Man who set fire as distraction to shoplift in Vancouver grocery given conditional sentence

British Columbia’s contentious experiment decriminalizing fentanyl, cocaine and other hard drugs was hailed by provincial health leaders as a “vital” means of keeping people from dying from drug overdoses. It appears it didn’t. New research found no significant changes in drug-related hospitalizations or toxic drug deaths compared with the rest of Canada, where the drug laws hadn’t changed. “I think there’s a real risk of over-promising simple solutions” to the opioid crisis, said the study’s senior author, Dr. Daniel Myran, in an interview. Although drug poisoning deaths dropped...