The Failed Drug Legalization Experiment

By Damien Kurek
Battle River-Crowfoot MP

Everyone knows someone who has faced addiction and the devastation and loss it wreaks on individuals, families, and communities. Time and time again, addiction has resulted in trapping its victims in hopeless situations. This makes it unbelievable that two years ago, the Liberals, with the support of the NDP, decriminalized hard drugs like cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, and crystal meth in the province of British Columbia. This is nothing less than an extremist experiment that has cost countless Canadians their lives and has resulted in dangerous drug-fueled environments in Canadian hospitals, playgrounds, parks, and other such public spaces.

Conservative Party of Canada leader, Pierre Poilievre, has been critical of this policy since its inception, but it came to a head in the last number of weeks as the Provincial NDP in British Columbia admitted failure when they announced they wanted to scale back this dangerous experiment. Retired police officer, Chuck Doucette, president of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, stated, “Whether they're legal or decriminalized or not—doesn’t make them any less likely to kill you.”

It is regrettable that the Liberals and NDP would continue to promote this dangerous experiment instead of promoting treatment. Further, there are a growing number of examples where the Government has been providing drugs, all with taxpayers’ money, to which those drugs are then being resold on the streets without consequence. Rural parts of the country are no exception to this.

Although BC is the only place where drugs have been decriminalized, the Liberal-NDP Government has not ruled it out from happening in other places as major cities such as Toronto and Montreal have put in requests for the same. What’s worse, the Liberals’ soft-on-crime judicial reforms have led to the unofficial decriminalization of hard drugs across our nation because it has become next to impossible to get convictions for those responsible for putting drugs on our streets.

There is hope in seeking help, and while some provinces are working at increasing treatment, we need a federal Government that will keep hard drugs off our streets, put gang leaders and drug kingpins behind bars, and ensure that there is treatment for those stuck in the grips of addiction.

That is why Pierre Poilievre and Common-Sense Conservatives are proposing practical measures that would help restore order to the chaos caused by these radical policies. Our initiatives include offering treatment for those battling addiction, jail and not bail for hardened criminals and those who are pushing these drugs on Canadians, and the recently announced Safe Hospitals Act which would ensure that hard drugs stay out of community spaces.

The lives and safety of Canadians must never be treated as an experiment, and we owe it to Canadians to offer hope, not slow death by poison. My Conservative colleagues and I are committed to restore the promise of what Canada can and should be.