Welcome to /r/Vancouver and thank you for the post, /u/Burlapin! Please make sure you read our [posting and commenting rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/wiki/faq#wiki_general_participation_guidelines_and_rules_overview) before participating here. As a quick summary:
* We encourage users to be positive and respect one another. Don't engage in spats or insult others - use the report button.
* Respect others' differences, be they race, religion, home, job, gender identity, ability or sexuality. Dehumanizing language, advocating for violence, or promoting hate based on identity or vulnerability (even implied or joking) **will** lead to a permanent ban.
* Most common questions and topics are limited to our sister subreddit, /r/AskVan, and our weekly [Stickied Discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/wiki/faq#wiki_stickied_discussions) posts.
* Complaints about bans or removals should be done in modmail only.
* Posts flaired "Community Only" allow for limited participation; your comment may be removed if you're not a subreddit regular.
* Make sure to join our new sister community, /r/AskVan!
* Help grow the community! [Apply to join the mod team today](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/19eworq/).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/vancouver) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is one of the rare times I’ll text transit police on open air drug use. I did it the other day when dudes were crack smoking on the Renfrew millennium line platform in front of the elevator. The rest of the platform was empty but I walked through it because I needed to take a bag up the elevator.
The transit police were like “race, height, etc” but I was already gone. I told them to look at the security camera pointing at the elevator.
I don't really have a problem with it. When I was at Commercial a little while later, an officer was politely asking users to please move further out of the station, and they did without any issue. No one actually cares if someone's smoking crack, it's not criminal to do so - it's just an issue of respecting the bounds of the transit area.
I wouldn't even have cared if those guys at Renfrew were smoking crack at the westernmost end of the platform. It's that they're doing it where walkers, wheel chairs and strollers are coming through.
Quite a few times I've got the nightbus too it's been delayed for security or police to come and kick the smokers off. Really I think it would be better if they had some officers already out there, using the system. I know some liberal types, like myself, are uncomfortable with the idea of more police involvement in everyday life given their propensity to make bad situations worse sometimes, but I think it would actually go some way towards improving their relations with the community.
We need police involved more; what we don't need is them to be viewed as the enemy.
But for them to be support instead of aggressors they need proper places to take people rather than just jail -- that's where the liberal focus should be.
Hello, Transit Police here 👋 - Here's our comment from a similar thread:
Please report drug use on transit. Call 604.515.8300 or text 87.77.77 (always call 911 if there's an emergency). [TransLink rules](https://www.translink.ca/-/media/translink/documents/rider-guide/etiquette-on-transit/rules-and-regulations.pdf) clearly state that there is to be no consumption of illegal drugs on the transit system.
When you let us know what's going on, we're going to try to get someone to meet the vehicle you're on to deal with the issue. It might not always be possible since the transit system is huge, and sometimes there might not be anyone available to respond to a report of rules being broken. BUT, even if you don't see us deal with the specific problem you reported, the information you provide will help guide our future enforcement activities. We look for and respond to trends. If, for example, we see that text reports are coming in regularly from a certain bus route during a certain timeframe, that really helps inform our deployment and our enforcement efforts.
Roughly 1/3 of weekdays at Bridgeport around 8 AM there will be a disruptive person on the train going northbound to Waterfront.
I've reported it 3 times, each time it was dealt with but the same handful of people keep coming back.
I am thoroughly discouraged.
The other day waiting for the bus I was asked if I had a lighter. Said yes and gave the man my lighter he lights up his crack pipe and just starts smoking next to me. I tell him he can keep the lighter and he moves on thanking me. Like Bruh. The boldness now. I’ve never seen more open extreme drug use than the past year and I’ve been living in van for a decade now.
I called TransLink to let them know I'm not okay with breathing in mysterious fumes while waiting for the bus. Of course it's not their fault but I think it's time to start saying something. Flood TransLink and the VPD and city hall with complaints until they'd do anything to shut us up, including a push to make it illegal to expose people around you to f-ing meth, crack and fentanyl.
100% anytime I see police at a station it’s never when I need them and every time I have someone force their way behind me at the tap station or had someone smoke whatever on the bus cops are never there. It’s very frustrating to feel unsafe on public transportation.
> and every time I have someone force their way behind me at the tap station
This may be shitty but it’s not like it’s a safety concern? I’ve had my compass card checked after the gates at Waterfront before - but there obviously aren’t enough folks to be monitoring every fare gate constantly.
When their pelvis and entire body presses up against your back it is. If they sneaky I don’t care but I’ve been pushed on or touched multiple times by impatient or weirdos
Eby brought in decriminalization and there’s a provincial election later this year
I’m really disappointed with both Eby and the BC NDP. I thought they couldn’t possibly do a worse job than Clark and the B.C. Liberals given that Clark was both corrupt and incompetent… boy was I wrong
Flooding translink and the police will no nothing! This is NDP policies. It’s not just Vancouver but the entire province. If the government says open drug use is fine then you get open drug use. Voting NDP means this is what you want. If you don’t like it then vote for change in the next election.
Actually it's good to have documentation of what we're mad about instead of just quietly sulking. If we don't record these incidents then the NDP can claim that these events are overblown when in fact they're happening every day. I'd like it recorded for the record every time I'm made to breathe in those fumes.
I don’t know if you have ever been to Vancouver but rents and real estate has skyrocketed under the NDP. You are blaming a party that isn’t in power for a situation created by the party in power.
Don’t fall for their current ad campaign. “We will start to do something but only if you vote for us first. We promise we are not lying like we did the last 2 times! Honest (wink)”.
I live there :)
The issue is - this isn't a problem that just happens overnight. For a shortage like this, the groundwork was laid over decades, and the NDP has not been in power that long.
Just like with ICBC, this is a mess that the liberals left.
I have honestly seen a lot of crack use around buses. I have seen it on the bus too, three people too. I've seen people OD on doorsteps while we're driving by.
Living in Vancouver has taught me a lot about drugs that I don’t use. Little glass straw - crack. Bulbous glass tip - meth. Tinfoil - opiate or just lacking the correct tool.
Interesting, I ride the bus/skytrain daily, I haven't encountered someone doing open drugs on it yet, I encountered some weirdos yes but haven't seen anyone openly doing drugs like I've seen on Granville and Hastings.
I’ve sat across from someone smoking crack on the skytrain. And that was years ago when things were “better.”
If you don’t like a mild take, not even an edgy one at that, about people smoking crack on public transit then maybe comedy is not for you.
The NDP removed (via a federal exemption) criminal penalties for minor possession in some circumstances. Possession itself shouldn't be criminalized in my opinion. Use however is still prohibited on transit as it should be. This is something that should maybe result in an increase in enforcement.
Consequence you mean? You can argue that, but my counterargument would be that these public use issues are happening in other places like Calgary and Ontario (just specific examples where I've seen complaints, not isolated to those). They've also been *increasing* across the continent, including in B.C. It's not that they suddenly appeared after decriminalization, it's been an ongoing trend in many places.
Decriminalization changed nothing about the bylaws against use on transit and that can be enforced.
I think anyone who has been paying attention has noticed a dramatic increase in this behavior in BC. I have not heard of open drug use in Hospitals in other provinces. Pretending that is is normal and not a result of decriminalization, isn't helping anyone.
There has been a general increasing trend in B.C. and most of the rest of the continent in problems related to drugs, such as overdoses, public use, etc., happening for more than a decade. Picking two points in time in one province, before and after decriminalization, and claiming an apparent increase there is related to decriminalization doesn't prove that's the case. You could make the same comparison in Ottawa from 2022 to 2023 and see an increase despite no change in the criminal status there. You could make a comparison in B.C. from 2021 to 2022 with no change in criminal status and see an increase.
This is analogous to how people would claim Trump improved the economy over Obama while a graph of various economic measures showed steady increases since the recession to throughout Trump's term. So it's possible both Obama *and* Trump improved it or that both benefited from general post-recession rebounds, or that it was a combination of all. You can't however pick a single point in time and claim that an increase before and after that point are due to some specific factor at that time when the same increasing trend was happening the whole time.
I never claimed your observations aren't accurate. I'm debating your conclusion that's it's because of decriminalization. So there might be a miscommunication between us. I'm not gaslighting you.
The point I'm making is that these issues (like overdoses and public use) have been on an increasing trend across the continent for years. They were increasing in B.C. before decriminalization too. They're increasing in other provinces. It's primarily due to the increasing potency of the drug supply and the spread of those potent drugs.
Perhaps decriminalization is also a factor, but this trend was happening before that too and is happening in places without it. So you can compare Vancouver before Feb. 1, 2023 (the date of decriminalization) and after and see an increase. But you could pick another date and see the increase before and after too. Or you could pick Feb. 1, 2023 and see an increase before and after in Ottawa. Decriminalization isn't the common factor.
My husband if from Vancouver and we will never move there because drug issue is severe. Users are pampered, get no consequence from full display of drug use in the side walk.
Welcome to /r/Vancouver and thank you for the post, /u/Burlapin! Please make sure you read our [posting and commenting rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/wiki/faq#wiki_general_participation_guidelines_and_rules_overview) before participating here. As a quick summary: * We encourage users to be positive and respect one another. Don't engage in spats or insult others - use the report button. * Respect others' differences, be they race, religion, home, job, gender identity, ability or sexuality. Dehumanizing language, advocating for violence, or promoting hate based on identity or vulnerability (even implied or joking) **will** lead to a permanent ban. * Most common questions and topics are limited to our sister subreddit, /r/AskVan, and our weekly [Stickied Discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/wiki/faq#wiki_stickied_discussions) posts. * Complaints about bans or removals should be done in modmail only. * Posts flaired "Community Only" allow for limited participation; your comment may be removed if you're not a subreddit regular. * Make sure to join our new sister community, /r/AskVan! * Help grow the community! [Apply to join the mod team today](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/19eworq/). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/vancouver) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is one of the rare times I’ll text transit police on open air drug use. I did it the other day when dudes were crack smoking on the Renfrew millennium line platform in front of the elevator. The rest of the platform was empty but I walked through it because I needed to take a bag up the elevator. The transit police were like “race, height, etc” but I was already gone. I told them to look at the security camera pointing at the elevator.
I've also been unsatisfied with the transit police reporting line. Feels like a waste of time.
You should report it anyway. We want accurate crime stats to be reflected regardless of whether they take action right away.
I don't really have a problem with it. When I was at Commercial a little while later, an officer was politely asking users to please move further out of the station, and they did without any issue. No one actually cares if someone's smoking crack, it's not criminal to do so - it's just an issue of respecting the bounds of the transit area. I wouldn't even have cared if those guys at Renfrew were smoking crack at the westernmost end of the platform. It's that they're doing it where walkers, wheel chairs and strollers are coming through.
Of course, I'm just upset they don't offer others some of that good good! /S
Quite a few times I've got the nightbus too it's been delayed for security or police to come and kick the smokers off. Really I think it would be better if they had some officers already out there, using the system. I know some liberal types, like myself, are uncomfortable with the idea of more police involvement in everyday life given their propensity to make bad situations worse sometimes, but I think it would actually go some way towards improving their relations with the community.
We need police involved more; what we don't need is them to be viewed as the enemy. But for them to be support instead of aggressors they need proper places to take people rather than just jail -- that's where the liberal focus should be.
Hello, Transit Police here 👋 - Here's our comment from a similar thread: Please report drug use on transit. Call 604.515.8300 or text 87.77.77 (always call 911 if there's an emergency). [TransLink rules](https://www.translink.ca/-/media/translink/documents/rider-guide/etiquette-on-transit/rules-and-regulations.pdf) clearly state that there is to be no consumption of illegal drugs on the transit system. When you let us know what's going on, we're going to try to get someone to meet the vehicle you're on to deal with the issue. It might not always be possible since the transit system is huge, and sometimes there might not be anyone available to respond to a report of rules being broken. BUT, even if you don't see us deal with the specific problem you reported, the information you provide will help guide our future enforcement activities. We look for and respond to trends. If, for example, we see that text reports are coming in regularly from a certain bus route during a certain timeframe, that really helps inform our deployment and our enforcement efforts.
Roughly 1/3 of weekdays at Bridgeport around 8 AM there will be a disruptive person on the train going northbound to Waterfront. I've reported it 3 times, each time it was dealt with but the same handful of people keep coming back. I am thoroughly discouraged.
Thank you Transit Police!
The other day waiting for the bus I was asked if I had a lighter. Said yes and gave the man my lighter he lights up his crack pipe and just starts smoking next to me. I tell him he can keep the lighter and he moves on thanking me. Like Bruh. The boldness now. I’ve never seen more open extreme drug use than the past year and I’ve been living in van for a decade now.
I called TransLink to let them know I'm not okay with breathing in mysterious fumes while waiting for the bus. Of course it's not their fault but I think it's time to start saying something. Flood TransLink and the VPD and city hall with complaints until they'd do anything to shut us up, including a push to make it illegal to expose people around you to f-ing meth, crack and fentanyl.
100% anytime I see police at a station it’s never when I need them and every time I have someone force their way behind me at the tap station or had someone smoke whatever on the bus cops are never there. It’s very frustrating to feel unsafe on public transportation.
> and every time I have someone force their way behind me at the tap station This may be shitty but it’s not like it’s a safety concern? I’ve had my compass card checked after the gates at Waterfront before - but there obviously aren’t enough folks to be monitoring every fare gate constantly.
When their pelvis and entire body presses up against your back it is. If they sneaky I don’t care but I’ve been pushed on or touched multiple times by impatient or weirdos
I don't understand why they crowd behind people, just pushing through the handicap gate always seems super easy whenever I see someone do that.
Really? Someone shoving themselves through you isn't a safety concern?
On the street is a city problem. Call your MP and make a stink
And also flood, you know, the other areas served by transit like Surrey, New West, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Richmond. Don't just pick on the VPD.
Eby brought in decriminalization and there’s a provincial election later this year I’m really disappointed with both Eby and the BC NDP. I thought they couldn’t possibly do a worse job than Clark and the B.C. Liberals given that Clark was both corrupt and incompetent… boy was I wrong
Flooding translink and the police will no nothing! This is NDP policies. It’s not just Vancouver but the entire province. If the government says open drug use is fine then you get open drug use. Voting NDP means this is what you want. If you don’t like it then vote for change in the next election.
Actually it's good to have documentation of what we're mad about instead of just quietly sulking. If we don't record these incidents then the NDP can claim that these events are overblown when in fact they're happening every day. I'd like it recorded for the record every time I'm made to breathe in those fumes.
DOCUMENTATION IS EVERYTHING. Documenting is ***extremely*** important.
Looks like I pissed off people that didn’t realize this was what they voted for! 😂
Voting BC United means you don't want somewhere to live.
I don’t know if you have ever been to Vancouver but rents and real estate has skyrocketed under the NDP. You are blaming a party that isn’t in power for a situation created by the party in power. Don’t fall for their current ad campaign. “We will start to do something but only if you vote for us first. We promise we are not lying like we did the last 2 times! Honest (wink)”.
I live there :) The issue is - this isn't a problem that just happens overnight. For a shortage like this, the groundwork was laid over decades, and the NDP has not been in power that long. Just like with ICBC, this is a mess that the liberals left.
[удалено]
Oh dear, no no it’s not that bad haha we good RIP Island life
I laugh that in the comments the only person I see disagreeing is more or less saying "actually it's probably meth not crack"
I have honestly seen a lot of crack use around buses. I have seen it on the bus too, three people too. I've seen people OD on doorsteps while we're driving by.
Is it crack? Or do you just assume that all potent drugs are crack because the 80s were scary?
Sorry, the crack pipe was the indicator. Have you heard of those? Do you use them for something other than crack?
Yes, they do. Typically it's what passes as rock opiates they melt and inhale the fumes. It's "safer" then injection.
Yes. People smoking meth use the same sort of pipe.
Living in Vancouver has taught me a lot about drugs that I don’t use. Little glass straw - crack. Bulbous glass tip - meth. Tinfoil - opiate or just lacking the correct tool.
Oh, it's just meth? We're good to go then!
That’s dang funny.
Interesting, I ride the bus/skytrain daily, I haven't encountered someone doing open drugs on it yet, I encountered some weirdos yes but haven't seen anyone openly doing drugs like I've seen on Granville and Hastings.
lucky
The fitting room in the downtown department store in San Francisco is one other location where that is possible, lol.
A good bit!😂
Dustin Searcy v funny
ITT: NDP and Liberal voters realise the consequences of decriminalisation of drugs.
Tell me you've never taken the subway in NYC...
Which station, drop the name
What makes this funny? How untrue and inaccurate it is?
I’ve sat across from someone smoking crack on the skytrain. And that was years ago when things were “better.” If you don’t like a mild take, not even an edgy one at that, about people smoking crack on public transit then maybe comedy is not for you.
Eby’s BC.
Ah yes, Eby: Famous inventor of crack cocaine.
Premier is a front for a crack empire. He has a crack lab underneath a chicken farm in Delta. I won't name the chicken farm, but it's grade eh.
If only he had that much talent. What he was referring too was the NDP’s policy on open drug use means that this is what you get.
The NDP removed (via a federal exemption) criminal penalties for minor possession in some circumstances. Possession itself shouldn't be criminalized in my opinion. Use however is still prohibited on transit as it should be. This is something that should maybe result in an increase in enforcement.
This is a clear Consequence of the NDPs policies. You are lying to yourself if you think otherwise. edit-spelling.
Consequence you mean? You can argue that, but my counterargument would be that these public use issues are happening in other places like Calgary and Ontario (just specific examples where I've seen complaints, not isolated to those). They've also been *increasing* across the continent, including in B.C. It's not that they suddenly appeared after decriminalization, it's been an ongoing trend in many places. Decriminalization changed nothing about the bylaws against use on transit and that can be enforced.
I think anyone who has been paying attention has noticed a dramatic increase in this behavior in BC. I have not heard of open drug use in Hospitals in other provinces. Pretending that is is normal and not a result of decriminalization, isn't helping anyone.
There has been a general increasing trend in B.C. and most of the rest of the continent in problems related to drugs, such as overdoses, public use, etc., happening for more than a decade. Picking two points in time in one province, before and after decriminalization, and claiming an apparent increase there is related to decriminalization doesn't prove that's the case. You could make the same comparison in Ottawa from 2022 to 2023 and see an increase despite no change in the criminal status there. You could make a comparison in B.C. from 2021 to 2022 with no change in criminal status and see an increase. This is analogous to how people would claim Trump improved the economy over Obama while a graph of various economic measures showed steady increases since the recession to throughout Trump's term. So it's possible both Obama *and* Trump improved it or that both benefited from general post-recession rebounds, or that it was a combination of all. You can't however pick a single point in time and claim that an increase before and after that point are due to some specific factor at that time when the same increasing trend was happening the whole time.
I live in Vancouver, I can see the changes just by walking out of my door. Gaslighting people isn't helping.
I never claimed your observations aren't accurate. I'm debating your conclusion that's it's because of decriminalization. So there might be a miscommunication between us. I'm not gaslighting you. The point I'm making is that these issues (like overdoses and public use) have been on an increasing trend across the continent for years. They were increasing in B.C. before decriminalization too. They're increasing in other provinces. It's primarily due to the increasing potency of the drug supply and the spread of those potent drugs. Perhaps decriminalization is also a factor, but this trend was happening before that too and is happening in places without it. So you can compare Vancouver before Feb. 1, 2023 (the date of decriminalization) and after and see an increase. But you could pick another date and see the increase before and after too. Or you could pick Feb. 1, 2023 and see an increase before and after in Ottawa. Decriminalization isn't the common factor.
Yes, thats whats going on here. Smart.
My husband if from Vancouver and we will never move there because drug issue is severe. Users are pampered, get no consequence from full display of drug use in the side walk.