Peaceful measures

Community Action, March 21, 2005 by Leon Kumove

The deaths of the four young Mounties in rural Alberta is a tragedy for the families, friends and for all Canada. Sadly, what started out as a repossession process became an investigation into stolen auto parts and finally murder. Along the way, marijuana plants were found at the ambush scene and this has raised the ire of many people, especially in the United States. Now people on both sides of the border are calling upon Canada to join the U.S. led War on Drugs.

The War on Drugs was initiated by President Richard Nixon in 1971 and renewed by every U.S. president since then at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. Since that war started, the Viet Nam War, the Cold War and many lesser conflicts have ended. But the War on Drugs goes relentlessly on. Canada, much to the chagrin of the U.S. never signed on and has taken a mixed, gradualistic approach to drug problems.

We stepped up law enforcement on drug dealers and tried to interdict the import and export of drugs. As a result, our prisons have large numbers of inmates who are there because of crimes committed to feed their drug habits; once inside they seem to have little problem obtaining illicit substances, Addiction treatment facilities in correctional centres are inadequately funded and relatively few inmates helped. Now, the drug war advocates are complaining that our judges are giving out too lenient jail terms.

Our efforts to stop the dealers have little to show. Each time police break up a drug ring, another group emerges to take up the challenge while inside prison, drug dealing continues.

However, there is some progress. In Canada, possessing small quantities of marijuana is no longer a crime. Those possessing larger quantities are presumed to be dealers and are prosecuted.

Canada has taken steady steps to deal with drug addiction as a public health problem. Many local health authorities have set up needle exchanges to reduce the spread of disease. Recently in Vancouver, where drug addiction problems are at their most serious, two drug injection clinics opened with the cooperation of police. Users can inject themselves with their own substances while physicians and nurses stand-by. The result has been a reduction in the spread of disease and death by overdose. Some people who appeared in these clinics have now entered treatment programs encouraged by the on-site staff. A third clinic will open in Toronto in the fall of 2005. Throughout the country, other "harm reduction" programs have arisen which promote safer use of their substances. This accords with the desire of Canadians to manage the problem.

Suppose we joined the U.S. led campaign, on whom would we make war? In Canada, we estimate that several million people have used marijuana at some time in their lives and we're led to believe that several hundred thousand Canadians have used cocaine and other illicit substances, most without developing serious addictions. We haven't yet heard of anyone arrested or causing an accident while driving under the influence of a banned drug. So on whom will we make war? Our families, our friends, our neighbors?

On the world scene, the War on Drugs makes little sense. Afghanistan is now a major source of heroin because the war lords who control the trade helped remove the Taliban and in return, are now shielded from interdiction. The civil war between competing armies in Colombia includes groups that finance themselves through the drug trade, some with the blessing of the U.S. government.

In 1991, Bruce Alexander published Peaceful Measures: Canada's Way Out of the 'War on Drugs'. Alexander provides a brilliant analysis of the falsehoods, fabrications, fanaticism, and sheer self-interest of anti-drug bureaucrats who keep the war going. He focuses on the more normal patterns of using illicit drugs and reminds us that many of the drugs in question have a long history going back as far as the Roman Empire and have only been treated as a criminal problem in relatively recent years.

He points out that the violence of the drug scene is fueled by current drug policies. Alexander calls for an "armistice" to enable us to find peaceful ways of living with drug issues, including legal regulation and controlled distribution. Canada's politicians and professionals have been worried about a backlash and have taken a slow, gradual approach, perhaps too slow. We need to move on from the modestly progressive advances we've made. We urge Canada to reject the War on Drugs and accelerate peaceful measures.