LILLEY: Insanity versus common sense in battle over drugs

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At one end of the country, a public health activist is calling for the implementation of insane drug policy while at the other end, a politician is calling for common sense.

The activist is Dr. Bonnie Henry who wants to effectively legalize all drugs and the politician is Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre who wants to roll back “wacko” Liberal policies.

Dr. Henry issued a new report on dealing with drug overdose deaths that starts out by telling you that drug harms are caused by settler colonialism and white supremacy. When that is how a report starts, you know it’s about politics and not science and is pretty much worthless.

By signing her name to it, by putting this report forward, Dr. Bonnie Henry, British Columbia’s Provincial Officer of Health has embarrassed herself. She’s also embarrassed all those who worked on the project and had to sign their names along with their ethnic descriptions such as declaring themselves a white settler or white occupier.

While this report claims Canada’s drug laws are the result of racism and white supremacy, it’s worth noting that the toughest drug laws in the world are found in places like Malasyia, Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, China, Dubai and Saudi Arabia, all very non-white nations.

Are their laws also driven by white supremacy?

That Henry hangs this report on such a ridiculous claim should raise questions about the rest of the report and her recommendations. Her recommendations, though, are just as ridiculous on their own and hopefully will be fully and completely ignored.

Henry wants the so-called safer supply programs expanded in British Columbia and she wants hard drugs effectively legalized and sold in stores. Forget pot stores, she wants retail outlets for meth, cocaine and heroin.

And when it comes to handing out opioid pills, Henry and her fellow panelists believe they and other drugs should be supplied without a prescription so as not to perpetuate stigma and racism. The researchers also say that requiring people dealing with addictions to keep medical appointments perpetuates stigma and racism.

“Prohibition in Canada is based on a history of racism, white supremacy, paternalism, colonialism, classism and human rights violations,” the report states.

For years, activists and public health departments, which are filled with activists, have been calling for the ever-increasing liberalization of drug laws. They wanted so-called safe injection sites and using the courts were successful. Then they wanted so-called safer supply and they got that and now they want full scale legalization.

It must be stopped.

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At each turn, the claim has been that each of these measures is needed to save lives and that is the claim in this report. Why then, if all of these measures save lives, have the number of opioid deaths continued to rise.

In 2014 there were a total of 370 overdose deaths in the entire province of British Columbia. Between January 1 and April 30 of 2024 there were 763 overdose deaths, while in 2023 the province set a record of 2,558 overdose deaths.

The track record in British Columbia from these policies is not success, it’s death.

“They are drug dens, and they have made everything worse,” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said about the injection sites.

Poilievre was making an announcement at a playground near where a Montreal injection site has been operating. The site is located within 200 metres of a school and neighbours are complaining about what they have witnessed since it opened but the federal Liberals who approved it aren’t backing down.

If he and his party form the next government, Poilievre said he will reinstate policies keeping these facilities away from schools and playgrounds, policies the Liberal did away with. He said the government needs to focus on treatment and recovery instead of aiding and abetting addicts.

blilley@postmedia.com