Hard Drugs Have Been Decriminalized in the PNW (Talking to the Police, in 2020)

no intro no outro just real talk
this video is going to be especially succinct because it really has no thesis and no conclusion currently in Victoria British Columbia Canada and in most of the Pacific Northwest illegal hard drugs have been in effect decriminalized and I just had a conversation with two police officers about it at quite some length we had two drug addicts using what was either crack cocaine possibly fentanyl possibly meth but smoking a white powder in our Clear View just outside of our window and they were not in any hurry to go anywhere and I talked it over with my girlfriend first before calling out maman I was like well look we're both witnesses to this we can both take photographs they're mobile phones if we don't call 911 will like ethically morally whose responsibility isn't to do something about this if not ours right now like if I don't do this if I don't call that one one then I'm really a bit of a hypocrite if I complain that nobody does anything about the drug drug epidemic but the ultimate reason to reach out and challenge Authority is just to learn from those authority figures fundamentally about how the system works and why the status quo is the way it is and that is what I learned from talking to these two police officers so we called 9-1-1 told them the story and again we have two witnesses photographs in this case it's an increase to an force the law this could race through the court system right about 15 minutes after the call to 9 was placed two police officers showed up but and they were undercover police officers they were in a plain black car and not wearing police uniforms and they just came and asked these two people these drug users to move along what I think also legally they didn't have to do I mean if you're not gonna be punished rethink drugs see if every right kind of be passed out in the park or whatever they were those they were no rush to leave I mean they use drugs and they were enjoying lying around on the grass in that span of time they smoked whatever the substance was twice now you know you can see the puffs of white smoke we could see everything you could see the the drug paraphernalia in action with let's say um and I went out to target the Casa de it's nobody gonna get arrested here is nobody actually interested in enforcing the law and what ensued it's exactly like the Internet social justice warrior stereotypes playing out in real life and these cops these are some of the toughest cops in this part of Canada these are the hard guys they're relatively big and muscular and tattooed incidentally extensive tattoos and the cops these are the guys who supposedly are out here to to rough up the drug addicts as opposed to being in a softer line of work with his Police Department and of course as one of the cops said to Fiat length they found me very intimidating they found me very confrontational in asking these questions but from my perspective I told them this too I said look I'm just here to learn if I didn't have this conversation with you I said this towards the innocent but I didn't have this conversation with you I would not have learned that this is the way things are here and I I think you know I think you'll agree I could not have learned this from reading the newspapers because the newspapers and so on are not entirely honest about this so they began by just laughing at the notion that they would actually enforce the law and arrest someone for smoking crack cocaine fentanyl or meth as the case may be they laughed at that they thought that was hilarious and when they they saw that I was not laughing they went on to detail that if they had arrested these two people the crown would have thrown out the case now in the Canadian context the crown just means some at a higher level of authority than themselves I mean in theory this could mean the prosecutor's office but it might just mean someone else in the police department in this context I don't think the term crown should be interpreted too too narrowly but in case whoever they hand the paperwork to next after arresting someone apparently there would just be no interest in enforcing the law and they proceeded to inform me about just how left-wing and SJ w Victoria BC Canada was that I must be aware that the police are already facing brutal criticism that must be really tough they're facing terrible criticism for being so oppressive towards the armies of homeless drug addicts living in tents on the street oh I'm sorry I didn't realize that what are you signed up to be a cop you should be protected against criticism we were talking about laying hands on drug addicts here it's a tough job I completely appreciate that but if you think a legitimate reason to not enforce the law is that there would be criticism that is hilarious oh one of these two cops was white and one of them was Asian and he mentioned as the conversation persisted that he had spent some time in Taiwan that was a guy I just got back in town one I've been living in telling us it's inter I also - look I speak read and write Chinese which he did not react to I'm guessing he does not speak to peace but you know at one point early on they said like what's the point of even asking us this like what's the point of even asking us about the law and enforcing and stuff they said you know like yeah that's the law but you know nobody wants us to enforce it like you know low peace they didn't specifically say City Hall or local government his wording was he said you know the political climate here in Victoria nobody wants us to enforce the law so this wasn't naming the mayor or anything specifically the responsible this but just the political climate and the the harsh harsh criticism they face but I said to them you know there are some countries in the world where they actually enforce the law against drugs and they have dramatically less drug use so the asian guy especially got very defensive about this I said you know I said look I'm gonna say this to you guys real quickly cuz I don't wanna waste your time with their police on duty I said but look you know I used to live in the Golden Triangle I used to live in the world center where they produce drugs like opium heroin but also methamphetamine and so on you know this is a one of the world's great centers of drug production where hard drugs are really really cheap you know what on the streets there you don't see a single homeless drug addict you don't see any drug dealing because the government of China People's Republic of China check they actually enforce the law right the asian guy immediately stood with like oh yeah but they also have a lot of human rights super famous and i said that may be true but that's not what i was debating here i said it's also true that countries like Japan and Taiwan and Singapore have democracy and freedom of speech but they enforce the law and they don't have this kind of epidemic of drug addiction and this guy was really trying to throw me every kind of far left-wing excuse why this isn't true that no he said he'd been to Taiwan that no these were some how horribly oppressive governments and you know Japan has a lot of organized crime and hey you know what I'm not claiming that there isn't a single vial of opium or heroin or cocaine in Tokyo Japan of course drugs exist everywhere you know what I'm claiming to you I'm claiming to you that there wouldn't be crackheads openly smoking crack cocaine in the middle of a city park in downtown Tokyo there wouldn't be flagrant drug use from drug addicts in a public place with like eight witnesses that's welcome you you will never see that in Tokyo you will never see that in Singapore you will never see that in Taiwan you will never see that in China the rates of drug addiction are dramatically lower they're not zero and you don't have this kind of public problem and I remember the first cop that laughed and he said if we actually enforce the law we would have about 200 arrests just on this street pointing over one direction I say let's okay that's it's interesting point do you actually think that's an unattainable goal for the police department do you actually think it would be impossible to solve the drug problem by arresting the people who are openly using fentanyl heroin other opioids methamphetamine methamphetamines very popular here crack cocaine arresting those people maybe they are two hundred people it's not mm it's not 20 thousand the people who are flagrantly violating law streets do you actually think that's uh that's impossible or an unattainable goal and again they revert to saying nobody wants to do that that's not the political climate here I remember they specifically said to me that if I ran for government if I tried to get elected to the mayor or city council office no one would vote for me because everyone supports their policy the policy as they're enforcing it of having de facto decriminalized hard drugs on the streets and then they went into this cycle of like you're being very aggressive one of the cops said to me I have more problems with you than I do with those two drug users when I asked so the problem isn't the drug addicts the problem is someone like me who dares to come out and say hey is nobody actually getting arrested is nobody interested in enforcing the law so look as brief as that interchange was actually could offer a bunch more funny anecdotes from what the police said the real more of the story for you in the audience the moral of the story is if you don't make this a little bit of an effort if you don't take this risk you won't learn for yourself you know the structure of political authority the anatomy of political authority what the law means in practice where you live and that was one of the things the cop said to me he said well look you know you studied political science in university so like you know the law and theory on paper but this is this is how it is like in the real world drugs have been come lately decriminalized apparently because the police are just too intimidated by criticism from the general public and some kind of reluctance which you know needs to be pinned down whether it's been down by someone like me or by journalists or by politicians standing for others some kind of reluctance on the part of higher authorities like the crown the court system maybe its local politicians maybe it's provincial politicians some kind of reluctance to actually enforce the laws as they are on the books let me tell you something whether or not there are people you know in the privacy of their own apartments in Japan very secretive Lee smoking methamphetamine sure there were a few alright the difference between downtown Seattle and downtown Tokyo is striking the difference between downtown Vancouver yes yes y'all and hey even downtown nice France I mean we've been to all kinds of democracies around the world that have the drug problem under control that much better extent in this telecom faint Coover compared to you nan China compared to Singapore compared to uh Victoria come sorry my daughter right now is growing up in France if my daughter came here if my daughter came to visit if my daughter came to spend quality time with me I would be ashamed and afraid to have her play in the playground that's right outside my door and why because nobody wants to enforce the law and so this park like the whole city of the Victoria and like the whole Pacific Northwest Seattle and Vancouver included it's become a playground for drug addicts and for drug addicts only there's a very simple solution that you can see in Japan you can see in Taiwan you can see in communist China you can see in Singapore and that is to enforce the law so the power can be used by everyone who is willing to obey the law