Canada’s drug crisis has a solution. Politicians don’t like it

Decriminalization saves lives. But Canada is only just accepting that reality—and the United States is even further behind
Foreign Policy (US)
Sunday, September 29, 2019

canada dcr usersA recent study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Addiction, found that a trio of policies adopted to combat the opioid overdose epidemic saved, combined, an estimated 3,030 lives in the Canadian province of British Columbia alone, between April 2016 and December 2017. The findings are a ringing endorsement of the policies adopted by the government of the province hit hardest by the epidemic: promoting access to the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, expanding access to supervised consumption or injection sites, and providing access to treatment known as opioid agonist therapy.