The big addiction experiment

Enlightened or just dangerous? World watches province's decriminalisation of narcotics users

- CHRISTOPHER BUCKTIN

Walking along the historic East Hastings Street in downtown Vancouver, I've just bought W enough fentanyl to kill myself. Paying a mere €17 for each "fat point" of the drug they call Murder Eight here, I have enough collectively for someone to fatally overdose.

"For a guy like you, who has no tolerance, our fentanyl will kill you, Les Vans, once a successful chef and now hopeless addict, tells me after dealing me some drugs.

"If you were to smash [inject] that, you too will become another statistic.

But as Vans, 49, hands over the drugs several one of deals We conducted with various people here we are not in one of the rat-infested graffiti-ridden back allies or squalid crack houses.

We are on one of the Canadian city's main thoroughfares at one in the afternoon.

Police cars and Porsches swish by.