CANADA ON DRUGS

We learned from the Canadian Addiction Survey last week that the use
of marijuana has nearly doubled in the last 10 years. Perhaps no other
single fact better explains the drift of Canadian politics. Indeed,
the report (sponsored by Health Canada and others) may offer a
one-stop shop for those trying to account for a wide variety of
political and social developments in Canada since Jean Chretien came
to power.

A figure now approaching half the population freely admit to having
smoked dope, and something like one in nine also admit to the use of
hallucinogens. Ditto, cocaine. On the other hand, fewer than one in 16
of your neighbours is on hoppers, and fewer than one in 20 has done
heroin or ecstasy. (Higher in cities.)

The part that surprised me least was that pot use "increases with
education and income" -- which is just what they say about the Liberal
vote. It's been a long time since there was any correlation between
formal education and learning, or between high income and social
utility; I therefore find no paradox to confront. The response of the
Liberal party has been to make efforts to decriminalize the
recreational use of marijuana, and who could blame them? They know
their constituency.

Whereas the NDP might be compared to the resin left at the bottom of
the pipe after the leaves have all burned away. One thinks of the card
distributed by Jack Layton supporters in the last election, which
showed the Great Helmsman's face superimposed upon a sprig of
guess-what. It declared a real enthusiasm for legalizing marijuana,
and looked forward to the day when people would be able to smoke at
their ease in their homes and "socially" in restaurants and so forth.
Substitute tobacco for marijuana, and I might be tempted to vote NDP.

Well actually, I just realized I have told a lie. The part that
surprised me the least, in the addiction survey, was not the stuff
about education and income. The truth is, I was even less surprised to
learn that British Columbia led the other provinces in drug use. I've
been to Vancouver several times in the last decade, and was under the
impression that it was not I, but the whole city, that was on some
kind of trip. Even the bankers there seem -- let's say, a little flighty.

What can it all mean?

Don't ask me, man. I stopped doing drugs when I realized they make you
crazy. It would be a serious lie to say that I never inhaled -- um,
anything. But that was in another era, and, as the saying goes, if you
remember the '60s, you weren't there.

I'm aware that I'm writing in the newspaper in which the
semi-legendary Dan Gardner wrote innumerable series of award-winning
articles arguing that the legalization of drugs would put an end to
all associated organized crime and make the world safe for democracy.
It's one of those issues about which, even though I am a vocational
pundit, I have never had an opinion. But wait for it, I'm about to
come up with one.

The flaw in the libertarian argument is that people don't need
permission to misbehave. That is the part of human behaviour that
comes naturally. Instead, it takes a considerable amount of repressive
tradition, social stigma, and legal threat to get anything good out of
the species. And while there may be some tactical discussion of what
is worth making illegal, and what is not, the idea that you can reduce
crime by getting rid of laws is tautological.

In this case, the question of organized crime is tertiary. We have
police to take care of that sort of thing, and if there aren't enough,
then we need more.

The secondary question is: Do we want to live in a country that is a
magnet for all the superannuated hippies in the United States? While
the Americans progressively close the border against drug shipments
passing the other way? With consequences for all the dwindling number
of Canadians who do not happen to be stoned out of their wee minds?

But even on this level, drug legalization would be merely an act of
stupidity.

The primary question is, do we want the drug culture to become our
public culture? For that is the unseen goal we now approach: in a
word, Holland.

Call me square, but it's yet another horror I would like to have
shoved back in its closet, and a bolt driven through the door.