Jagmeet Singh is boasting about the NDP forcing the Liberal government to provide a national school lunch program…
I guess all that free recreational fentanyl is making children hungry…
‘No minimum age listed in protocols for providing youth with taxpayer-funded recreational fentanyl.
It seems that parents will actually be powerless to stop the government from supplying their children with fentanyl, as safer supply technically counts as a health-care intervention and youth have substantial control over their own medical decisions in Canada.
While some provinces set a minimum age (typically between 14 and 16 years old) for when minors can make such decisions, British Columbia has no minimum and relies instead on a fluid idea of “capability” — youth in the province are considered “capable” if they understand what a medical intervention involves, why it is needed and its risks and benefits.
Yet it is hard to imagine any scenario where a drug-addicted minor would be capable of providing informed consent for safer supply fentanyl, given that addiction hijacks the brain and inhibits rational decision-making. While adults have extensive rights to personal self-determination, which permits them to make impaired or self-destructive decisions if they so choose, it is hard to see why this same freedom should be extended to youth when it comes to using hard drugs.
It is true that many drug-addicted youth are in foster care or estranged from their parents, and that, for them, securing parental consent is near-impossible. Yet making an exception for this subpopulation, and permitting them to receive free fentanyl, could incentivize other underage drug users to cut ties with their families and run away from home to secure free drugs.
As parents are often a youth’s greatest asset for recovery, any safer supply system that undermines child-parent relationships is harmful.
In a sad twist, the same laws that allow the government to give recreational fentanyl to kids without parental consent also prohibit parents from sending their children to involuntary addiction treatment — in other words, the government won’t help you force your kid to get clean, but they will give them unlimited “safe” drugs against your will.
As I argued in my MLI report, “By reframing the provision of unlimited recreational fentanyl as medical care, the provincial government may inadvertently turn itself into a parent’s worst nightmare — an unstoppable drug dealer with endless supply and unrestricted access to their child.”
While Health Canada confirmed to me in an email that it did not play a role in the development of these protocols, it did not respond to a follow-up email where I asked if the federal government had any objections to giving recreational fentanyl to minors.’
