It's time to bust our drug laws.

Donna Laframboise

The Globe and Mail, May 31, 1997, page D3.

Pressure to decriminalize illicit drugs has been building for years. An
impressive parade of police, lawyers, health workers, politicians and
the media agree that when it comes to drug use, the cure is worse than
the disease. Why won't the government listen up?

In 1995, nearly 43,000 Canadians were charged with almost 62,000 drug
offences. Seventyone per cent involved cannabis, 18 per cent were for
cocaine and 2 per cent involved heroin. Roughly twothirds of all drug
charges each year are cannabisrelated. Statistics on sentencing
patterns are not available but we do know that over the past 20 years,
nearly 700,000 Canadians have been arrested on cannabis charges and more
than 500,000 of those were charged with possession. (Sharing a joint
with a friend is considered "trafficking," while growing a plant in your
backyard is "cultivation" and carries a more severe penalty than simple
possession.)

Following a yearlong inquiry into 331 heroin overdose deaths in British
Columbia in 1993 (up from 39 deaths five years earlier), the province's
Chief Coroner Vince Cain declared: "The so called 'war on drugs' which
is conducted by the justice system can only be regarded as an expensive
failure." Noting that illicit drug use was the leading cause of death in
B.C. residents aged 30 to 45, he called for the decriminalization of
simple possession of both hard and soft drugs.

Dr. Cain may as well have been speaking in Klingon for all the good it
did. Nevertheless, pressure to rethink the way Canada deals with illicit
drugs continues to mount. Since the Liberals took office in 1993, an
impressive list of mainstream organizations and individuals has been
advocating a change of course. Some groups argue that prohibition is a
fundamentally flawed concept regardless of whether it is alcohol,
marijuana or heroin. Others advocate the decriminalization of small
amounts of cannabis only. The point is something must be done to wipe
clean the criminal records of the hundreds of thousands of Canadians
already convicted of minor drug offences. Here is what some of these
groups and individuals are saying:

The lawyers

The 34,000strong Canadian Bar Association is among the groups that say
such drug policies are misguided. In March, 1996, spokesperson John
Conroy told a Senate committee that while lawyers would lose business,
his organization has been advocating the decriminalization of marijuana
since 1978. "We submit that it is folly to continue in the present
direction," he said. "People who have been working in the field are
saying that this continued approach does not work; it is doing more harm
than good." Despite many Canadians' tolerance of cannabis, Mr Conroy
points out that thousands of people are still being sentenced to jail
terms for such crimes.

The Criminal Lawyers Association of Ontario takes a similar stand.
Spokesperson Irwin Koziebrocki told a Senate committee last year that
while his group believes cocaine and heroin pose a threat to the
community, the harmful nature of cannabis is questionable. Since a
criminal conviction for cannabis hampers a person's employment prospects
and can result "in tremendous restrictions on one's ability to travel"
decades later, the damage inflicted by the legal system seems
disproportionate to the offence. Drug laws are usually defended as being
necessary to protect young people, but Mr Koziebrocki says there appears
to be no relationship between the illegality of cannabis and its use by
youth. "Walking through [Ottawa's] Rideau Centre yesterday," he informed
the Senate committee, "I passed three young people who were openly
discussing the merits of smoking a joint. Last week, I asked my son
who goes to a reputable school in Toronto if he could obtain this type
of substance. He told me that it was very easy to do."

The police

While there are differences of opinion among lawenforcement personnel,
many police also favour a new approach.

In 1993, the Canadian Police Association, representing 40,000 officers,
urged Parliament to remove cannabis possession from the Criminal Code by
making it a ticketable offence similar to a speeding violation.

In 1994, Ottawa Police Chief Brian Ford called for its
decriminalization, declaring that the risk of things going wrong during
marijuana busts is too high. (Three years earlier, his officers fatally
wounded a man during a raid on a private home that turned up only a few
grams of marijuana.)

With 35 years' experience as a lawenforcement officer in three U.S.
cities, Joseph McNamara, Kansas City's former chief of police, also
thinks decriminalization is the way to go. "It's the money, stupid," he
says, "that is my message to the righteous politicians who obstinately
proclaim that a war on drugs will lead to a drugfree America. About
$500 worth of heroin or cocaine in a source country will bring in as
much as $100,000 on the streets of an American city. All the cops,
armies, prisons and executions in the world cannot impede a market with
that kind of taxfree profit margin." Mr McNamara adds that the large
amounts of money involved in the illicit drug trade also contribute to
police corruption in the form bribetaking and thefts of both drugs and
cash.

Beginning in late 1995, police in British Columbia were advised to stop
laying marijuana charges because of court backlogs, a serious concern in
many jurisdictions. At a rock concert I attended in Toronto two years
ago, people were openly smoking dope on their way into the stadium. The
dozens of police officers in attendance looked the other way.

The health workers and criminologists

Dr. Diane Riley began her 25year career researching the effects drugs
have on the brain. On the staff of the Canadian Centre on Substance
Abuse until Ottawa slashed funding, she says: "We have to face up to the
fact that drugs are with us," that some (but not most) people abuse them
and that our prohibitionist approach is making it more difficult to save
lives. "The World Health Organization has cautioned that if one does not
keep the country's level of HIV infection in injectiondrug users below
10 per cent, then one faces an explosive epidemic," says Dr. Riley. In
Montreal, that level is currently around 20 per cent. In a test city in
England where drug abuse is being treated as a health matter rather
than a criminal one and people aren't afraid to seek help Dr. Riley
says the HIV infection rate among intravenous drug users has been
reduced to less than 1 per cent.

HIV is 10 times more prevalent in prisons than among the general
population. Nearly 40 per cent of inmates in Kingston's Prison for Women
who agreed to be tested are hepatitis C positive. Everyone admits drug
use is rampant in such facilities. Although prison inmates are at
particularly high risk of contracting HIV and other diseases from dirty
needles, Dr. Riley points out that Corrections Canada spent $1.2 million
on drugtesting, and less than onesixth of that amount on AIDS
prevention. In fact, drug testing is aggravating the already highrisk
situation since inmates here as well as in other countries are
apparently switching to harder drugs because cannabis is detectable via
urinalysis for 30 days or more, while cocaine and heroin dissipate
within 72 hours. "The war on drugs is a crusade," says Dr. Riley. "And
nobody wins in a crusade."

Line Beauchesne is a criminology professor at the University of Ottawa
and the author of a book about youth drugabuse prevention programs. "We
must define our objectives," she says. "Is it to reach a point where
people will no longer take any drugs, legal or illegal, or medication,
or alcohol, or do we want them to consume drugs in a moderate way?"

Prof. Beauchesne says that if her daughter suddenly began eating large
amounts of chocolate, her first reaction would be to wonder what was
wrong, rather than to ban chocolate. "In order to be able to say that
there is no more drug abuse, I would have to able to say that there are
no more unhappy people, that the world is perfect and that there is no
reason left to want to numb one's feelings."

For her, decriminalization is a means to an end. If society's goal is to
have as healthy a population as possible, providing drug treatment for
addicts rather than consigning them to prison makes more sense. Such
programs that do exist in Canada have scandalously long waiting lists
and are often chronically underfunded, even though addiction treatment
costs much less than caring for an AIDS patient.

The media

Last month, The Ottawa Citizen ran four editorials in five days
advocating the gradual decriminalization of all illicit drugs. The
Toronto Star published editorials in 1993 and 1996 urging the
decriminalization of marijuana. A 1995 Globe and Mail editorial, based
on a 19 country World Health Organization study that found little
evidence of lasting harm from the use of cocaine, argued that
decriminalization would ease pressure on our overburdened courts and
police forces.

A year ago, Montreal Gazette nationalaffairs columnist William Johnson
admitted to using cannabis, urged decriminalization and declared that
the "supposed cure, prohibiting some drugs, is infinitely worse than the
disease." Toronto Star columnist Frank Jones has called for cannabis to
be legalized and distributed by the provincial Liquor Control Board.
Southam News columnist Andrew Coyne has written it "should be evident by
now that much of the harm of the illegal drugs has more to do with their
illegality than with the drugs themselves."

The politicians

Nor is political leadership entirely lacking on Parliament Hill. Last
year, Canadian senators Sharon Carstairs, Richard Doyle, Duncan
Jessiman, RoseMarie LosierCool and Pierre Claude Nolin all publicly
supported the decriminalization of cannabis. A handful of MPs were also
leaning in that direction. Bloc Québécois MP Pierre de Savoye
acknowledged that "young people can indulge in escapades. We don't want
to ruin their lives over such incidents." Bloc MP Pauline Picard
declared that "illegal drug use is much more of a health problem than a
crime problem." NDP MP Nelson Riis called for the decriminalization of
cannabis, while BQ Pierrette Venne said she had "reservations about the
way possession of cannabis" is currently being handled.

Technically, there is no "war on drugs" in Canada. That term isn't
officially used by Ottawa as it continues to pursue decadesold punitive
measures, often against people who consume illicit drugs responsibly
with no apparent ill effects.

In 1980, while serving as justice minister in Pierre Trudeau's cabinet,
Jean Chrétien told Canadians it was the government's "intention to bring
about changes which will serve to lessen the severity of penalties for
possession" of cannabis. Seventeen years later, we are still waiting.
The Prime Minister advised students in Prince Edward Island last year
that decriminalization wasn't one of his government's priorities.

What has to happen before it becomes one? How many people need to earn
criminal records for marijuana offences? How high do HIV and hepatitis
rates need to climb? How many heroin overdose deaths will it take? How
many more people need to lose their lives in drug turf wars between
Quebec biker gangs before we acknowledge that police powers that
threaten civil liberties are not the answer?

As Senator John Bryden observed last year, "If we cannot control the
access to drugs (hard drugs, soft drugs and otherwise) and if we cannot
keep intravenous needles out of topsecurity prisons, I would think that
is a commentary on how we might think we are able to control, by
criminal law, the access of general citizens to these things."

Indeed, this is the crux of the matter. If we are prepared to live under
a totalitarian regime in which not only prison inmates but virtually
every citizen is subject to 24hour monitoring to ensure we don't
ingest, inhale or inject prohibited substances, the war on drugs can be
won. The question is: Are we willing to pay that price?

If we are not, our policies need to change. Dozens of organizations and
individuals who have made presentations to Parliament in recent years
say there are less harmful, more constructive ways to deal with illicit
drugs. When are our politicians going to listen up and do the right
thing?

Donna Laframboise is a Montreal writer with an interest in
criminaljustice issues. Like Alexa McDonough, Jean Charest and Gilles
Duceppe, she too has inhaled.

(Transcribed by Alan Randell who is responsible for any errors.)