IN DEPTH: Open Drug Use, Other ‘Big City’ Problems Proliferate in Smalltown Ontario

In the past couple weeks, the town has seen a rapid escalation in the violence and crime that has been steadily increasing for years.

Cobourg Police Service headquarters is seen with a boarded up door on Oct. 2, 2023. Tara MacIsaac/The Epoch Times

COBOURG, Ont.—About six years ago, Jamie Briscoe first saw someone smoking drugs off a piece of tinfoil—a method for consuming crack-cocaine, heroin, and other hard drugs—near his home in the little lakeside town of Cobourg, Ontario.

“I was just mind-blown that there was somebody sitting there in the middle of the day doing drugs and nobody was doing anything about it,” he told The Epoch Times. Now, it’s a daily sight, he said.