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Medicine Canada

2 Drug Companies Can Legally Start Selling Cocaine, Heroin, and MDMA (vice.com) 179

Posted by BeauHD from the how-about-that dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: At least two companies in British Columbia, Canada, say they've received exemptions from the federal government allowing them to produce and distribute cocaine, heroin, MDMA, or magic mushrooms. But it's not clear under what circumstances the companies will be able to sell the drugs, and B.C. Premier David Eby said he was "astonished" to hear the announcement. On Thursday, Sunshine Earth Labs, a psychedelics manufacturer announced that Health Canada, a federal government agency, is allowing the company to legally produce and distribute the coca leaf and cocaine; MDMA; opium; morphine, heroin and psilocybin, the active ingredient in shrooms. The company said it plans to "bring a safer supply of drugs to the global market."

Meanwhile, cannabis extractions company Adastra announced it's now legally allowed to both produce and distribute psilocybin and cocaine. In a statement to VICE News, Health Canada said Adastra is licensed to produce the drugs for scientific and medical purposes but cannot sell products to the general public. "They are only permitted for sale to other licence holders who have cocaine listed on their licence, pharmacists, practitioners, hospitals, or the holder of a section 56(1) exemption for research purposes," the agency said.

Both companies claim they received amendments under Health Canada's Dealer's Licenses, which grant manufacturers, doctors, and researchers exemptions to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, allowing them to legally possess and make banned drugs. In a news conference, Eby said the licenses were granted without consultation from the province. "It is not part of our provincial plan," he said, noting that he would be following up with Health Canada about the announcements. Adastra said it's license allows it to "interact with up to 250 grams of cocaine and to import coca leaves to manufacture and synthesize the substance."
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2 Drug Companies Can Legally Start Selling Cocaine, Heroin, and MDMA More

2 Drug Companies Can Legally Start Selling Cocaine, Heroin, and MDMA

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  • Good. This bodes well for personal liberty (Score:5, Insightful)

    by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Friday March 03, 2023 @10:34PM (#63341083)
    If you want to get high, thats on you. Just dont hurt anyone else.

    Besides, since there is such easy access to drugs as it is, we might as well reap the economic benefit of legal sales. Why should cartels reap billions? Publicly trade those companies, and tax their product. Make them liable for quality.
    • But then who will pay for all the unnecessarily large police forces and "operations"?!?! /s

      • You can hire a larger police force if you have the tax revenue from drugs.

        In essence the drug users are paying for the additional police. Itâ(TM)s genius.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Problem being that getting addicted to drugs almost universally reduces person's ability to care about themselves, which in turn also causes projection which leads to them caring less about everyone else.

      Which leads to societal collapse, as observed in China during the Opium Wars. Best case scenario, drug addled masses don't care about anything and have enough money stashed to finance their habit until they expire. For most people, they don't so they also end up doing anything and everything to get money fo

      • Personal freedom angle works for people who do well for themselves. It has the opposite effect for those that can't do well. Especially because they have a drug habit which effectively subverts their entire personality to serve the addiction.

        Considering that Florida seems to have gone significantly crazier right around the time they made a whole lot easier to get legal pot, there might be something to this.

        Yeah, correlation is not causation and all that. Don't tell me; I know.

        • Florida's problem is that despite all the legislation and whatnot, it's still fairly trivial to get a hand on the ingredients for meth. Pot doesn't make people crazy, it makes them lazy.

          • Pot doesn't make people crazy, it makes them lazy.

            Well specifically, the elected officials got crazier and the electorate became too lazy to vote them out. Democrat turn out in Florida in '22 was abysmal.

      • Re:Good. This bodes well for personal liberty (Score:4, Insightful)

        by fafalone ( 633739 ) on Saturday March 04, 2023 @12:40AM (#63341285)
        Some of the many problems in your post:
        1) Prohibition isn't working.
        2) The exorbitant cost to fund a habit is consequence of prohibition. Nobody needs to steal to get high if their drug of choice was as cheap as a nicotine or alcohol habit. So not only is this a canard you've raised, but it's prime example of how harm is caused to prohibition-- the property crime by addicts stops in a well designed legalization system.
        3) Programs to supply addicts with their drugs exist. Their results are clear: People are *more* likely to maintain their own housing and employment when they don't have to be out spending so much time acquiring the money and drugs for their next hit.
        4) "Societal collapse" being a real thing caused by drugs is such a ridiculous argument you might as well just be ranting about how these degenerates need to suffer for their sins or else God will smite us.

        The bottom line is that prohibition is a harm maximization strategy. You'll never be able to eliminate 100% of the harm of dangerous drugs like opioids and cocaine, but a *well regulated* (i.e. not a free for all) legalization system is the way you minimize it.

        • Re:Good. This bodes well for personal liberty (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Saturday March 04, 2023 @01:18AM (#63341305)

          1. Prohibition works as long as you recognise that goal isn't elimination of drug addiction but suppression of drug addiction to lower levels than otherwise available. Only if you're a genuine "black and white, no gray" person can you believe that having less access to acquire something doesn't lead to less getting that substance and use of it.

          It's also helpful to have less destructive drugs available for those that have personality traits that require some form of chemical addiction. Ethanol, for all its horrific problems is still far less harmful than opioids for example.

          2. This cost has to be contrasted with cost of not doing that. I once again bring up China during Opium Wars as a prime example of cost of not prohibiting these substances being many orders of magnitude higher than what we have today in countries that prohibit those drugs. Our societies are largely functional, and overwhelming majority of population does fine without those drugs. As opposed to Chinese society, which effectively collapsed because large enough amount of people didn't care about anything but servicing their addiction.

          You seem to like arguing history with all the talk about making drugs illegal being comparable to prohibition, which is a specific historic event in many Western nations. I recommend comparing it to the other side of the coin. Read up on state of China during Opium Wars, and why they call that period "century of humiliation" in PRC today. It's a far more harrowing read than the worst crime sprees of prohibition era USA.

          3. They do. What they don't tell you is that those programs in countries where they actually work generally do two things. First, drugs are still illegal and you will go to prison for them. Two, you're offered an exemption to this on condition that you sign up to being in programs to stop your addiction and reverse it, and constant monitoring of your progress. Failure results in exemption being removed and you going to prison for drugs. Most examples that far left "total freedom at any cost" folk that push for legalizing drugs cite in their drug legalization campaigns talk about these nations (example: Portugal), without talking about how those systems actually operate.

          4. You're arguing with well documented history. Evidence to just how societally destructive mass addiction is ranges from Opium Wars where evidence is on par with evidence for things like Holocaust, to modern day Afghanistan's problems with the same issue where it took Talibs forcing tens to hundreds of thousands of addicts in Kabul to go full cold turkey under heavy monitoring to solve what Western allied government claimed to be an utterly unsolvable problem that was one of the worst economic problems facing that city. Giving credit where credit is due. One thing Talibs definitely do better than us Westerners is opioid addiction management, because they have no tolerance for it, and they also provide a spiritual structure to help overcome the addiction on top of it. Because another poorly known but well documented fact about drug addiction is that it generally changes addict's personality on brain structure level. We can observe the changes in addict's brain with fMRI. And those changes are effectively a new personality built on top of the old one.

          Which is why the generally best way to fight this is to have a strong religious impulse directed at rejecting addiction. It's why final stage of AA is to welcome Jesus as your saviour. Religious impulse is something that evolved in humans specifically to override other incentive systems to enable better service to one's tribe. As a result, it is capable of overriding everything from addiction to even self preservation impulses. Which makes it useful to beat even extreme addiction, where nothing else works.

          The bottom line is that prohibition is harm minimalization strategy. You ensure that only the people with most addiction-oriented personalities will be willing to expend effort to procure drugs. As opposed to "free drugs for all" strategy, which is

          • Only if you're a genuine "black and white, no gray" person>

            This offends gray people.

          • Re:Good. This bodes well for personal liberty (Score:5, Insightful)

            by quintessencesluglord ( 652360 ) on Saturday March 04, 2023 @02:30AM (#63341379)

            So you are going to have to explain your mechanism of prohibition reducing drug use to lower levels that say wouldn't happen with a tax. How are the mechanisms different? If you are doing prohibition, you've now introduced financial incentives and crime the government doesn't control into the equation. How would prohibition work differently than it does now?

            Bit you omitted from your detailing of the opium wars was opium was already prohibited, but financial incentives kept China flush with opium for longer than a century afterwards (and continues to this day, even after Mao), so exactly what did prohibition accomplish? How was harm minimized?

            Show your work.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              You advocacy for selling alcohol and tobacco to children is interesting. Please elaborate on how taxing sale of both to children is an improvement on control of access to both for children.

              P.S. You seem to also not understand how drugs impact people. Once addicted, drying of supply without addressing the personality changes does little. People will be desperate to get a fix regardless. You need to actually address the addiction. Which is why in China, it took the time it requires for drug addicted generatio

              • Pffft.

                Average yearly cost to smoke is a bit over $4k, with a fair portion of the price being taxes. Don't know many children that can afford that.

                And if you were to compare alcoholism rates between Germany (lowest drinking age for a western nation) with the US (one of the highest drinking ages), the US rates in the top ten for alcoholism/alcohol use disorders while Germany is 93rd.

                But good of you to bring up think of the children. Let's me know the caliber of intellect I'm dealing with since the rest of you

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dryeo ( 100693 )

            How can you say that opioids are worse on your health then ethanol? Not counting ODing, something that can happen with both, the major health risk from opioids, assuming clean needles etc, is constipation. Meanwhile there is a huge list of health problems with ethanol. I've known to many alcoholics who have died painful deaths from liver failure. Not to mention the violence and such that goes with ethanol, whereas the opioid addict, given a supply, at worse spends there time nodding off.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              Remind me, what's the death toll of alcohol overdoses vs opioid overdoses for same amount of population taking those?

              It seems like you don't have problem with my argument, but with mathematics.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by dryeo ( 100693 )

                Well, you have to take prohibition into consideration. When alcohol was illegal, there was quite a high death rate from contaminated booze resulting in poisoning.
                OTOH, at the local safe injection site, there has been zero deaths this century, or for the 20 odd years it has existed.
                Most opioid deaths are due to poisoning from contaminants or unknown purity with some from people getting out of jail or such and forgetting their tolerance has dropped.
                So if we remove poisoning from the equation, I'd say there ar

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Strider- ( 39683 )

          1) Prohibition isn't working.

          Which is why British Columbia, where the companies mentioned in this article, has an exemption from federal laws regarding the possession of small quantities of these drugs for personal use. They were decriminalized about a month ago.

        • The problem with current drug laws and prohibition etc is they go after the wrong people.

          The users number in the tens of millions (or more). It is ridiculously impossible to inflict legal consequences on all of them. What we should be much more aggressive about is destroying the drug cartels and other related criminal organizations. These are not happy go lucky hippies growing some extra pot for their neighbors. These are some of the most vicious and horrifying people on the planet who also engage in se

          • Still the wrong target. I'm with the late George Carlin here who said in one of his rants about the death penalty:

            "And you know, in this country, now there are alot of people who want to expand the death penalty to include drug dealers. This is really stupid. Drug dealers aren’t afraid to die. They’re already killing each other every day on the streets by the hundreds. Drive-bys, gang shootings, they’re not afraid to die. Death penalty doesn’t mean anything unless you use it on peopl

      • > Which leads to societal collapse, as observed in China during the Opium Wars.

        I thought the main lesson to be learned from the Opium Wars was that prohibition does not work and that the drug dealers always win.

        I mean there were two Opium Wars and China lost both of them. They even lost Hong Kong for 99 years because they failed so hard at prohibition.

        They should have learned their lesson the first time, and here you are trying to lose your nation to the cartels again.

        • Well, it works that way if your dealer is backed by the biggest army the world has to offer.

          • There's a tendency towards them becoming the biggest army... given that they have a monopoly on a highly demanded commodity... also see the Zeta cartel and who knows how much the mafia have infiltrated your government?

            • Remind me, what drug does the US push? They seem to have a pretty impressive army.

              • All of them as far as I'm aware, The US is responsible for the Single Convention on Narcotics that all nation members of the UN were forced to sign up to so the Mafia would have a global monopoly on the drug market (to replace the market they lost to the 21st Amendment).

                The US military is highly involved in maintaining that monopoly.

                Where do you think the majority of the worlds drug money ends up?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          Except that of course, once drug access was cut off, the society recovered once drug addled generations passed on.

      • You need drugs to not give a fuck about people? I dare say most people can achieve that level when sober.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dryeo ( 100693 )

        Saw an interview with a junkie who got on the safe supply wagon.
        Basically, before, spent all his time trying to avoid withdrawal, doing illegal stuff to come up with the money to get his next hit. Withdrawal is so horrible that people will do anything to avoid it. Not to mention you don't know what you're getting on the street.
        Now, goes to the clinic on the way to work to get his hit, same after work. Note that he now works and has a home. he loved the improvement in his life.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          That is left's argument. That there is a tiny portion of people who are really poorly off, of which a small portion may be in the category that will be helped by this.

          What this ignores is massive amount of people it will harm. From similar state addicts who will sink even lower into their addiction, to people who didn't have severe addiction who will develop one because access becomes easy, to massive amount of people who would have never gotten addicted in the first place trying the drugs "because why not,

    • I don't think access is all that easy unless you know someone or persevere at it. I remember having problems finding a little weed when I moved to a new city and I'm not about to resort to dealers on the street. I'd rather go without and I did for a while a few times. Now I just go to the store. I wouldn't know where to get any hard drugs except for alcohol. I've known a few people who did cocaine every once in a while, but they didn't use it all the time. I've known a few people who had problems with th

    • Yeah.... but no. I have libertarian leanings, so I'm sensitive to the personal freedom argument. But the truth is you can't shield the rest of society from the adverse consequences of drug consumption. In other words, if/when the free consumption of drugs creates the need for more health spending, security spending, welfare spending, this is gonna hurt everyone (to use your words). So if your drug consumption is self contained, fine. But they seldom are.

      • A recent case that got some media attention in Europe: https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]

        I wish it wasn't the case, but there's no such thing as isolated and harmless drug consumption. If there was... yeah, go for it, shoot up whatever you want in your body.

        • I realized after posting this is a bad example. Because in *this* case the harm done to society is going to be met with some consequences, probably in the form of some financial penalty and/or light jail time. But this is an exception.

    • I'd say it's because the Canadian federal government feels it's more important than ever to ensure the masses get an opiate, ANY opiate.

    • That's fine. Play stupid games and win stupid prizes. But if you get hooked and turn into a junkie (which I've seen happen multiple times in my life), that's on you. In ultra-libertarian land, your bad decisions should never be allowed to negatively affect others. That means you can't play the victim card for any of the bad shit that happens, because you knew the risks and consciously chose it anyway. If you become addicted and steal or commit violence to feed your habit, you go to the man jail away fr

  • Publicity stunt (Score:3)

    by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Friday March 03, 2023 @10:37PM (#63341087)

    This publicity stunt is getting a lot of play. Lots of organizations are licensed to posess things like cocaine, and a bunch of others are licensed to produce and distribute it... to the ones licensed to posess it.

    Example: https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/C... [sigmaaldrich.com]

    But because this one is called "Sunshine Earth Labs" and not "Sigma-Aldrich", and they normally sell you weed, not expensive lab reagents, everyone somehow thinks you're going to be able to buy coke from the corner store.

    • On the radio, I heard that they can't sell to the public, only to the hospital or other licensed companies.

    • Yeah the fact that cocaine is Schedule II and cannabis is Schedule I has always been extraordinarily silly but I think this is more interesting because of the psychadelics especially MDMA and psylocibin which I think will have massive theraputic uses. I think those getting their justified attention form a medical perspective is interesting and overall good, but I feel like this might just another version of a story we've seen already.

      buy coke from the corner store

      All goals have to start somewhere

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Strider- ( 39683 )

        This is Canada, where Marijuana is legal, regulated and taxed, similarly to liquor.

        Also, British Columbia now has a federal exemption decriminalizing the possession of small quantities of the aforementioned drugs for personal use. This was introduced about a month ago or so.

    • Thank you, but to expand upon the drugs listed.

      Cocaine - Is used to treat a few conditions of the eyes. That's the primary medical treatment I know about it being used for. It is apparently exceptionally good and also non-addictive in that form.
      Heroin - It can be used to keep non-responding opiate addicts from seeking out dealers and funding them.
      MDMA - can be used to improve psychiatric treatment tremendously, but care must be taken even there.
      "Magic Mushrooms" - much the same as MDMA, but more applicabl

  • Legalize all drugs (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
    Treat the hard stuff as a medical condition. Have the government give it away to addicts and then immediately when they come down provide addiction therapy. Provide universal health Care and extended unemployment insurance so people aren't getting hooked on painkillers in order to keep working so they can survive.

    Do all that into drug war ends. This has two benefits one for the left wing and one for the right wing.

    For the left wing it's just plain less cruel and it saves a ton of money.

    For the r

    • Re:Legalize all drugs (Score:4, Informative)

      by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Friday March 03, 2023 @11:43PM (#63341187) Journal

      For the right wing it'll end the cartels and in the process it'll stop the tide of immigrants coming over the border as South America can finally modernize and develop a modern economy that can support its people.

      The right wing needs the cartels and the immigrants. They need them as someone to blame for the harm that their own policies cause.

    • Have the government give it away to addicts and then immediately when they come down provide addiction therapy.

      The problem is that many people don't want addiction therapy and just keep taking the free drugs. BC has changed from using treatment to deal with the drug problem to using "safe supply" in the mistaken belief that this reduces death. Instead, it just postpones it since nobody gets off their addiction and eventually, it will kill them. In the meantime, if you visit Vancouver you will find drug users all over the city even outside some of major business hotels.

      I wish I knew what the best solution to the

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gwjgwj ( 727408 )
        Any medical action just postpones death, and does not reduce it. Everybody dies.

      • I wish I knew what the best solution to the drug problem was

        The best solution to the drug problem is to expel the rent seekers (sadly, no airlock is available) and care for human needs. But in our modern capitalist reality, that can't happen without worldwide revolt, because any nation that does it will be at a disadvantage.

      • Addiction therapy works. The multiple studies showing at works and we have Portugal legalized hard drugs and did exactly what I'm talking about and it worked there too. You're being fed a line so that people who profit from the drug war and continue to profit from it at your expense.

      • Saying "The problem is that many people don't want addiction therapy and just keep taking the free drugs" tells me that you have not given this any thought beyond surface emotional reactions and moralizing.

        The problem of addiction isn't "people are getting high" - the problem of addiction is that addicts prioritize using over other life responsibilities and it causes problems in society. Safe supply and needle exchange programs reduce harm and give addicts a chance at addressing the issues that prompted th

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 )

      Excuse me? The right doesn't want those cartels and immigrants to go away, they need a scapegoat for why their politics who benefit their 1% cronies for some odd reason makes the life of the other 99% more miserable. And there ain't enough commies around anymore, besides, nobody takes them serious as a threat anymore.

    • Do all that into drug war ends.

      Of course. The war is a construct based on criminalisation. You don't even need to treat people, provide healthcare or benefit society in order to end the war on drugs.

      On the flip side you don't need to legalize it to treat the problem and improve society. You can simply take the approach of many other countries, and not criminally convict and imprison people for mere possession of something they bought for $30 on the street. But won't someone think of the poor prison owners.

  • https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada... [www.cbc.ca] 'The company has significantly misrepresented the nature of the licence,' says B.C.'s premier.

  • The war on drugs (Score:4, Informative)

    by Huitzil ( 7782388 ) on Saturday March 04, 2023 @01:08AM (#63341303)
    When Mexico explored legalizing weed and decriminalizing harder drugs to deal with rising violence a few years ago, the US threatened to pull military aid and impose trade sanctions. But when Canada does it, it is lauded and called progressive.

    • When Mexico explored legalizing weed and decriminalizing harder drugs to deal with rising violence a few years ago, the US threatened to pull military aid and impose trade sanctions. But when Canada does it, it is lauded and called progressive.

      I live in Canada, and AFAICT a) we aren't a major exporter of illegal drugs, especially to the States and b) whatever illegal drug cartels we have don't have drug wars on our streets that affect large numbers citizens of just trying to live their lives. Also, we don't have massive numbers of people seeking illegal refuge in the US on a daily basis. Those factors may have something to do with America's differing approaches to the two countries in question.

      • No drug wars eh? Have you been to East Vancouver, Surrey BC recently? One looks like World War Z, the other one has drive bys and gang violence every night. Matter of fact, the fentanyl crisis pre pandemic was fueled by overseas trade that likely leveraged Canadian ports. Sure, that has shifted down south .. but consumption and trade in Canada is huge.

    • Imagine a stable Mexico that can use more of its armed forces to seal off the border, where should the US get their cheap illegal labor from, huh? By boat from Cuba?

    • When country Trump hates explored legalizing weed and decriminalizing harder drugs to deal with rising violence a few years ago, the Trump administration threatened to pull military aid and impose trade sanctions. But when Canada does it, it is lauded and called progressive by a sane Biden administration not hell bent on pissing off its neighbours or building a wall next to them.

      FTFY.

  • Clickbait claims, but I'm glad it's happening. (Score:3)

    by OneOfMany07 ( 4921667 ) on Saturday March 04, 2023 @02:53AM (#63341393)

    One of the issues for researching these substances is the lack of supply. You can't trust Rico down the street to give you the same stuff every week. And people claim we shouldn't legalize them without more information (which they block us from obtaining by not manufacturing clean supplies).

    I hope the moron that scared people by saying they're going to sell stuff to anyone is fired.

  • Heroin isn't unusual (Score:3)

    by jeti ( 105266 ) on Saturday March 04, 2023 @03:16AM (#63341411)
    To my knowledge, there's nothing truly unusual about using Heroin as pain medication in hospitals for severe cases. It's called Diamorphine in a medical context. Patients typically only get it for a short timespan and aren't told what it is. Withdrawal isn't much more problematic than with other opiate based pain medication.

    • Cocaine is also still used for medical purposes when a patient tends to react to all of the other options.

  • Contrary to predictions from hanky-clutching police forces on both sides of the border, nothing has changed since Canada flat-out legalized marijuana. Subsequent attempts to provide a safe supply of more dangerous drugs have had mixed but generally positive results.

    Meanwhile, south of the border, the "War On Drugs" has helped create a nation of inmates and jailers, with the United States imprisoning a higher percentage of its citizens than any other country. Americans were the most freedom-loving people o

  • So much over-reaction in the comments here. The announcement doesn't mean the company can sell those drugs on the street.

    "the sale of controlled substances can only take place under certain circumstances, such as to another licensed dealer, pharmacist, doctor, or an individual who has an exemption from Health Canada—like people approved to use shrooms at end-of-life."

    And...

    "Canada already has safe supply programs, through which people with opioid addictions can access pharmaceutical heroin and fentany

  • It's not great for your heart but as far as dangerous drugs go, it's slightly more dangerous than cannabis but far less dangerous than alcohol or heroin.

  • Per the CBC [www.cbc.ca], the B.C. company retracted its claim of licence to sell cocaine after prime minister and premier weigh in. The permier says that the company has significantly misrepresented the nature of the license.

  • Basically, beyond having any therapeutic value, to prevent psychological harm MDMA needs people to work. The last thing you ever want to do: find yourself along on MDMA. Remember set and setting is everything.

  • You have to be a doctor to get the good stuff.

  • The company spoke out of line, they cant make coke for recreational purposes, and they have withdrawn this statement. Soryy but a dumbass in marketing spoke wrong.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada... [www.cbc.ca]

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