Overturn the ban on Poppers in Canada

In 2013, the Harper Conservatives pressured Health Canada to outlaw a category of “legal highs” that included most notably the Nitrite family of inhalants colloquially known as “poppers”. Poppers are related to the heart medication Amyl Nitrite and have been in safe use both medically and recreationally for decades around the world.

The reason this ban disproportionately affects gay men is that Nitrites also relax the smooth muscles of the involuntary musculature such as those found lining the anal canal. For a great number of gay men, the use of poppers is both a sexual enhancement and also a tool to assist in the relaxation necessary for anal sex. When this ban went into place, our sex lives were dramatically affected as a number of sexual practices suddenly became more complicated or painful in the absence of this aid.

Recently in the United Kingdom, a law was proposed to repeat this denial to gay men in the UK, but this time human rights advocates were able to prevail and enlighten lawmakers to the use and importance of these products in our cultural group. They found that banning Nitrite inhalants had a negligible effect on protection the health of citizens, but disproportionately targeted men having sex with other men in a form of discrimination who’s roots are both anti-sex AND homophobic. 

I would like to encourage the Liberal Government, to consider the impacts of this conservative prohibition and in particular the burden imposed upon free adults and the way they choose to exercise their sexuality.

Please instruct Health Canada to step back from imposing prohibitions on generally safe and well understood products that Canadians should have the right to choose the use of for themselves. For there is no poorer a man that he who’s pleasures depend on the permission of another.

In 1967 Prime Minister Trudeau Sr., shut the nation’s bedroom door to the meddling of bureaucrats and the government’s prying eyes. I urge you in 2016 to act in support of this paradigm which in large part created the modern Canada we have all come to love as our home.