The Surrey School district tested 621 water sources and found 269 exceeded lead content. By Health Canada standards, 27 sources were undrinkable.
As they wait for repairs, 269 toilets are flushed every morning per “protocol.”
And then fentanyl went missing from Victoria’s Royal Jubilee Hospital in 2015, Vancouver Island Health Authority reported the incident to Health Canada but it wasn’t public until a Freedom of Information request brought it to life.
BC has declared a public health emergency after 200 overdoses.
People are using fentanyl since safer hard drugs, like the coca plant, are illegal.
Yet, it is cannabis dispensaries that are considered a threat to public health and safety.
When consumers are prohibited from inputing value through mutual exchange, and therefore the overarching structure of production, the result is bureaucracy.
And bureaucracy is the most dangerous substance of all.
Doctors and nurses and teachers are relegated as mere cogs in a bureaucracy.
Without market means of allocating the vast array of resources and labour for Canada’s health care and education systems, without price signals, the “public sector” is inherently wasteful.
Whether it’s losing fentanyl or potentially poisoning children with lead pipes — without the ability for consumers to withdraw payment, to patronize competitors — the result will always be bureaucratic.
Little wonder administration costs soar while doctor shortages are the norm. Where funding for schools takes a backseat to teacher pensions.
And never mind a federal debt in the billions that pays for the whole scheme, meaning, today’s taxpayers owe international bankers interest payments for generations of borrowing we had no part of.
And where opening a cannabis dispensary for anyone aged 19 is criminalizing behaviour. Where a farmer’s market of herbal and industrial hemp production and retail is discouraged and undermined.
On what grounds are government authorities not acting counterproductively?
Centralizing control to Ottawa is operating by failed Soviet economics. Look at Venezuela for a modern example of socialism. Even the European poster-children suffer from economic stagnation and rampant alcoholism.
By any measurement of the situation, cannabis dispensaries are far safer than government schools and hospitals.
Justin Trudeau wants to keep children safe by criminalizing adults for growing cannabis and opening dispensaries.
Subjecting federal actions to financial loss would likely indicate that Justin’s got his priorities all wrong.
Having the option to defund the drug war and plug more money into schools and hospitals would be a good step towards protecting “the children.”
In the meantime, If I’m feeling under the weather, I’ll buy an edible from a dispensary rather than wait hours in line for some pills. And next time I hear about a fentanyl death, I’ll know who to blame.