chilliwack Mayor Ken Popove expressed disappointment in the British Columbia Supreme Court’s ruling on the suspension of the law passed by the British Columbia NDP in November in an effort to ban open drug use by most of the public. spaces, including sports fields, beaches or skate parks and within six meters of building entrances.

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That law has not gone into effect and faces a constitutional challenge.

Alto and Popove, who co-chair the BC Urban Mayors Caucus (an informal collective of mayors from 16 of BC’s largest cities) did not call for an end to decriminalization and emphasized that the toxic drug crisis is a health care issue.

However, they said that “without accessible support and resources and without barriers for people who use drugs, we are once again left with no way to regulate drug use and safety in public spaces. As a result, local governments must pick up the pieces and costs of these challenges.”

During a visit to Victoria on Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau indicated that the federal government will not intervene and shorten the decriminalization experiment.

“We are going to continue to work carefully with BC as they manage how this program develops,” he told reporters during an appearance at the University of Victoria.

British Columbia’s mental health and addictions minister will meet with her federal counterpart, Ya’ara Saks, in Vancouver on Friday to discuss how the province’s drug decriminalization experiment is working.

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His office said the pair will discuss decriminalization, support for Indigenous people, child and youth mental health funding, the toxic drug crisis and treatment and recovery.

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