WHY STOP AT POT? LEGALIZE ALL DRUGS

Three cheers for unelected senators!

Last week they released a report stating that Canada's marijuana laws waste
enormous resources, destroy the lives of drug users, infringe on civil
liberties, foster organized crime and do absolutely nothing to stop people
from getting high. Inevitably, critics were quick to offer the usual
objections in response to the senators' call for legalization. "As a
parent," Canadian Alliance Leader Stephen Harper observed, "I simply don't
share the view that alcohol is more harmful than marijuana." For their
part, The Globe and Mail and National Post published cringing, wishy-washy
editorials calling for decriminalization rather than outright legalization.

The sole problem with the committee's recommendations is that they apply
only to cannabis.

When it comes to drugs, the only humane policy is to legalize them all.
Ecstasy, cocaine, heroin, PCP; prohibition has failed in equal measure for
all of these substances. Prohibition has enormous social costs and does
more harm than good. It's time to junk the entire approach.

Prohibitionists say legalization would trigger massive increases in drug
consumption and addiction.

This reflects an extremely simplistic understanding of the relationship
between legalization and usage.

As the Senate committee notes in regard to cannabis use among the young,
"we have not legalized cannabis, and we have one of the highest rates in
the world. Countries adopting a more liberal policy have, for the most
part, rates of usage lower than ours, which stabilized after a short period
of growth." (Italics added.) Similarly, heroin use is almost three times
higher in the ultra-prohibitionist United States than in freewheeling
Holland. The idea that legalization means epidemic consumption is mostly
hysteria.

Of those who do try drugs, many, perhaps most, experiment in their youth
and then stop. Of those who do keep using, the majority do so without
becoming addicted. Two years ago, Ottawa Citizen journalist Dan Gardner
obtained a 1995 World Health Organization study on cocaine, the most
extensive ever conducted, and quoted one of its key findings: " 'Occasional
cocaine' use, not 'intensive' or 'compulsive' consumption, is 'the most
typical pattern of cocaine use.' " (Such findings so discredited America's
drug policy that it threatened to withhold WHO funding, and the report was
never released.)

As for actual addicts, prohibition only compounds their misery.

Someone with a drug problem doesn't need a jail sentence, he needs help.
The Senate report notes that 90% of government spending related to drugs is
devoted to enforcement. That leaves only 10% for things like addiction
treatment and harm-reduction programs, where anti-drug dollars would be
better spent. Several studies have documented that when addicts overdose,
other users who are present frequently don't call 911, out of fear they'll
be arrested. Prohibition is a direct factor in such preventable deaths.

That's not the only area where prohibition kills.

As Gardner wrote in 2000, "From 1920 to 1933, the years of [alcohol]
Prohibition in the U.S., about 800 gangsters died fighting each other in
the streets of Chicago. In just the last two years in Tijuana, 1,000 people
have been killed fighting over the drug trade." Tijuana is only an extreme
example of a phenomenon that takes place around the world.

Prohibition creates a black market.

That gives rise to organized crime and violence, from Quebec's biker wars
to inner-city shootings in the U.S. to the destabilization of entire Latin
American countries. Only removing the control of drugs from criminals will
address the root problem.

This is one reason why decriminalization doesn't go far enough.
Decriminalization means getting caught with drugs results in the equivalent
of a traffic ticket rather than arrest.

But selling drugs is still illegal -- so criminal distribution chains
remain completely untouched. Decriminalization also does nothing to address
the massive resources that would still be wasted targeting traffickers and
ticketing users, or the violations of civil liberties prohibition entails.

Endless numbers of innocent people are subjected to the indignity of
airport strip searches -- or worse -- thanks to the current drug hysteria.

For many of these problems -- especially the carnage afflicting Latin
America -- we can thank the United States and its tragically misguided "War
on Drugs." The U.S. has consistently bullied other countries whenever
they've considered liberalizing domestic drug laws. Aid packages have been
withheld, official passports denied, threats of trade sanctions issued.

In Canada, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency recently conducted a covert
sting operation that involved "blatant acts in disregard of Canadian
sovereign values and law," as a B.C. judge ruled in August. All this in the
name of a policy that has consistently failed to eliminate drugs.

Wars have victims, and the war on drugs is no exception.

In recognizing this simple, crushingly obvious truth, the Senate has
produced a rare government document that speaks in a voice of moral sanity.

Prohibition will always fail. Why are we so afraid to try something else?