WEB EXTRA: THE ALLIANCE MP FROM MAUI-ZOWIE

Dr. Keith Martin Explains How He Would Decriminalize Marijuana Possession

Keith Martin is a thinking person's MP. A medical doctor, he stresses
issues over politics, and often seems to stretch the limits of the
conservative ethic of the Canadian Alliance party he represents. The
views of the MP for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca on Vancouver Island became
more widely known last year when he ran for the leadership of the
Alliance in the race won by Stockwell Day. He has also attracted new
attention lately with his private member's bill calling for
decriminalization of marijuana possession. In a meeting with
Maclean's board of editors, Martin talked about his approach to
drugs--and to the strife-torn Canadian Alliance.

Maclean's: Tell us about your initiative on marijuana.

Martin: The bill calls for decriminalizing, not legalizing, simple
marijuana possession. It came out of when my province actually closed
down about a third of the courts--they were overfull. I thought, how
can we decrease the load on the courts? Why don't we take simple
marijuana possession and put it as a fine instead of going through
the court system, chewing up extensive court costs, legal fees and
such. Those monies can then be used for rehabilitation, child
education and others.

Maclean's: Presumably, you set an amount, above which you would
consider it more than mere possession, right?

Martin: Correct. We use the common legal definition of what simple
possession is. That was not changed at all.

Maclean's: It would be like a parking ticket?

Martin: That's exactly the analogy.

Maclean's: What if you get more than five or 10 parking tickets in a
period of time? Do you then graduate to a felon?

Martin: I've got a "three strikes, you're out" bill basically. It's
one, two, three offences and then after that . . .

Maclean's: After that, you start doing jail time?

Martin: Well, the bill really deals with the first three possessions
of marijuana, where your fine goes up $250, $500 and $1,000, if my
memory serves me.

Maclean's: How does your party feel about it?

Martin: Most of them are in support of it. Some of the more rock-hard
conservatives we have in our party, people say, "Do you mean they
support it?" Yeah, they're police officers. They are met on the front
lines with what's going on, and I wasn't surprised by that; others
seemed to be. But they said it's absurd. They're not in favour of
smoking pot, I'm not, but a significant majority of my colleagues do
support the bill.

Maclean's: How would that work in terms of records, like U.S.
access? I can think of someone I went to university with a million
years ago, who because of a marijuana bust at that point still has
trouble getting into the United States.

Martin: You're right. With the bill, you would not get a criminal
record. And that is a problem. I have a case right now in my office,
where a chap just walked in and said, "I want to go and see my child
as a star hockey player in the U.S., but I can't get in there because
I was busted at 17 for possession of marijuana." The guy's in his
late 30s. So, with the decriminalizing bill, you would not get a
criminal record.

Maclean's: What do you think the U.S. reaction would be if Canada did
decriminalize?

Martin: They'd probably say a few things about decriminalizing, but
what they really fear, of course, is legalizing marijuana. As you
know, the Americans are very angry with us right now because we're
not doing a good job in securing our borders. There's a lot of pot,
with THC [the active ingredient] content significantly higher than
when we were younger. Maui-Zowie was seven per cent and that was top
of the line. Now, it's 28 per cent, which is a substantial difference.

Maclean's: This is the stuff they're growing in British Columbia, is it?

Martin: In my riding on Vancouver Island. But the Americans are
justifiably angry because the stuff is flowing in. Organized crime is
very involved in it. There's a high profit margin. We're not securing
our borders at all.

I went to Colombia in February with David Kilgour [secretary of state
for Latin America and Africa]. I met President Andres Pastrana, and I
asked him to make a statement at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec
about a new approach to dealing with the illicit trade in drugs.

In my view, the so-called war on drugs is an abysmal failure. It is
never going to work. And so we have to take another approach. Rather
than focusing on the production aspect, let's focus on the
consumption aspect. Because this is absurd. How arrogant of us to
stand up and start pointing fingers at Colombia, when we're the ones
who are consuming the stuff. But it's become very dangerous, because
now what's happened is, in Colombia, they're making a very pure,
high-grade heroin. It's very cheap. I noticed this a couple of years
ago. On the streets, there's a price war between cocaine and heroin,
and purity levels are going up substantially, so people are
overdosing like mad. You're seeing this in Vancouver. This is a
serious problem.

And we have this even more potent heroin that's been flooded into our
markets here in Canada. So we have to think, how can we deal with
this problem? In my view, it requires a combination, new methods of
treating users, not in a punitive fashion, but using medical models.
There are some really superb European models that have 60-per-cent
one-year success rates for hard-core narcotics abusers. Unheard-of.

You have to take them out of the drug environment that they're in for
an extended period of time. Because the new science shows very
clearly that the cascade of brain transmitters that say "We've got to
have this heroin" are in part excited just by being in the drug
environment. So part of the beauty of the program is that they remove
the person from that environment, they acquire job skills, they live
in a structured environment. They acquire the skills that are
necessary to them to get jobs they want, and it works. There's a
little bit of front-end loading on the cost side, but future savings
to society are huge.

Maclean's: And your colleagues go along with this? Basically, it
sounds like a social-work proposal, and it's surprising that you
might have full backing of the party.

Martin: Well, it's a private member's initiative. What's important
for me is I've got to get the government onside. So, Pastrana did
make that statement at the summit, which is good. I've got 17 Latin
countries onside and I've got 17 Latin country reps in Canada and
they're onside for this, so I think there's a great role for Canada
to move this forward.

Maclean's: And how does this relate to the decriminalization motion?

Martin: It's separate. It's another part of dealing with the drug
problem. It not only involves these new models, but it involves
implementing RICO amendments, such as they have in the U.S., that
enables us to go after the proceeds from crime. It involves the
utilization of import/export permits for the precursor chemicals that
are used in the manufacturing process of cocaine and heroin.

Maclean's: What is your view of the total legalization of drugs?
Obviously, it's negative.

Martin: Looking at where it was done in Europe, and the Needle Park
experience in Geneva, it was an abysmal failure, for a number of
reasons: it became a haven for organized crime, use went up, crime
went up, and caused incredible social duress. In our country, we
don't have any reason to believe that wouldn't happen. Also, we would
meet with a huge war with the United States. They would engage in a
massive punitive trade war with us.

Maclean's: In your own situation as an Alliance MP, do you at least
have days where you get up thinking to yourself, it would be a lot
easier, and maybe more sensible in terms of your real core beliefs,
to just cross the floor and join the Liberals? You've got some views
that are relatively small-l liberal, you've got a lot of friends on
the other side. There is at least a suggestion that a
social-conservative element is moving towards leadership there.

Martin: I would be lying to you if I said I hadn't thought about it.
I ask myself where can I be the most use. Speaking to members from
the other side, they hate their leadership. I'm using the "H" word to
quote them. They are so frustrated. I think for the time [being], I
can do the best where I am. And maybe I'm wrong.

Maclean's: The party seems like a dysfunctional family at this point.
How does somebody like you with ideas, deal with that?

Martin: It's very, very difficult, because what's dominating the
situation now is the Day issue. And how do we actually deal with
that? In my view, the party has to go back to its roots. It has to go
back to how we can become a fiscally conservative, socially
responsible party. I think there's a great opportunity for us to turn
the paradigm in thinking in Canadian politics on its head, in a
number of ways. Number 1, we need to rethink the concept of
right-left. Right-left, I think, is an obsolete way to define a
political spectrum. People need to be defined by what they stand for.
Are they fiscally conservative? Are they socially conservative?
Socially responsible? That, I think, is a more genuine reflection of
a person's political beliefs.

Because you talk about right-left, you attach certain positive or
negative monickers to that kind of label. I was giving a speech
yesterday on health-care reform. A lot of the people there were
totally against what I had to say. They were very disparaging. Bob
Rae stands up, the former Ontario premier, says exactly the same
thing and people say, "That's really good." They like it. Mr. Rae is
NDP and Mr. Rae cares, whereas I am a right-wing, uncaring, for the
rich, against the poor type of person, which all those labels are
attached to, which I find fascinating.

Maclean's: Not irritating?

Martin: It takes a lot to irritate me. It's just sad because it dumbs
down the political debate and people cannot look objectively, but it
is human nature.

Maclean's: Do you support Stockwell Day as leader?

Martin: My whole objective is to give our members of Parliament a job
to do commensurate with their abilities. I've been trying to keep the
dissidents in, saying that the concerns that you have are shared by
many people. But the way to deal with it is not to go outside and do
it the way it's been happening right now. Because all that's
happening is we're creating long-term rifts within our membership.
And they're solidifying. So, if Mr. Day goes tomorrow, and somebody
from the, quote, dissident group gets in, or Mr. Manning decides to
come back, they're toast--those people who supported Mr. Day. It's
going to be payback time.

What I've been trying to do is redefine the party, as being one
that's fiscally conservative and socially responsible. Which I think
would not only attract the Conservatives and us, but also would take
a lot of people who voted Liberal. At the end, that's what we have to
do. We have to attract a substantial number of people who voted
Liberal if we're going to go and get into power. In the end, the
question about Mr. Day's leadership, I think, is, the words "Prime
Minister Stockwell Day": is that rational or is it an oxymoron?

Maclean's: What's your answer?

Martin: That is something that I will keep to myself. But that's a
question for the members. The members will decide.

Maclean's: You're not a partisan guy by nature. Over the years,
you've gone out of your way to establish relations with other
parties, just as Reform did in the early days. But those efforts
seemed to fail on all sides. How frustrating is that for you now?

Martin: It is frustrating because we've actually gone further on.
We're actually more partisan, in many ways, than the government. Our
behaviour is worse than a lot of members, at times, and I think it's
disheartening for a lot of my colleagues, too, who sit back there and
say, "We really shouldn't be doing this."

But what's rewarded is in our system, if you're a blind zealot, the
more of a zealot you are, the more you think the other side is the
enemy, rather than the problems or the issues, the more you'll be
rewarded. The more you'll be prepared to go and negotiate with the
other side, or approach the other side, and try to work with the
other side, then you're suspect.