Police arrest man operating mobile hard drugs store in Vancouver | 24CA News
Vancouver police say they’ve arrested a person working a storefront promoting illicit medicine together with cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and MDMA.
Drug consumer advocate Jerry Martin opened the store, primarily based out of a cellular trailer, Wednesday night within the metropolis’s Downtown Eastside.
In an interview with Global News, he mentioned ‘The Drugs Store’ was promoting medicine examined for fentanyl in an effort to supply secure provide and cut back overdoses.
“Just for someone buying their drugs, this is a lot safer. People have to go through many things to get their drugs — you could get robbed in an alley and many women get abused,” he informed Global News on Wednesday.
“It’s also going to stop a lot of the overdoses as people don’t even know what they are getting (typically). It’s very important that people know when they are buying something, they are getting that product.”
In a Thursday media launch, Vancouver Police Department mentioned the arrest adopted an investigation by its Organized Crime Section.
“We support measures aimed at improving public safety for people who use drugs, including harm reduction services and decriminalization,” Const. Tania Visintin. mentioned within the launch.
“However, we remain committed in our position that drug trafficking will continue to be the subject of enforcement.”
Investigators additionally seized two autos, physique armour and money, police mentioned.
Police mentioned they launched the person pending his subsequent courtroom look, and that he has been banned from the Downtown Eastside as a situation of his launch.
The look of the cellular medicine retailer comes about 4 months after British Columbia started a three-year experiment with the decriminalization of possession of small portions of some exhausting medicine.
That initiative is supposed to scale back the stigma of drug use and maintain drug customers out of a cycle of incarceration however has proved controversial in lots of quarters.
The arrest doubtless comes as no shock to Martin, who informed Global News he anticipated the initiative to land him in courtroom.
Martin mentioned he hopes to launch a constitutional problem of Canada’s drug legal guidelines.
With recordsdata from Darrian Matassa-Fung
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
