David Eby, the Premier of B.C. since 2022, is a member of the N.D.P., Canada’s Far Left party. In 2023 his government decriminalized the possession of small amounts of hard core drugs clearly meant for the personal use of the possessor. Canada’s Federal Health Minister granted B.C. an exemption from the restrictions still in effect throughout the rest of the country. Pierre Poilievre, our Conservative leader, saw the decriminalization as absurd.
As of now, Premier Eby has declared the 3 year experiment to be over. As early as late 2023, 9 months into the program, drug users were prohibited by B.C. courts from going within 15 meters of school yards and playgrounds inasmuch as young kids there were finding drug paraphernalia, including needles, everywhere! Absurdly, it was thought that a 15 meter gap would somehow remedy this situation! Even more absurdly, B. C.’s Chief Justice, Christopher Hinkson, almost immediately overruled that decision, reinstating people’s right to engage in their addictions wherever they wanted!
Police Chiefs throughout B.C. were unanimous in condemning the decriminalization project, citing a significant increase in crime within their jurisdictions and pointing particularly to homeless encampments where rampant drug abuse was having devastating effects. As reported by Michael Higgins in a Jan. 10 opinion piece in the National Post, the year 2014 saw 370 people in the province die of drug related issues, while that number had increased to 2,315 by 2024!
The experiment having now been terminated, David Eby has admitted it to have been an absolute failure. But how, one must ask, could any person of common sense have assumed people addicted to an obviously self-destructive habit would treat their exemption from criminal prosecution rationally and responsibly? To a student of the contemporary Cultural Climate, of course, Eby’s empathy for his province’s drug users smacks of the same naivete that sees our “liberal” courts and their judges grant bail to criminals who have been arrested over and over again, in the hope that they will mend their ways. It was that very naivete, as I discussed in a recent blog, that led to the murder of three elderly tourists to Florida on Jan. 17 by an obviously dangerous individual who had compassionately been released from custody by his “woke” judge.
A World-View which removes Moral Responsibility from its Ethos reduces us to the level of little more than Animals. Frankly, more and more people these days seem to be behaving as such!