Canadians lose money investing in Cannabis

[WiltonRanch]

My local city of 30000 has the highest per capita liquor stores and was upwards of 9+ pot shops. Haven’t done a substantial count but roughly guess 40% out of business now and others changed names. Overbuilt for the demand. Could see it coming. Funniest thing is the medichair has a pot shop beside it. Half baked seniors.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

So who was forcing investors to invest in Cannabis?

And who's fault is it when the value of many investments of all types have fallen?

And who is paying for all the health and addiction issues from tobacco, alcohol and gambling happily taxed by provincial governments? Is cannabis any worse? In fact it is probably less addictive and destructive than all three of the above.

Seems like a lot of provincial premiers deserve some of the blame.

I think we can both agree, that this is a case of a fool and his money are soon parted. No different than the green energy scams, electric cars, crypto, and NFT's etc.

Who would have ever guessed that a highly government regulated industry would produce an inferior product at a superior cost, and would grossly miscalculate supply and demand. Almost reminds me of another government mandated monopoly that used to sell wheat.

I feel no sympathy for investors who got sucked into these obvious scams. They will all fail, just as spectacularly as FTX just did. Meanwhile, actual productive industries, and actual energy producers are starved of capital(as governments and institutions cried about divest, while throwing good money after bad at worthless adventures such as this), regulated out of existence(why was it OK for Element to build their pot facility in the middle of a bonafide muskeg, while a farmer who produced food is regulated from ever farming something that had water on it once), starved for labour(Why would you want to freeze on a drilling rig in the middle of nowhere if you can just open a store and sell pot in your hometown), and a good portion of the labour they do get is most likely useless thanks to legalized pot.

And I am with you on your next point. I disagree with keeping damaging products/practices legal, just because governments can collect a sin tax from them. How do you propose to solve this age old problem? I doubt any party would get elected in the 2020's based on a platform of making pot, alcohol, tobacco and gambling illegal. Past attempts at prohibition weren't very successful.

[Partners]

The trurd thought there was alot of Pot smokers like him..
Guess not.
Chuck and Aggie better pick up the pace..

[Guest]

Article in the National Post:”Canadians have lost $131 billion investing in cannabis.”

Just another example of Justin Trudeau’s great vision and leadership! Lol.

just to put it in perspective
thats $43k for EVERY person in canada

[AlbertaFarmer5]

just to put it in perspective
thats $43k for EVERY person in canada

Which should make anyone suspicious that this statistic is probably not accurate.

Even if it's only $43 per citizen, imagine what we could have accomplished if we had invested that in something productive, such as pipelines and LNG terminals. Or twinning the railroads. Or invest in the healthcare industry instead of the health wrecking industry.

[WiltonRanch]

The trurd thought there was alot of Pot smokers like him..
Guess not.
Chuck and Aggie better pick up the pace..

God forbid they don’t need pot. They’re baked enough as it is

[chuckChuck]

just to put it in perspective
thats $43k for EVERY person in canada

Case did you total up $43,000 times 37 million?

That is getting pretty close to the total per capita GDP of the country measured in USD.

Where did you get that number?

[chuckChuck]

Pierre Poilievre couldn’t be more wrong on drug policy
Gary Mason
Gary Mason
National affairs columnist
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-pierre-poilievre-drug-policy-everything-broken-video/

Do you ever feel like everything is broken in Canada? Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre does and suspects many of you do, too.

This was the overarching theme in a five-minute video Mr. Poilievre posted last week, one that included a rather controversial and misguided message on drug policy in this country.

With a tent city in Vancouver as his backdrop, Mr. Poilievre said offering addicts access to a safe supply of illicit drugs was a “failed experiment” brought in by “woke Liberal and NDP governments.” He said if he became prime minister, he would end this policy (although he didn’t say how) and instead put federal dollars toward recovery and treatment.

I want to say here that Mr. Poilievre doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But his harping on about the perils of giving people “taxpayer-funded” drugs is a trope guaranteed to get his conservatively inclined base fired up and might even persuade the odd centrist or two to question the policy as well. They ignore the fact that “safe supply” isn’t really a radical departure from conventional addiction treatments with drugs such as methadone or Suboxone.

Former Harper adviser denounces Pierre Poilievre drug policy unveiled in video

So where to begin with the federal Conservative Leader’s message?

For starters, Mr. Poilievre says there has been a 300-per-cent increase in drug overdose deaths in B.C. since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took office in 2015. What he’s trying to do here, of course, is tie Mr. Trudeau to this horrific death tally, which he inflates but is close enough. Blaming the Prime Minister for these deaths is preposterous. As is Mr. Poilievre’s view that safe-consumption sites are also to blame.

Yes, there has been a tragic and well-documented increase in illicit drug deaths in B.C. in the last six to seven years, but virtually none of it is the fault of safe supply operations, which offer people access to drugs that, if purchased on the street, could well contain deadly does of fentanyl – a powerful synthetic drug – or methamphetamines. Since 2017, the sites also helped reverse more than 41,000 overdoses without one death.

An analysis by the BC Coroners Service that looked at illicit drug toxicity deaths between Jan. 1, 2012, and Sept. 30, 2022, found that no one had died of an overdose at supervised consumption sites and there was “no indication” they were contributing to the rise in narcotic-related fatalities in the province. In fact, 56 per cent of overdose deaths in B.C. this year happened in private residences, the report noted.

So why are so many people dying? It’s pretty simple: the toxic nature of the drugs being sold on the street. There were roughly 200 deaths per year before fentanyl became a common ingredient of street drugs. There were 2,267 last year, and, again, none of them occurred at a safe consumption site. Fentanyl or analogues were detected in less than 5 per cent of illicit drug deaths in 2012. It’s almost 86 per cent now.

In his video, Mr. Poilievre also says that he would bolster staff at our borders to keep ingredients such as fentanyl out of the country. The folks at Canada Border Services Agency must have gotten a kick out of that one. They know that substances such as fentanyl are so powerful that they are often shipped in single envelopes. Good luck checking all those.

Mr. Poilievre points to Alberta as the illicit drug-fighting jurisdiction to be imitated because overdose deaths have fallen. Former premier Jason Kenney came out against supervised injection sites when he was running the show. What Mr. Poilievre doesn’t say is that the Alberta government still supplies thousands of people a month with free doses of opioids to help reduce their drug cravings. And five cities run supervised consumption sites.

The fact is, safe supply is viewed by many in the health care field as an essential intervention to protect people from dying on the streets or in their homes. It’s hoped users can take advantage of the service to stabilize and get further treatment.

No, it’s not perfect. And yes, there are skeptics, including some doctors who aren’t sure it’s such a great idea. But combined with a greater investment in treatment and recovery it can be – and is – a necessary tool in society’s fight against a scourge that is sweeping not just Canada but the world.

Mr. Poilievre says in his video that giving people more drugs at safe supply depots won’t free people from addiction but will “only lead to their ultimate death.”

He couldn’t be more wrong. And his position couldn’t be more dangerous.

[chuckChuck]

Former Harper adviser denounces Pierre Poilievre drug policy unveiled in video

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-former-harper-adviser-denounces-poilievre-drug-policy-unveiled-in/

A former public safety and justice adviser to Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper has condemned Pierre Poilievre’s new video on Vancouver’s toxic drug crisis, describing the current party leader’s opposition to safe supply as unsubstantiated.

“I was really disgusted by it. I honestly was so disturbed to see Pierre Poilievre using people’s really desperate situation here in the city I live in as a backdrop for a political propaganda ad,” said Benjamin Perrin, a law professor at the University of British Columbia, in an interview on Monday.

Mr. Perrin was referring to a post Sunday titled, Everything feels broken, which features Mr. Poilievre criticizing the status quo on dealing with overdose issues – particularly Vancouver’s approach of safe supply, or providing drugs that are not contaminated with toxic opioids, to those grappling with addiction.

“It was a five-minute long diatribe that’s not informed by any research evidence or expertise. It’s just Mr. Poilievre rehashing Conservative, war-on-drugs tropes that have been long since discredited and have been found to be not only ineffective but costly and deadly.”

According to a report this month from BC Coroners Service, at least 171 people died from toxic drugs in September, amounting to 1,644 fatalities thus far this year. That monthly figure is an 8-per-cent increase over the number of deaths in September, 2021.

Prior to working for Mr. Harper from 2012 to 2013, Mr. Perrin was a law clerk at Canada’s Supreme Court. He now teaches criminal and international law, and is the author of several books, including Overdose: Heartbreak and Hope in Canada’s Opioid Crisis, published in 2020.

He also took issue with Mr. Poilievre posting the footage without meeting the media to talk about his policy.

“Politicians should be courageous enough to answer questions when they are going to propose that they have got solutions to a problem as complex and diverse as the opioid crisis instead of just posting a video on their social-media channels and just walking away without being responsible for what they said.”

Meanwhile, British Columbia’s Mental Health and Addictions Minister accused Mr. Poilievre of spreading a “dangerous” message with his video.

In a statement, Sheila Malcolmson cited the finding from the recent BC Coroner’s Service that the vast majority of toxic drug deaths in the province are due to people using illicit substances alone.

“People hide their drug use due to stigma and shame – which is why the message the leader of the Federal Conservative party is perpetuating is dangerous,” Ms. Malcolmson said.

“One of the most important ways to save lives from toxic drugs is to separate people from toxic drugs – that’s why B.C. prescribes safer supply and is the first province in Canada to do this. It’s toxic, illicit drugs that are killing people – not the province’s prescribed safer supply program.”

Mr. Poilievre’s video features him sitting on a downtown Vancouver beach with a tent community behind him.

“In that tent city are people hopelessly addicted to drugs, putting poisons in their bodies,” he says.

As the footage shifts to images of the Downtown Eastside, Mr. Poilievre cites escalating overdose deaths in the province, saying they have soared since Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister in 2015.

He calls the addictions part of a “failed experiment,” describing “a deliberate policy by woke Liberal and NDP governments to provide taxpayer-funded drugs, flood our street with easy access to these poisons.”

He says Conservatives support increasing resources on Canada’s borders to keep precursor ingredients used to make the drugs out of the country, as well as bringing in tougher laws for violent reoffenders and criminal actors preying on those with addiction issues. He adds that he opposes “the so-called and ironically named” safe-supply approach: “There is no safe supply of these drugs.”

Mr. Perrin criticized Mr. Poilievre’s suggestion that the crisis is caused by taxpayer-supported drugs as false, attributing the problem instead to street drugs contaminated with the potent opioids fentanyl and carfentanyl.

“There is no indication that prescribed safe supply is contributing to illicit drug deaths,” Mr. Perrin said, citing the recent BC Coroners Service report.

“Safer supply has been tested and found to be beneficial for people who have been unable to have treatment for whatever reason, and are long-term substance-abuse users. We’re talking about essentially substituting a contaminated street drug with a drug that has known contents and potency to help people stay alive, first of all, and also to be able to stabilize.”

B.C. introduced prescribed safer supply in May, 2020 and expanded it in July, 2021 – with more than 14,000 people from March 2020 to June, 2022 prescribed safer supply medications, include opioids, stimulants and benzodiazepines, and more than 10,000 of those prescribed an opioid, according to a statement from Ms. Malcolmson’s ministry.

Carolyn Bennett, the federal Mental Health and Addictions Minister said in a statement that there’s a need for a multi-faceted approach to the toxic drug crisis that uses prevention, harm reduction, treatment and enforcement. Safer supply, she said, can reduce hospitalizations, prevent ER visits and save lives.

“The Harper government removed the harm reduction pillar based upon ideology instead of science. We are now continuing to work hard to save lives after those failed policies. Because there is no recovery model for people who are dead. Instead, Mr. Poilievre wants to take Canada back to them,” Ms. Bennett said.

[cropgrower]

do you actualy think CC that anybody would bother to read all that ? i certainaly would not