In Canada, the criminalization of drugs, punitive approaches to homelessness, and related enforcement patterns intersect to function as a mechanism for racial oppression and diminish Canada’s ability to uphold fundamental civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights. Of all racial groups, Indigenous and Black people in Canada are the most impacted, experiencing disproportionate rates of incarceration, surveillance, and engagements with police. Further, the criminalized status of drugs leads to disproportionate health harms for Black and Indigenous people. Canadian jurisdictions are increasingly passing legislation that targets socioeconomically marginalized groups, within which Indigenous, Black and racialized people ar overrepresented. These collectively, and urgently, impact the rights to life, liberty, security, equality, and non-discrimination, the rights to be free from arbitrary detention and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment including nonconsensual medical experimentation, and the right to the highest attainable standard of health. Federal drug control laws, and provincial laws and municipal bylaws that regulate people in public space, including through involuntary addiction treatment and protective detention, and the imposition of undue restrictions on evidence-based health initiatives that reduce death, injury, and disease transmission, intersect to worsen inequalities and systemic race-based discrimination in Canada.
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