Pivot Legal Society

• Intervention without human rights goes by many names — involuntary institutionalization, compulsory drug treatment, “coerced care,” forced abstinence or a combination of all of those terms.
• Involuntary treatment in the Global South has been labelled inhumane by rights-based organizations, including the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNAIDS and Human Rights Watch.
• In Alberta, Danielle Smith’s UCP has also proposed apprehending those with, in her words, “severe drug addiction.”

Increased risk of overdose

• The evidence shows that forced treatment leads to increased risk of death and deprives survivors of autonomy, while no positive benefits have been established.
• From Mexico to Sweden, Vancouver and England, involuntary treatment has been found to increase risk of overdose and shows no significant impact on substance use patterns.

Lowered tolerance

• These overdoses are trending away from being predominantly non-fatal to being deadly due to the toxicity of the supply.
• People are being discharged into the same living conditions with lowered tolerance.

Settler colonial violence continues

• But reports suggest it is occurring through misuse of the province’s Mental Health Act.
• The B.C.
• Involuntary psychiatric detentions among youth, however, are at an all-time high in the province.
• As with most punitive and carceral policies in Canada, the province’s Mental Health Act is used disproportionately against Indigenous people in British Columbia, including children — a disturbing continuation of the violence against Indigenous children that Canada is founded upon.

Relying on involuntary treatment

• Involuntary psychiatric hospitalizations under the B.C.
• Mental Health Act for those older than 14 also increased to 23,531 from 14,195 from 2008 until 2018 in the province.
• Relying on a system designed to criminalize drug use, while temporarily stabilizing people via involuntary mental health treatment, risks causing further harm, trauma and death.
• Read more:
  As an Indigenous doctor, I see the legacy of residential schools and ongoing racism in today's health care

Moral panics

• Expanding forced treatment in Canada and elsewhere stems from the same moral panics that drove earlier drug prohibition regimes imposed through colonial power.
• Provinces should collaborate with municipalities and health boards to expand life-saving and life-affirming safe use sites, and all levels of government must urgently prioritize solutions to the housing crisis.