DRUG REFORM'S NEXT FRONTIER

Earlier this week, I joined several of my co-workers at the National Post
in thoroughly embarrassing ourselves.

One of our editorial board members had recently bumped into some supporters
of Marc Emery, the marijuana activist jailed for three months on a
trafficking conviction for passing a single joint at a rally. Pleased to
learn that she -- along with most of our board -- supports their cause,
they offered her a pile of "Free Marc Emery" T-shirts.

So there we were, standing in the middle of our newsroom in mid-afternoon,
awkwardly posing for a photo in our ill-fitting new apparel (mine pulled
over a shirt and tie, which made me look like the draft pick for some very
unfortunate hockey team) as colleagues wandered past trying not to laugh in
our faces.

What did I learn from this uncomfortable little experience? For one thing,
that even though I recently lost some weight, I'm still better off with a
large than a medium. But more importantly, that the pot debate is very
close to being over.

When predominantly conservative editorial boards have hopped so willingly
on to the legalization bandwagon that they're wearing the T-shirts, you
start to wonder who's left on the other side.

True, a referendum on the subject would still yield a relatively close
result. But opposition to legalization, let alone decriminalization, grows
weaker by the day; a "pot cafe" in Vancouver reportedly sold marijuana over
the counter for the past four months, and the response was so muted that
its owner felt compelled to take her story to the media in hope of actually
provoking a crackdown.

Concern over the effects of legalization are limited primarily to older
Canadians; most now coming of voting age, including many non-users, are
inclined to view pot smoking as less a social taboo than a social practice
nearly on par with drinking. Simple demographics suggest we're probably
only a few years away from the debate being resolved once and for all.

That's a good thing, even for those of us who wouldn't have much interest
in lighting up. Because at long last, it might allow us to start focusing
on the really difficult drug questions.

The truth is, our pot laws aren't all that relevant. True, some otherwise
law-abiding Canadians are stuck with criminal records they did little to
earn. But there aren't many lives that have been ruined either by pot or
the rules surrounding it. Nobody's going to die because it's legalized, and
nobody's life is going to be saved.

It's only when we turn our attention to substances like heroin and crack
that the drug debate will really start to matter.

That, surely, is the next frontier. It won't be as much fun as the pot
debate (I don't expect our board to pose in T-shirts championing a
prominent crackhead), and a consensus will be much more difficult to reach.
But as the trend toward social liberalism informs our approach to tackling
social ills, it's a debate we'll have to have.

Through initiatives like Vancouver's safe injection sites and the
distribution of "safe crack kits" in Winnipeg, we're beginning to scratch
at the surface of a more creative approach to managing the problem.

Ultimately, this is going to lead us to a broader discourse on whether our
current emphasis on prohibition is still the way to go. But for whoever's
brave enough to open it, it's going to be one messy can of worms.

To begin with, any intelligent attempt at new methods couldn't reasonably
treat drugs like heroin and crack the same way. Because there is a limited
amount of heroin that junkies will consume, there's at least a possibility
of doing damage control by providing safe access to drug paraphernalia and
e ven the drug itself. As is made painfully clear in Down to This,
Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall's staggering account of life inside Toronto's
former Tent City, crackheads can't be treated the same way. With an
insatiable appetite for the substance, they'll smoke as much as they can --
with increasingly destructive results the more it's made available.

There are other questions, too, that don't come with easy answers. Would a
significant dent in organized crime justify positioning the state as an
effective drug dealer? Would softening our approach to hard drugs risk
removing some of the stigma around them, encouraging experimentation among
those who'd never consider it now? How much could we afford to alienate and
antagonize the United States, which is irked even by our relatively timid
marijuana decriminalization plans?

Hopefully, the pot debate will serve as a useful warm-up. The sooner we get
it out of the way, the sooner we can move on to the important stuff.