WAR ON DRUGS IS FUTILE, STUDY SAYS

Strategy Keeps Police Busy, Prisons Full, Researchers Say

The government is wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars every
year on a drug strategy that's not working, according a paper published in
today's issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

In fact, Canada's drug strategy, which the authors say keeps police busy
and prisons full, has done nothing to eliminate the problem of drug
addiction and exists at the expense of "proven and effective interventions."

Martin Schechter, the study's senior author and head of the department of
health care and epidemiology at the University of British Columbia, says
the government's "war on drugs" is actually to blame for many of society's
drug-related problems.

"If you look at all the harms associated with drug use, you need to ask,
'Is the harm caused by the drug or the war on drugs?' " he said. "As a
drug, heroin gives a euphoric reaction and is highly addictive. You can say
that but if you look at the other problems -- HIV, hepatitis C, bacterial
infections of the heart -- all of those things are caused by dirty needles
because the activity is confined to alleys. The violence is caused by
money. Corruption and crime aren't a function of the drug, they're a
function of the war on drugs."

The study, by researchers at the British Columbia Centre of Excellence in
HIV/AIDS and the University of British Columbia, looks at one of the
country's biggest heroin seizures -- 100 kilograms of uncut heroin seized
more than two years ago in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside -- and what effect
it had on drug use and drug prices. The size of the bust was not far from
the total amount of heroin seized by U.S. officials along the border with
Mexico, where most of it comes into North America, for all of 2000.

And the conclusion? The bust had zero impact.

The researchers had ready access to users because they are taking part in
an ongoing study of the drug population in this dangerous district. Every
six months, they interview subjects about their real-life drug situations.
They ask about price, quality and use.

When the heroin seizure took place during their study, they used it as a
way of measuring the impact it had on the drug's availability on the
streets. They interviewed more than 100 subjects before the seizure and
more than 100 during the month following the seizure. But contrary to the
arguments put forth by proponents of the war on drugs, the seizure had no
effect on supply or quality.

"Our data show that the market for heroin in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside
was totally unaffected by the seizure," said Evan Wood, a researcher at the
B.C. Centre of Excellence in HIV/AIDS. After the seizure, the price of
heroin actually went down and overdoses increased slightly, he said.

U.S. studies have shown similar results, though the U.S. government
continues to spend US$18-billion a year on efforts to control the supply of
drugs.

But those efforts appear to be futile, Wood said, because prices for drugs
have reached an all-time low and drug purity has reached an all-time high.

Wood and Schechter advocate treatment, prevention, education and harm
reduction over enforcement strategies. The authors point out that while
Sheila Fraser, the Auditor-General, recently estimated the annual cost to
Canadian society from illicit drug use at $5- billion, 95 per cent of the
$500-million spent on drug strategy goes toward enforcement.

"It's unfortunate that the government wants to spend the money in that
way," Wood said. "Our study shows there's no evidence these methods are
effective. Any economist will tell you that you can't control a market from
the supply side. You have to control it from the demand side."

Schechter said he thinks the general population is ahead of the politicians
on this issue.

"Fifty years from now, I can tell you for sure, these approaches will have
stopped," he said. "The question is when. I'm optimistic because I see
signs of rational behaviour happening."

He pointed to the recent election of Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell, who
won the vote solely on a "harm-reduction" platform.

Schechter said politicians need to start looking at drugs as a public
health issue, accept that drug addiction exists and that it will never go
away. He'd like to see it treated similarly to alcohol addiction.

The researchers say incarceration exacerbates the problem because diseases
are transmitted in jails. Canadian prisoners addicted to cocaine and heroin
are at increased risk of HIV.