Ottawa

Justin Trudeau, safe injection facilities and scary drugs

Is it time to ban alcohol and cigarettes too?

Part of a tidy little assessment of the parties’ respective positions on trade, the Conservatives have taken to equating Justin Trudeau’s support for the legalization of marijuana with support for the “drug trade”—four uses of the phrase in the first two days of parliamentary proceedings—and there have so far been three references to making it easier for children to access marijuana, including this from Terence Young, which oddly suggests that it might be time to prohibit alcohol and tobacco as well.

The Liberals and the NDP have certainly claimed that regulation will protect our youth from accessing marijuana, expecting Canadians to believe that no teens consume cigarettes or alcohol because they are legal and regulated.

Meanwhile, in debate on Friday about the government’s new legislation for safe injection facilities, Labour Minister Kellie Leitch accused the NDP’s Libby Davies of being “pro-heroin” (the “anti-salt” bit is presumably a reference to the NDP’s call for a national sodium strategy).

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