The quasi-voluntary offered as an alternative, or portion of, a judicial punishment seems to be the right balance.

Could be expanded to include alcohol related issues quite easily as well.

Speaking as someone who worked in drug rehab for a couple of soul-crushing years, forced rehab has a very, very low “success” rate (defined as staying clean for one year). Even for voluntary enrollees, there was only a 24% success rate, but the involuntary DOC diversions were well under 10%.

This is what Portugal does if I’m not mistaken and it has been very successful.

It. Does. Not. Work.

OK, sure. Is part of this governmental treatment path going to address the systemic drivers behind a large portion of substance abuse? Things like poverty, inaccessible mental health supports, insufficient resources to remove oneself from abuse, the BS support for disabilities and chronic pain, lack of support in finding incarcerated/people with records meaningful employment, etc.etc?

If not, it’s just going to be a waste of money that doesn’t help anyone.

We shouldn’t be discussing forced rehab until voluntary rehab has enough capacity and availability to take care of those who are seeking help.

I think the grubbermint got its wires crossed if your going to force people do it for a good cause like vaccines?

Even if this was a successful model (which it is not as pointed out by another commenter), where will all the needed staff come from? We already have a shortage of nurses, psychiatrist, psychologists… and who is going to fund it all?

If it is a successful model, it would be our moral duty to fund it.

Maybe start with corporate handouts. Just a fraction of a few billions every year we give to oil and automakers could fill the funding gap.

And lets pretend that the government already runs 100% efficiently and there’s no more fat to cut, then i would gladly pay more taxes to fix the opiod crisis.

That money spent has trickle down effects. Fewer crazy people on public transit, our parks would nicer, we could actually have public bathrooms opened all year round without fear of them being used as injection sites

Frame it as those benefits, and i’m sure most canadians would cough up an extra $20

This is what kills me about liberalism. Your system is driving record numbers to drug abuse. The inherent nature of people hasn’t changed, only their conditions around them. Improve their conditions and the numbers will go down.

Good to know McLean still has thier head up thier ass.