Benedikt Fischer is a B.C.-based senior drug-policy and public-health scholar.
Approximately a year ago, British Columbia enacted its temporary decriminalization policy for illicit drug use, mainly exempting the personal possession of very small amounts of illicit substances from enforcement and punishment. This initiative had been promoted by political leaders as an effective tool against the continuing toxic drug death crisis.
But, as anticipated elsewhere, this expectation has not been met.
B.C.’s toll of illicit drug deaths for 2023 is expected to reach, if not surpass, the tragic record count of 2,403 deaths in 2022 – the country’s highest provincial death rate. This unmet expectation should not come as a surprise, as this specific decriminalization initiative – while a generally laudable step toward a more health-informed and sensible drug policy – does offer tangibly little on its own to address the direct causes of overdose deaths from illicit toxic drugs.
The decriminalization initiative has brought or amplified select collateral problems, though. Naturally, it has facilitated greater amounts of illicit drug use out into public streets, sidewalks and other spaces. This is as noticeable in Vancouver as in many other places across the province. Partly in consideration of such effects, the B.C. government brought forward legislation (the Restricting Public Consumption of Illegal Substances Act) to regulate illicit drug use in public places.
This law set out to prohibit illicit drug use in certain public spaces, for example, public parks, sports fields and beaches, as well as near workplaces, transit stops and playgrounds. However, a recent injunction from the B.C. Supreme Court stopped the implementation of this law, reasoning that the act “would cause irreparable harm to people at risk of injury and death amid a public health crisis.”
Public spaces are an essential and valuable – and sometimes contested – part of communal life. They are important for everyday mobility, socialization and leisure, and yet laws, regulations or social norms restrict certain activities in public spaces that bring substantive risk for harm – or, in some instances, offence – to others. This is, for example, why we are expected not to drive cars on sidewalks, shoot firearms in parks or freely relieve ourselves on the street. While not categorically illegal, these types of activities are regulated and allowed in designated – in some instances private – locations or other settings, but not in public spaces at large.
Now, there are crucial distinctions concerning some forms of illegal drug use; specifically the circumstances of overdose deaths from toxic drugs require consideration. Many of the people involved in related drug consumption are not adequately housed, or homeless, but are sadly marginalized and disenfranchised, with these adverse circumstances rendering streets or other public spaces their default “home” by circumstance. Moreover, for many, addictive drug use is an essentially defining element of their existence, and many of the drugs they crucially depend on come from street-based sources. Acknowledging these adverse conditions, it is a different and much more plausible expectation for the average citizen to keep risky or offensive activities from public spaces than it is for marginalized individuals dependent on illicit drugs.
Notwithstanding those details, it was and remains imperative and justified for the B.C. government to seek sensible regulation of illicit drug use in public spaces, even amidst the realities of the drug death crisis and decriminalization. Related efforts and provisions should weigh measured consideration of actual benefits and harms involved, rather than being guided by polarized ideological-box politics or projected assumptions that commonly shape related perspectives.
Approximately half of recent drug deaths in B.C. have occurred in some form of indoor setting and so were potentially isolated from immediate, possibly life-saving emergency assistance. However, there is little tangible evidence or reason to assume that the lives of those involved with toxic drug use will be better protected against overdose death because they are now categorically allowed to use drugs in any and every public space, including those designated for vulnerable individuals (for example, playgrounds). Nor is this in the interest of the general public’s health or well-being.
The urgent and particular circumstances of the drug death crisis in B.C. require interventions that are both practically effective toward improved public health and safety while reconciling competing related interests. While rarely involved in acute fatalities, the public use of other legal substances such as alcohol, tobacco and cannabis is also restricted based on these principles. In the given realities, governments should provide for ample designated drug consumption spaces for those who have no good alternatives for using drugs elsewhere. Such spaces should be adequately sheltered, easily accessible and directly connected to basic emergency materials and services. While a limited number of “supervised consumption” or “overdose prevention” sites already exist, many more similarly purpose-tailored spaces are needed in response to the acute drug death crisis.
Meanwhile, responsible entities should focus on expanding other key measures needed to effectively reduce the unacceptable burden of drug overdose deaths. These efforts ought to primarily focus on reducing toxic drug exposure, including the targeted provision of “safer drug supply” for those at acute overdose risk.
Universally pushing illicit drug use into public spaces in general in itself neither promises to aid the protection of the health or lives of those using drugs, nor does it serve the general public’s legitimate interests.