The federal government's decision on British Columbia's drug decriminalization threshold was based on police input, says Canada's minister of mental health and addictions.
Drug users in B.C. who possess up to a cumulative 2.5 grams of illicit drugs for personal use will not be arrested or charged starting next year.
Law enforcement showed that about 85 per cent of drug confiscations are of quantities less than two grams, she said. “How do you make sure police officers and the justice system is ready for this change? How do you make sure that organized crime doesn't make a windfall off of this change?” Trudeau said.
More accurate data to properly set a threshold would not be the average amount of drugs confiscated from people for personal use, but the average amount of drugs confiscated by people who are drug traffickers, he said. Perrin said he had requested data on the number of people that were charged with drug trafficking from the Vancouver Police Department.
Vancouver Police Department data on drug confiscations by quantity for 2019-20 was analyzed by Erica McAdam, another researcher at the BC Centre on Substance Use.
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