ONE LAW FOR ALL

Toronto's Drug Policy: A Debate

Let's agree on this: The "war on drugs" is lost, and we would all be
better off if these damaging substances were legalized. Until that
happens, however, government-sponsored safe injection sites,
crack-pipe giveaways and other so-called "harm-reduction" efforts are
a terrible way to approach the problem.

The government's power to take away our liberty (i.e., throw us in
prison) is an awesome one, and not to be taken lightly. It is cruel
hypocrisy for government officials to exercise this power in regard
to some drug users, while coddling the junkies who happen to live in
Vancouver, Toronto and other cities that have adopted trendy
harm-reduction strategies. When the government shows this kind of
disdain for the law, how can it possibly expect the rest of society
to take it seriously?

It doesn't matter that the intentions behind the policy are good: By
flouting the law, the powers that be are sacrificing the moral
authority they have to force us to obey it. That may not matter so
much when it comes to victimless crimes such as drug possession, but
government's ability to command respect for its rules becomes crucial
in cases where people's lives and person are at stake: murder, rape,
assault, armed robbery, etc. Erode society's buy-in to obeying
admittedly ridiculous drug laws and you erode its deference to the
more serious laws, too.

Just ask Rudy Giuliani, who significantly reduced violent crime in
New York City by vigorously prosecuting such trifles as graffiti and
broken windows.

Of course, the difference is that throwing a rock through a
store-owner's window display, while a minor transgression, is still a
violation of that store owner's rights, just the same, and is
therefore deserving of punishment. The desperate and self-ruinous act
of injecting heroin, by contrast, is an act of destruction aimed at
oneself. That is precisely why it should never have been made illegal
in the first place.

So long as the drug laws remain on the books, though, the government
cannot simply do as it likes, selectively enforcing prohibitions
here, while openly ignoring them there. At least not without a price.

We all have an interest in preventing the government from
double-dealing: By doing so, we ensure that only laws that society
can morally stomach seeing enforced will be allowed to stand. The
rest, such as drug laws, eventually fall -- allowing the real
harm-reduction to begin.