DRUG BUSTS ARE FUTILE, LAWYER SAYS

U of O Professor Argues Raid Will Create Shortage, Drive Up Profits

Wednesday's massive drug raid proves drug laws are doing more harm than
good, says one of the organizers of the Canadian Foundation for Drug
Policy, a group that includes psychologists, pharmacologists, lawyers,
health policy advocates and public policy researchers.

Eugene Oscapella, an Ottawa lawyer who teaches drug policy at the
department of criminology at the University of Ottawa, is convinced the
efforts of police and government are futile.

"These arrests, the search warrants, are not going to make one iota of
difference in the long run, simply because the market is too powerful," he
said.

"The incentive is provided by prohibiting these drugs. Basically you take a
product that is very inexpensive to produce, you ban it and many people
want it, and the price skyrockets. That's why a kilogram of heroin costs
$1,000 to produce and can sell for more than $300,000. And $299,000 is your
profit margin on a $1,000 investment. So you can see the attractiveness of
this."

As long as Canada retains its current form of criminal prohibition when it
comes to drug law enforcement, the supply will always be replenished by
members of criminal organizations, he said.

"This (bust) will be touted as a major success," he said. "But in two,
three, or six months' time, they (the busts) will make no difference at all."

In fact, the bust may increase problems because it creates a shortage and
drives the price up. "That means the other people who are distributing it
may actually get more money for the product that they do have. So when you
take stuff off the market, you act as a price support for it."

Meanwhile yesterday, U.S. drug czar John Walters offered a different
perspective. In an interview, he said the raids show effective ongoing
co-operation between Canadian and U.S. law enforcement agencies.

He said policymakers on this side of the border need to match the U.S.
commitment to the war against drugs.

"With regard to how we look at the drug problem," he said, "we've had some
disagreements, but this shows the basic grounds of consensus, I hope," said
Mr. Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy.

"Marijuana's a large part, in this country anyway, of the addiction and
drug problem," added Tom Riley, a spokesman for the office. "Especially
since Canada's often a source of the high potency marijuana that we're
struggling with."

Mr. Oscapella says there are other, more productive ways of dealing with
drugs, including medicalized access and legal-regulated access, such as the
current tobacco and alcohol regulations.

"At the turn of the last century in Canada, heroin was legal, cocaine was
legal, opium, from which heroin is made, marijuana was legal," said Mr.
Oscapella.

Three years ago, Canada's auditor general reported 95 per cent of the
federal money directed at drugs goes to law enforcement and interdiction,
he said.

"Prohibition was really a product of the 20th century and we recognize that
alcohol prohibition was a disastrous failure because it was probably the
largest single force leading to the strengthening of organized crime in the
United States," he said. "And we have gone ahead and repeated the mistake
of drug prohibition, which is also one of the major sources of financing
for terrorist groups around the world."

Ottawa police Deputy Chief Sue O'Sullivan said the drugs that were seized
were merely "the commodity," whereas the criminal organization is the main
target.

"She stressed other activity that went along with the operation included
credit card fraud, identity theft, and large-scale money laundering.

"This was about criminal organization and all that goes with that."

She said "following the product and following money" ensured the operators
would be arrested from the street level up through to the top members of
the organization.

"Let's keep in mind, criminal organizations are about making money," she
said. "So if the commodity was not marijuana it would be something else. No
matter what, criminal organizations are in it to make money."

Police investigators have insisted that the drug ring was very organized.

"This is the first case of this magnitude where we have been able to
connect all the dots from the bottom to the top of a sophisticated
organization which carried out its activities locally, nationally and
internationally," Insp. Larry Tremblay, team leader for the Ottawa joint
forces on the case, said on Wednesday.

But some observers are skeptical both about the amount of money police
claimed was generated by the operation and claims that it was a tight-knit
web of organized crime.

Tom Naylor, an economics professor at McGill University who is an expert in
money laundering, said it's more typical for such an organization to be a
loose and informal group.

In fact, there is little in the criminal world that is complex, he said,
although the police like to give the impression that the operations are
criminal cartels and conspiracies operated by diabolical and dangerous people.

"You get a bunch of guys who work at arm's length. Some know each other and
some don't," he said. "There's no hierarchy here."

Meanwhile, he also questions the amount of money laundering cited by Ottawa
police Chief Vince Bevan in Wednesday's press conference.

Chief Bevan said $5 million U.S. was being laundered each month through the
hub of Ottawa and a business here.

But Mr. Naylor said these numbers are always exaggerated and the numbers
used often represent the gross amounts generated by the business, not the
amount of profit.