TREATMENT AND PREVENTION ARE KEYS TO A SUCCESSFUL DRUG STRATEGY IN B.C.

Stephen Harper's Conservative government has been promising a new
national drug strategy: "Get tough on drug crime, U.S.-style." With a
late spring election looming, this policy would represent a key plank
in their election platform.

This will be a dramatic shift from the consensus strategy that has
been built supporting a public-health approach to our drug problem.

Even in the U.S. this drug war credo has many opponents. One
particularly courageous organization is called "law enforcement
against prohibition."

Some 6,500 current and former police officers and members of the
justice system want to end the war on drugs just as we ended
prohibition of alcohol in the 1930s.

These officers, judges and prosecutors have seen first-hand how the
more you crack down on drugs the more lucrative drug trafficking
becomes and the more it corrupts society.

The medical perspective, drug planning, is supported to varying
degrees by all the other major political parties. Two-thirds of
Canadians view this as a public health problem to be dealt with
through treatment and prevention.

The Health Officers Council of B.C. is legally mandated to formulate
public health policy for the province. In a paper titled A Public
Health Approach to Drug control in Canada it recommends reform of
federal and provincial laws and international agreements that deal
with illegal drugs. It proposes moving toward a protocol that
emphasizes regulation as opposed to prohibition.

It recommends a plan that would advance in incremental steps toward a
guideline that regulates different drugs in different manners,
depending on their toxicity and danger to public health. 'Harder'
drugs would be strictly controlled and registered addicts would be
encouraged to seek rehabilitation.

Over the past decade, Vancouver has become a flash point in the
struggle between these conflicting views. This occurred because of an
epidemic of drug overdoses and HIV transmission in the Downtown
Eastside that reached critical proportions.

A major focus of this debate was around the opening of a
safe-injection site to lower the spread of HIV and the levels of drug overdose.

The argument in favour of this harm-reduction strategy in the end was
so compelling that most community stakeholders, including the police
chief, came onside.

In a letter of support, he stated that the Vancouver Police
Department has been working together with government partners in
developing a co-ordinated approach to the issues facing the Downtown Eastside.

The Rand Corporation found that every dollar invested in drug
treatment saves taxpayers $7.48 in aggregate costs. Treatment and
drug prevention is where we should be focusing.

The war on drugs guarantees narcotic trafficking will be the dominant
form of organized crime. It gives rise to a gangster culture and
breeds rot in our social fabric. From 1980 to the present, the number
of non-violent incarcerated American drug offenders has increased
from 50,000 to 500,000. And yet drugs are cheaper, purer and more
available than ever.

Their drug war is lost. Do we really want this future for Canada?