UN Amerindian, on the border of adolescence and adulthood, absorbs a strange mixture of dubious substances on Stephen Avenue Walk, the long pedestrian artery of Calgary, where young blond women like wheat, of the same age, pass without giving it a look. Around this drugged boy with opioids, there are ageless men and women, extended to the pavement, insensitive to the harshness of bitumen, rain, anesthetized in their artificial paradise. Some are curled up in a fetal, mutic position. None is able to pronounce an intelligible word.
Corruption
Calgary, this kingdom of Cowboys of Alberta, where the rodeos confine to religion, burns the wings in the crisis of opioids, like Vancouver or Toronto. These psychotropic drugs are analgesic drugs, some of the best known of which were developed in the 1990s by the Purdue Pharma laboratory, ownership of Sackler, a family of billionaires, to relieve incurable pain. They changed the face of America.
At the time, the laboratory corrupts scientists and the medical authorities of the United States to convince public opinion that oxycontin, its flagship, was not dangerous. American doctors then prescribe it to the tight, creating lethal outbuildings, because opioids are addictive. These substances have caused more than 700,000 deaths in the United States in twenty-five years and 50,000 in Canada since 2016, the official date of the start of the crisis for this country.
Ludovic Hirtzmann
The Sackler family was sentenced, but paid $ 4.5 billion to avoid prison. “All the classes of the Calgarian company are affected. Guests’ friends, notaries have lost their children, consumers of these drugs, “said a journalist from Radio-Canada Calgary who asks for anonymity. Opioids have spread throughout the country, fentanyl in mind.
Cartels on the lookout
With pharmaceutical laboratories and doctors, criminal groups are not the only ones responsible for the situation. By doubling the immigration quotas without having planned enough dwellings to accommodate 470,000 immigrants per year, ex-Prémier Justin Trudeau has unbalanced his country and created an unprecedented housing crisis. Thousands of people ended up on the street, which became some of the easy prey for drug cartels for some.
“Medicines that can be produced quickly, whose distribution is controlled by Mexican cartels”
The forgotten victims of this fatal overconsumption are white, black, rich or of modest condition. No one is spared. Here is a Chinese. He is lying on a sidewalk, eyes in a vacuum near the Guy de Montréal metro station, a hundred meters from Concordia University. “A Chinese. We had never seen that, ”says a Quebecer. Professor in the Criminology Department of the University of Ottawa, Eugène Oscapella confides: “In Canada, opiates come mainly from Colombia. Mexico is only a transit country. These are drugs that can be produced quickly, the distribution of which is controlled by Mexican cartels or biker bands [comme les Hells Angels, NDLR]. “And to add:” Fentanyl is by far the most dangerous drug in Canada, because all you need is to kill. And it’s inexpensive to make. »»
Formidable xylazine
In Montreal, the ravages of “zombie drugs” or Xylazine, a new substance, are even more impressive. A man unlimited, of great thinness, slightly leaning, his gaze in the vague, stands like a statue of salt. Motionless, without a movement. He is a victim of this powerful veterinary sedative used to calmly cattle and horses, that criminals mix with other substances. Xylazine causes tissue necrosis and often death.
No downtown district is spared from the disasters of narcotics. Above all, they spread very quickly, in a few months for Xylazine. A few hundred meters from the Montreal Jazz Festival, an unleashed drugged horde screams to death against an unfortunate vigil responsible for protecting the entrance to a care center.
Canadian authorities are exceeded. Eugène Oscapella concludes: “Our way of managing drugs poses more problems than they solve. The main difficulty comes from what we have dealt with this crisis as a criminal affair rather than a public health problem. Criminal law is not the right instrument. It has been used for a century and it did not work. Drugs are linked to social problems, mental health, poverty and loneliness in our society. »»
