DRUG PLAN IS GOOD, BUT HAS ITS FLAWS

The Conservative government's new $63.8-million, two-year drug
strategy could be worse, but it could be better.

Fully half the money will go toward beefing up treatment for addicts.
Since health and social services are mainly a provincial
responsibility, however, that money will go mainly to development of
national benchmarking - so that evaluations can be consistent across
the country - and extra programs for aboriginals. The main burden of
helping addicts remains with the provinces.

Another $10 million will go to prevention - ad campaigns and brochures
to remind people, especially young people, how damaging addiction is.
"Drugs are dangerous and destructive," Prime Minister Stephen Harper
said, unveiling the plan. "If drugs do get hold of you, there will be
help to get you off them."

Then he went on to the $22 million law-enforcement piece of the
strategy: "But if you sell or produce drugs, you will pay with prison
time."

The critics' familiar litany began at once - "useless" and "fascist"
and so on. But the details suggest that these measures are well
thought out: tighter import control for precursor chemicals, expedited
deportation for convicted non-Canadian dealers, additional police
officers dedicated to fighting organized drug crime ... We're not
happy, however, about mandatory minimum sentences, which reduce
judicial discretion in an unfortunate way.

This newspaper still believes that decriminalization of "soft drug"
possession would be sensible. But next best, we'll concede, is an end
to the twilight of legal vagueness and enforcement confusion that we
have had.