Olivia Batten. Mrs. Morrison-Robinson. Writing 421. 19

Olivia Batten Mrs. Morrison-Robinson Writing 421 19 May 2017 Fentanyl’s Policy Solution Fentanyl is a powerful narcotic, one hundred times stronger than heroin (Sagan), that is rapidly becoming a national crisis in Canada. Fentanyl is often found within fake OxyContin pills or laced in other drugs such as heroin. Alberta and several cities in Ontario are seeing how fentanyl is affecting their provinces: in 2016 Alberta saw 343 fatal overdoses, Ontario saw 165 in 2015 (Cheung). The closest Canadian province, British Columbia, to the deadly drug’s source has felt the impact of the narcotic the most. Last year there were 914 fentanyl linked overdoses in B.C (Ostroff). The danger of fentanyl is something every single Canadian youth needs to†¦show more content†¦There is a lot of misconception about drug legalization. Uncertainty towards this concept is usually because of stigma surrounding drug use or confusing legalization with decriminalization. Decriminalising an illegal drug means taking away penalties for possessing tha t drug but leaving its distribution in the hands of criminals who can continue to contaminate the drug any way they see fit. Legalization by contrast brings narcotics entirely under government control. That means that when a drug is legalized, the government is the one in charge of regulating the sales, content, and distribution of the drug. The most universally effective example of a government deciding to legalize a dangerous substance, which in its unregulated state was killing over a thousand people a year, happened when the United States decided to legalize alcohol. Before it was legalized, alcohol in the Prohibition era was laced with poison and the alcohol content of a drink varied dramatically (Ostroff). Back then the selling of alcohol, like the drug market today, was a criminally operated free-for-all. Unregulated and tainted liquor killed over 10,000 americans during the thirteen years of prohibition (Hanson), that’s two alcohol-caused fatalities a day. Today, al cohol is strictly regulated by the government and there are rules for what manufacturers can put in their product before it is allowed to go to market. For this reason alcohol fatalities are caused