A Vancouver man named Jerry Martin is floating a business plan to open a store that would sell crack, meth, and heroin over the counter as soon as British Columbia (B.C.) decriminalizes hard drugs — a policy announced in May and scheduled to take effect on January 31, 2023.
British Columbia legalized recreational marijuana four years ago. After a surge of drug-related deaths during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, the province decided the next step would be officially decriminalizing small amounts of most illegal drugs. Police in British Columbia were already in the habit of letting offenders slide for holding “personal” quantities of hard drugs, a practice known as the “Vancouver Bubble.”
Decriminalization will ostensibly assist “harm reduction” by keeping small-time users out of jail, where drug use allegedly becomes more dangerous rather than more uncommon. Proponents say it will free up police resources to pursue organized crime, protect users by encouraging them to use “safer” drugs instead of dangerous illicit concoctions, and make users more comfortable with seeking help for their addictions. Police officers who encounter drug users will point them toward social services instead of arresting them.
Some decriminalization advocates felt British Columbia’s plan did not go far enough because drugs will not be legalized nationwide and the amounts made legal are small, so users will still be obliged to pay frequent visits to their dangerous gang-linked suppliers.
The enterprising Jerry Martin of Vancouver supplied an answer to that problem by laying plans to open a drug store, cleverly named “The Drugs Store,” at which friendly staffers clad in bulletproof vests and masks would sell legalized 2.5-gram doses of various poisons over the counter.
“The Drugs Store will provide customers with reliable access to safe tested drugs, harm reduction supplies such as unused sterile needles, pipes, etc., and educational information,” Martin’s business plan said.
Canada’s National Post wryly observed that Martin’s business plan omitted the very important detail of where he would get the drugs from. The city of Vancouver would presumably have to grant him permission to buy in bulk, the way licensed dispensaries can obtain high-grade opioids. There is no indication that Vancouver is considering such authorization for Martin, who stood trial in April 2021 for running a cannabis shop before Canada actually got around to legalizing recreational marijuana.
The National Post noted that while British Columbia is about to make possessing small amounts of hard drugs legal, it has not legalized the sale of any quantity of those substances — but, as with the “Vancouver Bubble” of provincial police ignoring minor possession offenses, the authorities have a history of looking the other way if shops selling drugs are discreet.
The pot shop Martin was busted for running was not discreet; he got in trouble because local citizens complained about the crowds of customers thronging from all across Canada to shop at his veritable Wal-Mart of weed. One might assume that his proposed one-stop meth, crack, coke, and molly shop would also attract a lively clientele.
Martin, 51, cheerfully told Vice News he wants to get arrested so his lawyers can file a constitutional challenge to Canada’s remaining drug laws. A longtime drug addict himself, he claimed his mission was to provide users with safer products to feed their addictions and a safer place to shop, while gently offering “some education on how to quit.”
Martin said he is worried about vulnerable users, especially women, being preyed upon by the dangerous criminals they currently patronize to buy their drugs. The cashiers at his proposed store would wear body armor because those dangerous criminals might take exception to the competition, even though Martin vowed not to provoke them by undercutting their prices.
“Every day I’m not open, more people die. I can’t open fast enough,” he said.
Martin told Vice News he hopes to raise at least $50,000 through crowdfunding to launch The Drugs Store. If he could get to $500,000, he would consider buying retail space instead of renting it, which might be necessary because his legal history and poor credit rating make it hard for him to rent. If he cannot raise enough money to rent a storefront, he is considering “buying a trailer that can operate as a mobile store until he can find a more permanent location.”
Another flaw in Martin’s business plan is that British Columbia’s legalization of hard drugs is theoretically temporary because the province obtained only a three-year exemption from Canada’s national drug laws.
Writing at the Washington Post in June after the hard drugs legalization plan was announced, exasperated Canadian columnist J.J. McCullough denounced the idea as a transparently ridiculous “gimmick” that was tough to reconcile with a nanny-state Canadian government that requires “scary slogans to be printed on individual cigarettes” and plans to put toxic warning labels on salty foods.
McCullough pointed out that since possession of almost every controlled substance has been de facto legalized in Vancouver for years because the police refuse to pursue all but the worst trafficking charges, it was difficult to see how official decriminalization would have any beneficial effect on B.C.’s horrific toll of drug deaths.
McCullough found high levels of class snobbery in the idea that crack and fentanyl are among the few substances B.C. does not want to stigmatize:
Government rushes to regulate and discourage the self-destructive habits of the middle class, who authorities assume possess some degree of agency over their lives and can thus be persuaded out of doing bad things through propaganda and punishment.
Canada’s underclass, by contrast — in this case, drug users who are overwhelmingly destitute and poor — are presumed to have no such agency. Their defining self-destructive habit of drug addiction, “is not a choice” (as B.C.’s government incessantly repeats in its ad campaigns) but rather a “health condition” they can do little to escape. Accordingly, they deserve little more than sympathy, paternalistic supervision and protection from the disapproval of those who actually possess free will.
CBC News noted that actual drug addicts are fairly contemptuous of the legalization plan because they need a lot more than the stipulated 2.5 grams of various substances to feed their addictions.
The original proposal was to legalize 4.5 grams, and Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) Vice President Kevin Yake said even that was not enough.
“2.5 grams, I think that’s ridiculous. I need that to wake up in the morning. For people with higher tolerances, it doesn’t really cut it at all,” Yake said.
“It’s not a cure, legalizing a little bit of narcotics. It’s got to be more than that, having safe supply that’s tested every day before it goes out to the user, guaranteeing that person’s not going to drop dead from a heavy, heavy dosage of fentanyl, which is poison,” he said.
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