'THE WAR ON DRUGS IS LOST': ANALYSTS

'Run Up The White Flag': Fraser Institute Blames Prohibition For Violent
Crime

Not only is the war against drugs a complete waste of time and money, but it
is to blame for most of the murders and robberies commonly associated with
the drug trade, concludes a series of policy papers released yesterday by
the Fraser Institute.

The nine articles criticize world governments including Canada, which spends
$2billion a year enforcing the county's drug laws for siphoning money into a
"failed war" that breeds violent crime, destroys neighbourhoods and corrupts
law enforcement officials.

"I'm not necessarily encouraging the use of drugs," said Eugene Oscapella,
an Ottawa lawyer who wrote one of the papers. "We're just looking for a
regime that doesn't import all these other harms that are currently
associated with the criminal prohibition of drugs."

Those harms, he said, include people prostituting themselves for drugs and
dealers killing each other to gain control over a piece of the lucrative
trade.

Instead of using resources to arrest and prosecute these people, the papers
suggest a series of other approaches, ranging from more addiction treatment
centres to increased education to complete legalization.

"The war on drugs is lost," said Fred McMahon, director of the Fraser
Institute's Social Affairs Centre. "It is completely lost. It is
unambiguously lost. It is time to run up the white flag and start looking
for more sensible solutions."

Of the more than 64,000 drug-related crimes documented in Canada each year,
the authors suggest most are people stealing to pay for their expensive
addictions. If the drugs were legal, they argue, they would also be less
costly, in turn saving people from resorting to crime in order to afford
them.

"That type of crime would largely disappear," Mr. Oscapella said.

In his paper, titled Witch Hunts and Chemical McCarthyism: The Criminal Law
and Twentieth Century Canadian Drug Policy, Mr. Oscapella also argues
prohibition breeds corrupt police officers looking to cash in on the illegal
drug trade.

Canadians need look no further than Toronto, he said, where the RCMP is
investigating allegations of perjury involving some drug squad
investigations. "If you're in Toronto," he asked, "do you trust your cops?"

The collection of papers also highlights how the war on drugs works to
destroy the poor nations of Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, where
innocent people are caught in the crossfire between terrorists, militias and
government forces. (Unrelated to the release of the papers, more than 100
celebrities, including actors Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover, sent a
letter to the United Nations asking for an end to the war on drugs because
it targets minorities.)

Patrick Basham, a senior fellow at The Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.,
said the Canadian government has historically focused its attention on
fighting "the latest crisis" rather than evaluating the effectiveness of the
country's entire policy.

"The politicians, like most of the general public, have never really been
presented with an alternative take on the drug war," said Mr. Basham, who
wrote the introduction to the papers. "Nobody's really sat down and really
analyzed what we are doing now and how it is working. Because of that, all
the solutions tend to be counterproductive."

The papers are just the latest reports to criticize the worldwide war on
drugs. The July 28 issue of The Economist, which was largely devoted to the
legalization question, concluded "prohibition has failed" and "the laws on
drugs are doing more harm than good."

In May, an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal said "there
are no reported cases of fatal marijuana overdoses" and the "real harm
marijuana users experience takes the form of lost educational, employment
and travel opportunities due to the criminal record they acquire."

And a recent three-part series in the National Post outlined the lucrative
marijuana trade in the range of $30billion a year that goes unnoticed by
Canadian authorities.

The federal government has a Senate committee looking into the pros and cons
of decriminalizing cannabis, but Anne McLellan, the Minister of Justice, has
said she has no intention of making any drug legal.

"The Minister has said that she realizes there are differences of opinion on
this, and indeed that's one of the reasons why the government does not
intend to legalize drugs," said Alexander Swann, a spokesman for Ms.
McLellan.

However, these latest papers could force politicians to rethink their
stances on the issue.

"The papers are very sensible," said Diane Riley, a University of Toronto
public health sciences professor who specializes in social policy related to
drugs. "They alert us to problems which we're all too aware of that current
drug policies in most countries are a failure."