These two companies can now legally sell cocaine, heroin; know how

In an apparent effort to improve the safety circumstances for the nation's drug addicts, Health Canada has granted permission to Canadian businesses to make and sell cocaine. Justin Trudeau, Canada's prime minister, expressed surprise on Friday at the apparent indication that the country would soon permit the legal sale of hard drugs to the general public by corporations with licences to sell cocaine to pharmacies or hospitals.

The announcement came a month after British Columbia began an experimental decriminalisation procedure to combat the thousands-dead opioid overdose crisis.

Sunshine Earth Laboratories, a Canadian biosciences firm, announced on Thursday, March 2, that they have received a licence to manufacture and sell cocaine. A month earlier, British Columbia-based Adastra Labs had received a similar licencing arrangement.

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In a three-year pilot project, the province decriminalised the possession of small amounts of cocaine and other hard narcotics, but not their sale. The goal was to eliminate the stigma around drug use that prevents people from seeking help. Activists have also pushed for the availability of safer drug supplies for addicts who run the risk of passing away from severe drug poisoning associated with illegal street narcotics.

Trudeau clarified Friday that the companies did not have "permission to sell it commercially or provide it on an open market," adding that the misunderstanding would be corrected. "There are limited and very restricted permissions for certain pharmaceutical companies to use that substance for research purposes and for very specific narrowly prescribed medical purposes.”

After the US state of Oregon did so in November 2020, British Columbia is the second jurisdiction in North America to decriminalise heavy narcotics. Since it declared a public health emergency in 2016, the Canadian province is at the centre of a crisis that has seen more than 10,000 overdose deaths. Out of a population of five million, that equates to around six persons dying every day from toxic drug poisoning, surpassing Covid-19 deaths at the start of the pandemic. The number of fatalities in the country has topped 30,000.