Customs have seen it all - from horse head statues to candles to dishwashing liquid. Video / NZ Herald
A shop selling heroin and crack is set to open in Vancouver when hard drugs are decriminalised at the end of the month.
Customers at The Drug Store will be able to buy up to 2.5 grams of heroin, crack, and other hard drugs including methamphetamine.
Staff at the shop will wear protective bulletproof vests and masks to hide their identity.
On Jan 31, British Columbia is set to decriminalise possession of personal-use amounts of A-class drugs in a move that has been condemned by Conservatives as “flooding the streets with poison”.
Officials in the province, which is controlled by the New Democratic Party (NDP), say the policy is to reduce the “barriers and stigma” of drug addiction and to reduce overdose rates.
They also recently launched an initiative in which addicts are offered opioids on prescription in a scheme funded by the taxpayer.
In 2015 British Columbia had 529 deaths attributed to drug overdoses. In the first eight months of 2022, the figure soared to 1644. The rise has partly been attributed to a surge in the use of the synthetic opioid fentanyl.
‘There is no safe supply of these drugs’
Last month, Pierre Poilievre, the new leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, launched a withering attack on the province’s drug policies.
Poilievre said: “We need to stop using tax dollars to fund dangerous drugs under the so-called and ironically named idea of safe supply.”
“There is no safe supply of these drugs. They are deadly. They are lethal and they are relentlessly addictive.”
The new shop selling hard drugs is being set up by Jerry Martin, 51, a reformed drug addict, who has not used drugs for 15 years, and whose brother died from an overdose.
He said he wanted to give drug users access to safe and tested supplies, equipment such as sterile needles, and to educate them on how to end their addictions.
It was unclear where the drugs being sold would be sourced from, but they will be offered at rates just above street prices.
Meth will also be on the menu. Photo / NZME
Sale of hard drugs won’t be legal
Despite the impending decriminalisation it will remain illegal to sell hard drugs, including heroin and crack, in Vancouver so Martin will be breaking the law.
However, police in the city have in the past ignored the selling of cannabis in shops when that was illegal.
Medical cannabis sales were legalised in 2018, but before that there were already dozens of cannabis “dispensaries” operating openly in Vancouver.
At the time, police said they had “other priorities” than to shut them down.
Martin said if he was arrested when his shop opened he would launch a legal case, arguing for the selling of hard drugs under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
He told Canadian television: “A lot of these people take a risk every day to go get their drugs, if it isn’t clean or safe, or they put themselves in dangerous situations.
“A lot of predators out there get girls to do things for their drugs, whether they’ve got the money or not.
“I don’t think it’s very comfortable for anyone, so they can come here and not have to worry about any of that.”
He added: “To the people out there that think it’s a bad idea, you have to look at it from the user’s angle and the family of that user.”
His lawyer, Paul Lewin, said: “Vancouver is a very progressive part of the country.”
‘Deliberate policy by woke governments to flood streets with poison’
Poilievre said: “This is a deliberate policy by woke, liberal and NDP governments to provide taxpayer-funded drugs, to flood our streets with easy access to these poisons.”
He said such policies would lead to “major increases in overdoses and a massive increase in crime”.
Andy Bhatti, an addiction specialist, said the British Columbia experiment offering opioids on prescription was a “short-term fix to try to get people off of fentanyl” but “the issue is 90 per cent of opiate addicts use other stimulants”.
He told The Telegraph: “I think British Columbia’s approach to the opiate crisis isn’t really working.”
