A Calgary Criminal Defence Lawyer's Plea: Drug Laws are Meant to Keep You Safe
Laws banning or controlling access to certain substances have always been controversial.
At one extreme are those who believe that personal liberty should be inviolate, that we should have complete freedom to do what we want with our own bodies, including the ingestion of drugs.
At the other end of the spectrum are those who believe the government has a mandate for purposes of public and personal safety and even for moral reasons to control certain substances that can be harmful to our bodies and/or degrade our reasoning and/or decision-making abilities.
A variety of opinions exist between these two extremes, including the perspective from which today's drug laws are made. Wherever you feel they fall in terms of liberty and morality, the primary purpose of drug laws is to increase safety. Whether or not they are effective in this regard is a matter of debate, but that is their intent.
When it comes to fentanyl, the law is well worth heeding. Not because it's the lawthough following the law for the law's sake is rarely a bad idea, but because this drug has proven to be highly dangerous, with hundreds of Calgarians killed due to its use in the past few years.
I will staunchly defend anyone in Calgary accused of a crime, including any drug-related crime, and including charges involving fentanyl. I will also implore everyone, client and otherwise, to think twice before using fentanyl.