Publications & Submissions

Submission to the HESA Committee Study on “Opioid Epidemic and Toxic Drug Crisis in Canada”

The Canadian Drug Policy Coalition submitted a brief on January 10, 2024. The submission focused on changes to the unregulated drug supply and made the core recommendation to regulate all currently illicit drugs. The brief also discussed the disproportionate impacts to Indigenous, Black, and racialized people, problems with involuntary treatment, public support for human rights and public health approaches, and the recommendation to declare a national public health emergency from HESA’s own 2016 study on “The Opioid Crisis in Canada”.

Submission to Health Canada on a proposal to control the derivatives and analogues of 4-piperidone and its salts under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act

The Canadian Drug Policy Coalition made a submission that considered the existing legal framework, lessons from previous and ongoing scheduling of substances, and concerns about the health and societal risks created by the existing regulatory environment. The submission noted that the persistent and growing scheduling of substances and pre-cursors does not achieve the intended outcome of reducing the use of substances and has unintended negative consequences, especially for people who use drugs, and encouraged a more fulsome discussion of the models and options available to regulate all substances, drawing on lessons learned from other public health policy issues.

“Innovating Beyond Exclusively Medicalized Approaches” Policy Brief and Recommendations

The Canadian Civil Society Advancing Safe Supply Working Group is a coalition of national, provincial, territorial and regional stakeholders with expertise in drug use, policy, research, and medical and non-medical models of safe supply. This policy brief articulates the limitations of, and the harms of over-emphasizing, medicalized models for safe supply, and proposes recommendations for advancing non-medicalized models for the supply, distribution, and access to safer alternatives to the increasingly toxic unregulated drug supply. 

Submission to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights’ study on the decriminalization of homelessness and extreme poverty

In fall 2023, CDPC and Pivot Legal Society made a submission to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights’ study on the decriminalization of homelessness and extreme poverty. This submission outlines how public space bylaws disproportionately target unhoused and housing insecure people who use drugs through criminalizing life sustaining activities, including the possession and consumption of drugs in public space.

Human Rights and Decriminalization Done Right: Brief to Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs on Bill C-5, An Act to Amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act

 On October 19 2022, CDPC was invited to participate in a study on Bill C-5, An Act to Amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. In the brief, CDPC outlined key considerations and necessary amendments in order for the proposed legislation to support human rights-based policy and alignment with the recommendations put forth in the Decriminalization Done Right civil society platform which was produced in 2021 in collaboration with 20 partner organizations and endorsed by over 100 organizations across Canada.