CANADA'S 'DRUG STRATEGY' MISSING IN ACTION

Health Minister Anne McLellan wants us to believe the federal government
has a sound drug strategy.

She wants us to believe that Ottawa sees "both law enforcement and health
as being equal in terms of importance" if Canada is to get a handle on
illegal drugs and addiction.

Unfortunately for Ms. McLellan the facts don't back her claims, as we
learned from the Senate report on marijuana and a drug symposium in
Vancouver this week.

The Senate report notes that "only from 1987 to 1993" did the country have
a "fully-funded national drug strategy."

"Canada urgently needs a comprehensive and co-ordinated national drug
strategy" with "sound leadership" from Ottawa, the report urged. And it
should cover all psychoactive drugs, including alcohol and tobacco.

The same message was heard at the AIDS Vancouver symposium.

"We don't have a drug strategy," said Evan Wood, a researcher with the B.C.
Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.

"Are we better off than we were 10 years ago?" wondered David Brittian, who
penned an auditor-general's report very critical of Ottawa's lack of
information. "We don't know . . . What is Canada's drug strategy?"

It is a strategy that pumps far more money into enforcement than health
initiatives, despite McLellan's claim of balance.

The Senate report notes that some 90 per cent of all federal expenditures
on the drug issue go toward supply reduction, a slick term for law-and-order.

The Centre for Excellence told the symposium that law enforcement snorts
back 82 per cent of the money spent in B.C. on the "drug problem."

So addiction, which is a health issue, continues to get token amounts of
health treatment while the miserably failed police "war on drugs" racks up
huge bills.

The lunacy of this approach was brought home by New Mexico Gov. Gary
Johnson, who brought his pitch for legal marijuana and harm-reduction
strategies to the symposium.

"The war on drugs is an absolute, miserable failure," he said, reaching a
"level of insanity."

"Drug prohibition is what's tearing us apart, not the actual use of drugs.
Everything is made worse because of prohibition."

Johnson noted America spends $50 billion US per year on the war on drugs --
"and with all these massive expenditures, illegal drugs are now cheaper,
more available and more potent than they were 20 years ago."

Almost half a million Americans die yearly from tobacco, 110,000 from
alcohol, 100,000 from prescription drugs, "and of course marijuana doesn't
even make the list."

"In the U.S. . . . we're letting violent felons out of jail to make room
for non-violent drug-addicted individuals," Johnson said. "We need to move
away from a criminal model to a medical model."

Johnson isn't exactly coming from left field here. Patrick Basham of
Washington, D.C.'s renowned Cato Institute, told the symposium "the drug
war is an expensive, counterproductive Big Government program that should
be ended immediately."

Why? Because "all the arrests and all the incarcerations haven't stopped
either the use or the abuse of drugs, or the drug trade, or the crime"
associated with the drug black market.

"Most drug-related crime is, in fact, prohibition-related crime," says
Basham, a view shared by Mo Mowlam, the former British cabinet minister in
charge of that country's drug policy. She says legalization is the only way
to stop drug crime.

How sad that the drug war brigade still uses screwball logic from the
1908-1960 "period of hysteria" the Senate report refers to. When drug
legislation "was largely based on moral panic, racist sentiment and a
notorious absence of debate."