LEGALIZE DRUGS TO CURB CRIME RATES

VICTORIA - Last week's column touched on crime rates, 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. 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, 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.

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

1. Lobby the federal government to legalize the drug trade,
controlling it as tobacco and alcohol are regulated today.

2. Eliminate the organized criminal drug trade by way of a major
expenditure in new police teams, legislation targeting money
laundering and proceeds of crime, increased penalties and
construction of 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 Conservatives in Ottawa will embrace legalization when
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" and would likely only support
increased drug penalties.

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.

Criminologists argue that legalizing drugs isn't likely to increase
demand much more.

Nearly all the street crime, the car and house break-ins, 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 those crimes of passion that are themselves so 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 benign climate to make B.C. the
destination of choice for Canada's sophisticated criminals.

As things stand, B.C. currently 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.

The 'four pillars'

The SFU report endorses what has become known as the "four pillars"
approach to drugs, those pillars being education, treatment,
enforcement and harm reduction.

The prescription heroin trial that's currently going on in Vancouver
offers more potential than pretend "needle exchange" programs where
dirty needles are thrown on the street, or unsafe "safe injection
sites" where dirty street junk is injected with nursing supervision,
at least for a few hardcore addicts who don't respond to methadone
treatment. This type of program is the closest this country is going
to get to legalization in the near future, and it can be done without
the national and international political backlash that would kill a
bolder program.