Prejudicially Discriminatory to Label Drug Users as Addicts

"[The overdose crisis is] rooted in colonial approaches that prioritize individualism over community, wealth over health and power over empathy."

"Using punitive tactics by criminalizing people who use drugs and doubling down on prohibition policies have proven to be ineffective and harmful for decades."

"There is no evidence supporting claims that diversion is increasing overdose deaths, or leading increased rates of youth to become substance-dependent." 

Kasari Govender, human rights commissioner, British Columbia

B.C. Human Rights Commissioner Kasari Govender, seen here in March 2023, said that stigma against drug users is driving harmful policies that are causing deaths. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)

 

In British Columbia alone, over 15,000 people have died as a result of the overdose crisis, since 2016. A death toll that finally hit home for the government of British Columbia which has gone through a decriminalization process, providing drugs and paraphernalia to chronic drug abusers, with the intention of slowing down and possibly even stopping the rising tide of untimely deaths of addicts. The province's experience with the 'safe houses' that were intended to serve a drug-addicted population, to steer them away from dangerous street drugs such as fentanyl, failed when it became obvious that the oxymorphone being supplied to users was being sold on the street for the much-more favoured fentanyl, after all.

 

The B.C. Human Rights Commission published a 22-page report, stating that to even mention that the province is coping with an 'overdose' crisis, is in and of itself discriminatory. Falsely implying that doing drugs like meth or fentanyl is inherently dangerous. The commissioner made it clear that in her opinion the entire cause of the crisis can be summarized as "illicit drug manufacturers and dealers adding unknown toxic substances". This, in a province where a month earlier the Coroners Service confirmed an average of five overdose deaths each day.

 

Former B.C. chief coroner Lisa Lapointe has said she was disappointed by the province's decision to limit its safer supply program so people can no longer take their prescribed opioids home with them. (CBC News)

 

The solution as far as the commissioner is concerned, is that British Columbia must subscribe more diligently into policies allowing drug users to do drugs 'without stigma', in real support of 'human rights'. Greater dedication to decriminalization, more low-barrier shelters and more 'safer supply' in the province's program to distribute free recreational opioids to drug users. This, in direct contradiction to the province's official movement away from the kind of harm reduction its human rights commissioner is now pressing.

 

British Columbia took steps to backtrack on its safer supply program after reports that users were reselling free government opioids for cash. 'Safer Supply' is now only to be consumed before a clinician, replacing the system of opioids handed out daily as take-home rations. Leading the provincial premier to publicly disown the former policy -- that the experiment in hard drug decriminalization was "not the right policy". Where in 2022 federal permission was sought and given to legalize possession of 'personal use' amounts of illicit drugs like heroin, fentanyl and meth, branded as a bold, new stigma-reduction strategy to "decriminalize people who use drugs". 

 

Downtown Eastside, Vancouver, B.C.

 

Premier David Eby elaborated when he stated that instead of the intended outcome, decriminalization became a "permission structure" assuring drug users that "it was OK to use drugs anywhere". The premier promised an increase in involuntary treatment for severe addicts, along with tougher crackdowns on criminal drug networks. The official position of the B.C. government for over two decades was to view addiction as a public health issue, instead of a criminal justice issue. 

 

The report by the B.C. Human Rights Commission attributes the "deep-rooted history of colonialism, racism and discrimination" as the primary cause of drug addiction. The commissioner, Kasari Govender, is one of the highest paid civil servants in the province, while an arm's-length agency of the government. In 2024 she was paid an annual salary of $351,847, whereas the premier himself had an earning of $227,111.