ARE THE FUZZ ON A BUZZ?

It was cops against pot this week at the Senate committee on illegal
drugs. The Canadian Police Association, lobby for 30,000 of the
country's 65,000 guardians of the law, came out with guns blazing
against the threat of our Draconian drug laws being liberalized.

"Canada must resist the seductive temptations being advanced by a
sophisticated drug lobby," David Griffin, a former police officer now
employed by the association, told the senators.

Detective Sergeant Dale Orban, executive director of the association,
warned of the threat. "Drugs are not dangerous because they are illegal;
drugs are illegal because drugs are dangerous. There is no such thing as
soft drugs nor hard drugs nor bona fide criteria to differentiate
between these terms. People who refer to hard drugs or soft drugs
generally do not understand much about drugs or are seeking to soften
attitudes toward the use of certain illicit drugs."

Pow! Hands up, you university-trained specialists who paraded before the
committee discrediting the drug laws. The front-line cops know better.
And they'll not stand by and let our communities be contaminated -- like
the wretched Dutch -- by letting people buy marijuana openly at a local
shop.

"The Canadian Police Association will actively oppose efforts to
decriminalize the possession of illegal drugs, except in those approved
instances where drugs are legally prescribed for bona fide medical
purposes," they warned in their brief.

Canada, like the European Union, is reconsidering the prohibition of
some drugs, such as cannabis. Senator Pierre Claude Nolin began his
hearings last year. The Commons, with all five parties in agreement,
struck a committee two weeks ago to re-examine the drug laws. The
Supreme Court will hear appeals of convictions for possession and sale
of marijuana.

But, for the police association, the case is closed, and it points, as
justification, to the deterioration of the Netherlands, where people may
buy as much as five grams of marijuana in a "coffee shop," smoke it
there or take it home. "Violent crime in Holland is the highest in
Europe, and the rate continues to rise. According to studies reported by
the International Drug Strategy Institute, shootings increased 40 per
cent, holdups 60 per cent, and the murder rate in Holland was three
times that of the United States."

Wow! Amsterdam has joined Sodom and Gomorrah. But wait a minute. I
checked out the murder rate in the Netherlands compared to the United
States, as published last year by the United Nations. In 1998, the
homicide rate for men in the Netherlands was 1.81 per 100,000; in the
United States, it was 15.20, more than eight times the Dutch rate. Among
women, the rate in the Netherlands was 0.75; in the United States, it
was 3.90, more than five times the Dutch rate. Even Canada has a higher
homicide rate: 2.30 among men, more than a quarter again as high.

The EU's European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction
publishes an annual report on the state of the drug problem in the
European Union. In its report for 2000, it has a section on "problem
drug use," that is, using dangerous drugs or taking drugs dangerously
(by intravenous injection, for instance). It excludes marijuana from the
category.

It finds the highest rates of problem drug use in Spain, Italy,
Luxembourg and the United Kingdom, intermediate rates in Denmark,
France, Ireland and Norway, and "lowest in Belgium, Germany, the
Netherlands, Austria, Finland and Sweden."

What have our crusading cops been smoking?