DRUGS, DRUGS, DRUGS: SOME ARE GOOD, BUT THEY'RE ILLEGAL

Stephen Harper's Conservative government is one step closer to
passing legislation designed to curtail gang activity in Canada. The
proposed mandatory jail time and increased mandatory minimum
sentences set out in Bill C-14 are poised to attack drug trafficking
and the increasing number of gang related murders and drive-by
shootings in international drug hot beds like Vancouver, B.C..

"Our message to potential offenders is clear: if you sell or produce
drugs, you will face jail time," Federal Justice Minister Rob
Nicholson told the media in late February. The list of proposed
changes to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act includes a minimum
one-year sentence for the sale of drugs such as marijuana in
connection with organized crime, a mandatory two-year sentence for
dealing drugs such as cocaine, heroin or methamphetamines to "young
people" and a two-year mandatory sentence for running large-scale
marijuana grow-operation, the CBC told me.

These proposed changes to drug laws come at the heels of similar
enhancement of penalties to crimes involving gang violence, and sees
the Harper government making good on its campaign promises to "get
tough on crime." I still have a headline from that particular piece
of junk mail, sent out last October. "Keep junkies in rehab and off
the streets," it says. I have it tucked into a picture frame below my
signed photo of Mr. Harper to remind anyone rolling joints off it of
the kind of people we have running the show in Ottawa these days.

These amendments make good of the Conservatives' promise to "get
tough" on gangs in the public print, but do they really deliver the
goods? While few in Parliament will have the intestinal fortitude to
actually vote against the bill, criticisms abound as to its lack of
incentives towards the prevention of crime in the first place.

Winnipeg resident Frank Hermon, who spent time in gangs and jail
before returning to school and distancing himself from his troubled
past, spoke to the CBC when the legislation was announced. He said
that while the new laws might (key word) help, the problem is in no
way going to be solved by simply adding jail time to a sentence. "You
really don't care when they send you to jail," he said. "Most of your
friends are already in jail anyway."

A good friend of mine stopped by my house this past September with a
(then) recent issue of Macleans magazine featuring a cover story on
the B.C. drug industry to show me. As we partook in the buds of said
industry, he (being a student of commerce) directed my attention to
the numbers involved.

Now, the fact that B.C. is home to a massive drug economy was news to
neither of us: I was born in Victoria and spent the bulk of my youth
in Dawson Creek, and both us had spent time in the Interior.

During my time there and since, I have met many people who have been
employed "in the industry" in one-way or another. Hell, I work in a
head-shop, so technically I work in the drug industry, though safely
on the legitimate, fully legal, taxpaying periphery. I understand
that many people enjoy drugs, and I know these people come in every
single shape, size, age, class, race, creed, whatever, and enjoy a
wide range of drugs, both fully legal and flagrantly illegal.

Possessed, as we were, with a basic understanding of economics and
"the drug industry," the numbers Macleans presented were, frankly,
staggering. A brief example from that article reads, "a 2005 RCMP
report found that if marijuana production was factored into
provincial accounts, B.C.'s trade surplus would jump 230 per cent to
$8.6 billion." In the midst of a global economic meltdown, billions
of dollars a year are moving about completely untaxed in British
Columbia alone. Sounds like a Conservative's paradise!

"The bottom line is there's no question this is a multi-billion
[dollar] industry," Darryl Plecas, a criminology professor at the
University College of the Fraser Valley, told the magazine, and the
industry goes far deeper than drive-by shootings and gangsters
slinging dope. As in any other industry with fierce competition, the
gangs of the today are innovative, sophisticated organizations who
are not only keenly aware of "the bottom line," but are prepared to
fight and die for it. And yes, physically not figuratively.

"This is a business, but it's a business with no rules, no morals, no
ethics and the main tool is a handgun or a submachine gun," says
Supt. John Robin, a member of the B.C. integrated gang taskforce in
the Macleans article, articulating the view of the police and,
evidently, the state.

In a recent article for Vancouver's The Tyee, Rafe Mair explains that
if you want to stop gang violence, take the profit out of being in a
gang. How do gangs make profit? You guessed it: drugs. Mair argues
that drug prohibitions such as we have today are providing an ideal
environment for gangs to thrive. There has always existed a huge
market for drugs, and no legislation will change that. During the
failed prohibition of alcohol in the United States during the 1920s,
American gangs made a quite literal killing (i.e. profit), supplying
illegal liquor to drinkers (i.e. the market).

Gangs today are doing the exact same thing, only with a global market
for illegal drugs of all kinds. The unending war on drugs we find
ourselves waging today is proving no more effective than the
teetotalers' war on booze was, and is certainly more deadly. With the
battle against illegal drugs taking place on a world stage, billions
(if not trillions) of dollars and countless lives are wasted fighting
an unwinnable war ever year.

It is often left unsaid, or taken for granted, that there is also big
business in maintaining prohibition by force, a business the state
has invested heavily in. Millions of dollars are spent a year in
countries across the world, providing employment to thousands of law
enforcement professionals, lawyers, judges, jurors, jailors, doctors,
bondsmen, politicians and others who, like professional criminals,
earn their wages off the suffering and misfortune of others. The
existence of one class is reliant on the continued criminalization of
the other. In this there is no hint of justice, but rather a positive
feedback loop with only one just solution: the end of drug prohibition.

Dean Jensen enjoys many drugs, and almost exclusively legal ones.