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Drugs

Pot Arrests Are Dropping Across Canada, Hurray!

But arrests for meth and heroin are up.
Pixabay

With the hotly anticipated legalization drawing nearer by the day, marijuana charges appear to be going down across Canada.

These come as Statistic Canada releases their police-reported crime statistics for 2016 which show that nationally, when comparing 2016 to 2015, a drop of about 16 percent was seen in pot possession charges.

That said, the majority of police reported cases of possession in the country were in regards to weed—about 60 percent of the 95,400 controlled drug and substance reports made by police last year. Out of those 55,000 reported cases about 81 percent were possession reports—a drop of about 12 percent.

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In terms of actual charges arising from these weed related police reports, 23,329 Canadians were charged, with 17,733 being charged specifically with possession—a drop of 16 percent from the prior year. Per 100,000 people (151) this is the lowest amount of people that have been charged with weed related charges since 1995.

Chart via Statistics Canada

In the provinces, the largest drop in police reported cases came from Alberta who reported a 25 percent decrease from 2015, and Manitoba who saw a 18 percent decrease—Saskatchewan and Ontario both saw a drop of 16 percent. The highest rate of possession reports, per population, of reports came, obviously, from BC (232 per 100,000) and the lowest from Manitoba (66 per 100,000) and PEI (77 per 100,000).

The only increase in possession charges come from two of the Atlantic provinces: Newfoundland and Labrador who saw an increase of 28 percent, and PEI who had an increase of 10 percent. Quebec sat at par after actually seeing increases for the past several years. In terms of people actually charged with possession, the highest rates came from Saskatchewan (71 per 100,000) and Quebec (67 per 100,000). The lowest rate of charges, oddly enough, comes from Newfoundland and Labrador and PEI—the only provinces to see an increase. Other pot-related crimes charges which include trafficking and distribution also reported decreases from 2015 to 2016.

In Quebec, recent polls have shown that French Canada has a different and more pessimistic view of the legalization than English speaking Canada. A poll conducted for Radio-Canada showed that on a whole Quebecers aren't too pleased with the situation as a whole and, at a rate less than the rest of Canada, think it won't stem the black market and are more against pot being sold in their neighbourhood.

Cocaine charges, for the fourth year in a row, also dropped from 2016 to 2015 by about 8 percent. For drugs other than pot and coke, the drug charges are slightly going up, however. Possession charges for heroin rose (32 percent) and meth (22 percent) also rose, same with charges for trafficking the two drugs. The report states that "prescription drugs (including opioids such as Fentanyl), LSD, and "date rape" drugs" rose by 7 percent.

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