5.4 Costs & Consequences of Current Canadian Drug Policies

Outcomes of Canada’s Current Approach to Substances Include:

  1. The drug poisoning (overdose) crisis and an unregulated drug market.
  2. Crime rates, drug-related crime, and organized crime.
  3. Prison and incarceration.
  4. Increased violence.
  5. Stifling medical research.
  6. Increasing the negative effects of drug use.

(CDPC, 2020a)


Click these links below to learn more about the outcomes of Canada’s current approach to substances:

Outcomes of our Current Approach to Substances

Discussion Guide: Getting to Tomorrow – Ending the Overdose Crisis (Read pages 17-22)


VIDEO: Outcomes of Our Current Drug Policies

The following video provides an explanation of the costs and consequences associated with drug criminalization.


Additional Costs & Consequences of Existing Criminalization Policies

  • Instead of improving the health and lives of Canadians, current policies have exacerbated the negative effects of substance use (CDPC, 2020b).
  • The provisions of the SSCA are likely to affect many marginalized people, including people experiencing SUDs and structural vulnerability (Bennett & Bernstein, 2013).
  • “Tough on crime” measures, including mandatory minimum sentences, are not an effective deterrent for people experiencing structural vulnerability and SUDs (Bennett & Bernstein, 2013).


Click the following link to learn more about the
human and social costs of mandatory minimum sentences:

Throwing Away the Keys: The Human and Social Costs of Mandatory Minimum Sentences (Read the Executive Summary)

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Psychoactive Substances & Society (2nd Edition) Copyright © 2024 by Jacqueline Lewis & Jillian Holland-Penney is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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