this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2025
80 points (98.8% liked)

Canada

7942 readers
1287 users here now

What's going on Canada?

Related Communities

🍁 Meta

🗺️ Provinces / Territories

🏙️ Cities / Local Communities

Sorted alphabetically by city name.

🏒 SportsHockey

Football (NFL): incomplete

Football (CFL): incomplete

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer

💻 Schools / Universities

Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.

💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales

🗣️ Politics

🍁 Social / Culture

Rules

  1. Keep the original title when submitting an article. You can put your own commentary in the body of the post or in the comment section.

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
otter
mp3
80
Pierre Poilievre’s Pipe Dream: Imprison Drug Users for Life (thetyee.ca)
submitted 6 days ago by Sunshine to c/canada
27 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I think if the policy specifically targets people pushing and selling fentanyl, I agree those people do deserve to be in prison.

The vast majority of people using it don't even know they are using it, it's been laced into drugs they buy

I agree that the "drug kingpins" do deserve to be locked up.

Problem though: a lot of them are tightly interwoven with the pharmaceutical corporations, so you're kinda calling for checks notes pharma ceos to get jail time, Pierre.

And I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that's not what you meant.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

“There are always hand-to-hand transactions, from dealers to drug users to other drug users. It’s a constant exchange in the Downtown Eastside. It’s pretty common for people to pool their money to buy from a dealer and then those drugs get distributed.”

These hand-to-hand exchanges constitute trafficking, which would — under the proposed policy — subject every habitual fentanyl user to a punishment of life in prison

The article explains how the users are often also selling, and I disagree that those people (who are "redistributing") should be in jail, specifically for life.

The legislation would need to differentiate between redistributors who are users and like big, idk the term, wholesale drug dealers? But under PP's plan, anyone with 40 mg (according to the article that's less than half a baby aspirin) would go to jail for life for that.

It just doesn't make sense to me to jail drug users, even if they're just selling amongst themselves, and especially not for life where we have to pay for them in taxes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (2 children)

according to the article that’s less than half a baby aspirin

It's also the equivalent of 20 to 40 entire doses

One dose of fentanyl laced in other drugs is usually less than a single grain of sand

So 40mg is a fuck tonne of fentanyl to have on hand.

Usually users don't carry pure fentanyl around, it's already been laced into other drugs, so they maybe have a couple mg total on hand even for multiple peoples worth.

40mg is like an entire box of laced pills.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

you don't fix that issue by jailing people anyways, but by making all substance use legal

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Jailing people who lace drugs with fentanyl is reasonable, and people that aid in the distribution of laced drugs with it.

I dont think people who take the drugs deserve punishment, but the people pushing the drugs do.

The odds of someone having a whole fuckin 40mg of fentanyl on hand and not be involved in the drug pushing is very low, people dont realize that you dont move it around like that.

A person would be in possession of like an entire fuckin pack of pills to have that much, because there's like maybe tops 1mg per pill.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Pierre is cheering for this degree of being divorced from the reality of marginalized people. maybe don't victim blame substance users? most of the supply gets contaminated by the cartels. it's really simple, if you wanna fix that, you replace the dangerous supply with a safe supply and free drug testing centers

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Read what I've written.

I strongly doubt normal users and addicts are carrying more than 6mg on hand at any time.

40mg is an enture fuckin house party's worth of fent usually, because nearly always it's laced with other drugs.

So each dose is about 1mg or so

2mg is a lethal dose for most users... 40mg is enough to kill 20 people >_>;

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

why are you such a party pooper? who cares how much someone owns? you're equating potential of overdose with probability of harm being enacted. this is all a theory you made up in your mind

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

why are you such a party pooper?

  • There was a total of 49,105 apparent opioid toxicity deaths reported between January 2016 and June 2024

  • Of all accidental apparent opioid toxicity deaths so far in 2024 (January to June), 79% involved fentanyl

This shit is super hyper fucking lethal, and the people who move it around and push it need to be locked up

However, I've spent the last couple hours looking info up on this and it seems there us a growing trend of people, as crazy as it sounds, shooting up and smoking pure fentanyl.

And due to its much shorter duration, people build a tolerance way faster and, indeed, there's reports of people doing entire doses of dozens of mg in a single hit

Which is absolutely mind boggling to me tbh.

But yeah I guess there really are people walking around with that much in their pocket.

The thing that's tough is, how do you seperate between 1 person who has 40mg, lacing it in 40 pills to sell at a club (which could potentially kill people), vs 1 person who has 120mg which will only last them literally the day by themself.

Legally that is, in terms of possession charges.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

you don't separate them because that's how you end up perpetuating the war on drugs ideology and because most resellers don't lace their products.

I'm going back to my first comment again, if drug testing centers were free and accessible, there would be a repository of trusted sellers based on their purity results

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I know for someone who is not used to fentanyl, a very very low dose can kill them, but again:

As harm reduction advocate Zoë Dodd noted, fentanyl is generally sold on the streets in 100-milligram increments.

“If you’re talking about Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, fentanyl users are using a quarter gram [250 milligrams] or more a day,” according to Guy Felicella, a harm reduction and recovery advocate.

Unless I'm misunderstanding the article here, they're talking about people who carry a SHITLOAD of fentanyl for personal use.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

That sounds insane, I'm having trouble believing someone is using 125x the lethal dose of fent a day, that sounds inhuman.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

No reason to do this "meet in the middle" shit, they're not interested. Pierre and people like him want to make people suffer. The cruelty is the point. They will never support a policy that doesn't involve cruelty and suffering.