One Canadian province has decriminalised drugs
British Columbia’s bold experiment will be watched closely elsewhere
Illegal drugs are common in Downtown Eastside, a poor neighbourhood of Vancouver, the biggest city in British Columbia. Users regularly shoot up on the street. Overdoses are common. In 2016 British Columbia declared a public-health emergency after the number of people dying from illicit drugs more than doubled between 2009 and 2015, to 474. That figure has only kept rising. Last year, at least 2,272 British Columbians died from drugs.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “A small, necessary step”
From the February 25th 2023 edition
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