CITY HALL CANDOUR ON DRUGS REVOLUTIONARY

Headlining Report On Substance Use, Rather Than Abuse, Major Shift In
Perspective

The bravest and, I'd argue, most revolutionary report to come out of
Vancouver city hall may also be the most dryly entitled: Preventing Harm
from Psychoactive Substance Use.

It was co-authored by the city's drug policy coordinator Donald MacPherson
and social planner Zarina Mulla. When their report was made public last
week (before going to council this coming Tuesday), the resulting press
coverage concentrated on the recommendation to legalize and regulate the
sale of marijuana. (One exception to that coverage was The Vancouver Sun's
city hall reporter Frances Bula, who recognized that the report's
comprehensive nature went beyond pot.)

That emphasis on marijuana was a shame, since the report wasn't about
legalization. It was about the nature of governance. For that, the report
deserved a much closer reading than it got, starting with its title.

Notice, it doesn't use the accepted phrase "Substance Abuse" -- which has
always had a scolding connotation, suggesting the traditional paternalistic
government view that drugs are bad for you, and government is going to
protect you against them whether you like it or not. Instead, it uses the
less judgmental and open-ended phrase, "Substance Use."

That shift, which may seem like a small thing, is actually at the core of
the report's importance. It finds expression over and over in its pages.
Some examples:

"It is acknowledged that the use of psychoactive substances is part of
human behaviour."

And:

"The plan acknowledges that substance use is pervasive in contemporary
society and prevention initiatives should clearly focus on the prevention
of harm from substance use."

And:

"Social norms promote safety and safer substance use."

Got that? Hear the breathtaking candour and honesty in that?

It admits what we all know: We like drugs.

Here is a bureaucracy speaking to us candidly, stating the obvious rather
than keep up the usual schoolmarmish pretense of moral rigour. It is
admitting that we, for better and worse, are a drug-saturated society, and
that government, rather than act as an agent of censure and punishment,
would be better to take a more active role in education, treatment and
moral suasion.

It implicitly recognizes the hypocrisy of those who, regarding legalized
pot as the end of civilization as we know it, daily calm their nerves with
two bottles of wine and a half a pack of Export As. It would desist from
telling its citizens what substances they should or shouldn't put in their
bodies, but instead counsel them on the wise use of those substances.

"Prohibition," its states in a thematic paragraph, "ironically allows
unregulated access to those substances that are prohibited and hampers
efforts to develop quality educational approaches that address issues of
harm ...

"The rationale for moving towards a legal, regulated market in psychoactive
substances is the potential for increased prevention of harm ... Moving
towards a regulated market is an effort to gain more control over these
substances, not an attempt to liberalize our approach or encourage more use
of potentially harmful substances."

For himself, MacPherson said in an interview Friday, his move toward
legalization and regulation was evolutionary, one borne out of inertia. The
war against drugs was going nowhere.

"It was a never-ending problem, one where we were banging our heads against
a wall. The responses to the problem would be the same old responses over
and over and over again. More jail time! Stiffer sentences! You knew what
people were going to say before they said them."

And nothing, as we know, was working. So MacPherson turned to those
campaigns where public sentiment, and not government punishment, lead the
fight against our two most damaging, and most regulated and legalized drugs
- -- alcohol and tobacco.

Recognizing the futility of prohibition of either drug, the public
nonetheless demanded tougher regulation of them, and got it. It was also
the public, and not government, that led to the stigmatizing of their
abuse, namely -- you don't drink and drive, you don't smoke in enclosed
areas, you're an idiot to smoke, period. It was the "Nader-ization" of
these issues that compelled government to get involved, and not the other
way around.

That stigmatizing has had an effect. Tobacco use has been reduced by half
in the last 50 years, and drinking-driving charges have dropped by almost
half in the last 20 years. (Still, the report notes, tobacco and alcohol do
by far the most damage in the province, accounting for a breathtaking 90
per cent "of all deaths, illnesses and disabilities related to substance
abuse in B.C." But what gets the press? Pot, speed and meth.)

Mayor Larry Campbell, a politician, and therefore a pragmatist, thinks
highly of the report, backs legalization of pot, but knows, at this point,
anyway, it is still a talking point.

"Eventually, one day, there will be legalized pot, but I think regulation
is the way to go. But I'm also a realist. I don't think in my lifetime I
will be able to go into a 7-Eleven and buy a doobie."

As for the regulation of harder drugs -- amphetamines, heroin, cocaine,
etc., which the report suggests might be approached incrementally and down
the line, Campbell is less sure.

"If you go too fast, if you go too hard, you run the possibility of losing
all your support."

But this is a start, at any rate, of a new honesty.

Vancouverites should be proud that that start found its start here.