DRUG-INDUCED STUPIDITY

More than half the people incarcerated in American federal prisons are
there on drug charges, according to the U.S. Department of Justice,
and about one-fifth of those in state prisons. This doesn't count
people whose crimes were indirectly related to drugs, but it includes
people jailed for life for possessing one marijuana joint.
Nevertheless, the war on drugs rages on.

Canada's Conservative government is choosing to copy this strategy,
which has been failing non-stop since Prohibition. The reason Canada
has drug addicts on its streets is supposedly that dealers aren't
going to prison for long enough, so Tory Justice Minister Rob
Nicholson has a bill to make the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act
harsher. Judges have had the discretion to sentence drug criminals
according to the evidence presented in their cases, but now Mr.
Nicholson wants to change that by imposing mandatory minimum sentences.

For instance, anyone dealing marijuana would go to jail for at least a
year if he or she did so in support of "organized crime" (that is, in
a moneymaking enterprise involving three or more people). That covers
just about all marijuana dealers, who are by definition organized if
they have one supplier and one customer. Most of the changes are like
this.

Some drug users might be exempted from the minimums if they're
diverted into special drug courts that focus on treating addicts. But
an addict who deals to support his habit, who can't break the
addiction despite treatment? Why, what he needs is more prison time,
right?

Actually, wrong. This is bad law in pursuit of bad politics, based on
non-existent science. Parliament shouldn't go along.