It is no mystery to me as to why there are so many overdoses lately. This is what I mean.
City and medical officials all over Canada have been talking about the increase in overdoses lately. No one seems to know why there are so many, what can be done about them or how to stop people from using drugs, which in most cases leads to overdoses. I have a few theories.
The first is that now that the borders are closed, and people cannot travel as freely as they have in the past, it is really hard to smuggle drugs into Canada. People still try yet now that CBS has fewer people to stop at the border, or people arriving via ports or plane, Canada Border Services has (far) more time to stop and question people which leads to searching them. And that is why there have been a growing number of drug busts.
The second is that now that drugs like crack-cocaine are harder to smuggle into Canada, drug dealers have had to improvise. Instead of using their old-standbys, they have had to change it up. Now they use whatever chemicals are at their disposal. Making meth is the next best thing for those who can’t get crack. If they want to make the high higher, they might add some or a lot of fentanyl to the mix. Which is deadly to anyone who has not built up a tolerance drugs in general.
When stores were closed the boosters couldn’t steal anything to resell. Even when stores like the LCBO and the Beer Store were open, there were small numbers of people allowed in at time and there were security guards who, now that there were far less people to watch, were watching everyone closely. With everyone either working from home, waiting to go back to work, working part-time or avoiding it all together, break and entries have decreased. People may be take risks to get money yet they are not stupid. That financial gap was filled when the Liberal government introduced the CERB.
The Canadian Emergency Response Benefit was to financially help Canadians who lost their jobs, had their hours cut, got COVID19, had to stay at home to care for family members like their children, (who were no longer going to school or daycare), or their parents who could not care for themselves due to lack of services they had grown to rely on. The CERB was and still is helping a lot of Canadians, including drug addicts who are a resourceful and risk-taking bunch. And they were taking a risk. The risk was losing any and all monthly government money from one of two financial programs. For Ontario it is Ontario Works, also knows as welfare or OW for short. The other is Ontario Disability Support Program also known as ODSP.
Now that some provinces like British Columbia, the province with the highest number of drug users, drug addicts and thereby overdoses and deaths, has allowed anyone in that province to receive government benefits and receive CERB without penalty. Everyone who lacks a moral compass has been committing fraud the moment they knew they could get away with it. And in British Columbia, like every other province, they have been since mid-March.
With an extra $2,000 a month in the pockets of people who are clearly not entitled to the CERB, and some provincial governments who are not going to claw-back even a (small) portion of the provincial tax-payers money, the only people benefiting are the drug suppliers, the drug distributors, the drug dealers and those who use drugs. Everyone else loses. In my opinion, it is wrong and the provinces that do not claw-back all of the money that people are not entitled to are simply enabling them to use drugs and defraud the government.
If government and medical officials really wanted to help drug users and drug abusers they would stick them in rehab–even if that meant more than once.
As usual I could go on, yet I won’t.
Here is a link to my post from Behind the Blog. It is called, The Last Few Months.
Thank you for reading, A. Rebel’s Rant! ;D
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