HOW TO CUT THE CRIME RATE: LEGALIZE DRUGS

VICTORIA -- Last week's column touched on crime rates around the
province, which the B.C. government tracks by health region.

If you look at violent crime, serious property crime and non-cannabis
drug crime, the safest place to live in B.C. is Vancouver Island.
Next best is the Interior region, which encompasses the Kootenays,
Okanagan and Cariboo.

In the middle of the pack is the Fraser region, the largest in the
province by population, extending from Burnaby through the Fraser
Valley to Hope.

Second worst is the vast Northern region, which includes roughly the
top two-thirds of the province. And the highest serious crime rates
are in Vancouver Coastal, which includes Vancouver, Richmond, the
North Shore and Sunshine Coast.

The good news is that the rate of serious crime has been going down
in most parts of the province, with the exception being the north,
where serious crime went up by more than eight per cent from 2001 to 2004.

The bad news, as I'm reminded by a new discussion paper just released
by the B.C. Progress Board, is that despite improvements in recent
years, B.C. still ranks in the top third of Canadian provinces in all
categories of major crime. We also have more property crime per
capita than the neighbouring states of Washington and Oregon.

The discussion paper, prepared by Simon Fraser University criminology
professors Robert Gordon and Bryan Kinney, contains provocative
suggestions. When it comes to illegal drugs, for example, the
professors conclude. B.C. has only three choices:

1. Lobby the federal government to legalize the drug trade,
controlling it like tobacco and alcohol.

2. Eliminate the organized criminal drug trade with a major
expenditure in new police teams, legislation targeting money
laundering and proceeds of crime, increased penalties and more new jails.

3. Combine options one and two, with a crackdown on organized crime
followed by a phased-in decriminalization and legalization.

Of course the Conservative government will embrace legalization about
the same time Hell opens for public skating. Stephen Harper is
reputed to be a libertarian at heart, but his justice and public
safety posse, Vic Teows and Stock Day, are hang-'em high "social
conservatives" who were appointed to play to the party's older
support base, and would likely only support increased drug penalties.

(As a small-L libertarian, I disagree with that approach, but it's
preferable to the previous government, which repeatedly promised to
decriminalize pot but never followed through, while opening its own
low-grade grow-op in an abandoned mine.)

The criminologists argue legalizing drugs isn't likely to increase
demand. If people want drugs, they will find a way to get them, or
manufacture even worse substitutes like crystal meth.

Nearly all the street crime, the car and house break-ins that
ordinary people are all too familiar with, is perpetrated in the
pursuit of drugs. As for violent crime, if you take away the
drug-related shootings and stabbings, you're left mainly with crimes
of passion that are often committed in a fog of intoxication.

The report warns there is a fourth option, which is to maintain the
status quo. For B.C. that means continuing to have Canada's most
lenient courts, which combines with a relatively benign climate to
make B.C. the destination of choice for Canada's sophisticated criminals.

B.C. has twice the rate of drug crime as any other province. And
since legalization is currently not a viable option politically, the
practical choice would be to increase sentences for major drug crime.