drugs

• Since 2006 under the Conservative party, Stephen Harper passed a drug policy that is dismissive of public health and harm reduction
• Manifestation of this policy

  • Implemented restrictions on community based conditional sentences
  • Changes to conditions of pardon
  • Introduced mandatory prison terms for certain drug offences
• First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples in Canada have experienced distinct histories of colonization and cultural oppression, which have led to substantial burdens of social and health inequalities
• Indigenous peoples in Canada are over-represented in the criminal justice system for drug offences
• Indigenous peoples in Canada have high rates of blood-borne infections related to injection drug use
• Indigenous youth in Canada have high reported rates of illicit substance use and substance use disorders
• The illegal drug trade has caused multiple social damages to First Nations communities in Canada
• Discourses have produced racialized knowledge of the "Other"


  Such as indigenous people are more prone to addiction
• It was illegal to sell intoxicating substances to Indigenous peoples under the 1869 Act for the Gradual Enfranchisement of Indians
• Women's drug use are often seen as a greater crime than men's because of the effects on childbirth
• Bacchi's method (2009) for discourse analysis

  1. What is the "problem" represented to be?

  2. What presuppositions or assumptions underlie this representation of the "problem?"

  3. How has the representation of the "problem" come about?

  4. What is left unproblematic in the "problem" representation?

  5. What effects are produced by this representation of the "problem?"

  6. How/where has this representation of the "problem" been produced, disseminated and defended? How could it be questioned, disrupted and replaced?
• Most funding for the National Anti-Drug Strategy goes to the Enforcement Action Plan (70% of funding)
• The Enforcement plan doesn't specifically target Indigenous peoples but the Prevention and Treatment plan does
• Tobacco and alcohol are the greatest public health burden, but illicit drug use is widely fused with addiction, abuse, danger, and public disorder throughout the policy discourse
• Assumptions of the Treatment Action Plan

  • Illicit substance use requires treatment
  • All who engage in problematic substance use desire/will engage in treatment
  • Treatment is effective
• Those illicit substances users that do not seek treatment or do not see their drug use as problematic are not addressed in the Treatment Action Plan
• The current drug policies not only fail to address the specific needs of Indigenous peoples but also perpetuate systemic inequities
• The Prevention Action Plan allocates $32 million to awareness and education programs
• The Drug Endangered Children initiative follows a series of provincial legislative amendments to Child and Family Services Acts permitting child apprehension on the grounds of child exposure to illicit drug activity
• Current policy holds citizens responsible and accountable for their involvement with illegal drugs and deters it with harsh punishments
• Canada's Anti-Drug Strategy appears keenly positioned in this punitive policy turn with the potential to produce similar racialized and gendered effects as the US has
• Longstanding component of the Canadian colonial project is the complex of intersecting historical, structural, and social pathways that have positioned First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples in Canada at greater risk for illicit substance involvement and greater surveillance of illicit substance use
• The legacy of the Canadian colonial project is perpetuated today by the extremely high placement of Indigenous children into child welfare
• Indigenous peoples in Canada experience high welfare, poor housing quality, high rates of youth homelessness, food insecurity, high unemployment, and more
• 50% of indigenous youth will drop out or be pushed out of high schools in Canada
• Major depressive disorder is nearly double in indigenous youth than non-native youth in Canada
• Indigenous peoples in Canada have poor access to addiction services
• Indigenous peoples in Canada are overrepresented as service recipients at harm reduction programs, comprising from 13% to over 50% of the population served
• Problematic substance use among First Nations peoples is linked to cultural oppression and erosion, economic exclusion, and the intergenerational impacts of trauma borne from colonial practices
• The Safe Streets and Communities Act (Bill C-10, 2012) specifically targeted street gangs and the illicit drug trade
• Studies found a significant association between drug law enforcement and violence in the illicit drug market
• Evidence shows that minimum mandatory sentences do not deter as predicted or reduce harms associated with drug use
• Canadian penitentiaries are sites where street gangs are produced and reproduced
• Indigenous peoples comprise approximately 4% of the Canadian population but 23% of the prison population
• Over-incarceration of Indigenous peoples is especially prevalent in the prairies, where they represented 69% of admissions to provincial jails in Manitoba
• Racialized spaces often become associated with violence and disorder and therefore become heavily policed, resulting in the over-surveillance of the "usual suspects" (Indigenous young men)
• Many legal casebuildings use covert racist strategies and representations
• Canadian law has been ineffective at redressing the systemic discrimination of Indigenous peoples in the criminal justice system, even when equipped with tools for this purpose
• Conditional sentences have not been successful in reducing Indigenous overrepresentation, and appear to have resulted in net widening, whereby more offenders have received intrusive sanctions than before
• The current drug policy discourse focuses on holding individuals accountable for drug-related harms while too little attention is paid to the suffering and loss caused by criminalizing those who use drugs