CANADA SHOULD AVOID WAR ON DRUGS

U.S.-Driven Crusade Waste Of Time, Lives

On Wednesday, a United Nations agency slammed Canada for not being harsh
enough on drugs, especially marijuana. Justice Minister Anne McLellan
responded by promising to put more money and resources into the war on
narcotics.

The International Narcotics Control Board said the sentences meted out to
pot growers by Canadian courts amount to little more than slaps on the wrist.

"We wonder whether that policy is a sufficient deterrent to get people not
to cultivate cannabis," said Herbert Schaepe, the board secretary.

"It's clear that we can do more, and we must do more," McLellan told a
scrum outside the Liberal caucus meeting. "We're going to put more
resources toward that. Certainly we, as a government, are seized with the
issue."

The UN and McLellan overlook one small problem: throwing money and cops
into the war on drugs doesn't make matters better, it makes them worse.

The great majority of the human misery, crime, illness, death, lawlessness,
poverty, wasted human potential and other social evils attributed to the
use of narcotics is in fact a result of the illogical, counterproductive
attempt to control illicit drugs through the criminal justice system.

The results are easiest to see in the United States, which has for two
decades pursued the war on drugs with fanatical zeal. This year, the U.S.
prison and jail population will surpass two million, of whom nearly
one-quarter are there for drug offences. In federal prisons, drug offenders
constitute 59 per cent of the population.

By 1998, 3.6 million Americans had been deprived of the right to vote
because of criminal records. Nearly half of these were black males, a
staggering 17 per cent of whom are disqualified from voting by felony
convictions.

And yet, as the Cato Institute reported in 1997, this extraordinary record
of incarceration hasn't stopped "either the use or the abuse of drugs, or
the drug trade, or the crime associated with black-market transactions."

Thousands of Americans die every year in homicides related to the drug war.
Because illegal drugs can't be regulated as to quality or purity, tens of
thousands more die of overdoses. In Vancouver alone, 400 people a year
succumb to fatal overdoses. The illicit nature of drug use discourages the
hygienic use of needles, with the result that injection drug use is a
leading cause of the spread of HIV and Hepatitis C.

These impacts of the drug war have been well documented by groups spanning
the political spectrum, from Human Rights Watch on the left to the Fraser
Institute on the right. Zealous law enforcement makes the drug problem
worse by a simple, easily understood mechanism: the law of supply and demand.

By restricting supply, the anti-drug crusade drives up prices until
substances produced for pennies in the Third World can fetch thousands of
dollars on the streets of North America. This cost-price differential
creates an irresistible magnet for criminals.

At $600 billion, the estimated world trade in narcotics constitutes eight
per cent of all international trade, all of it tax-exempt, all of it going
into the hands of criminals.

Addicted users spend much of their time stealing or selling sex to raise
the hundreds of dollars a day their habits may require. The war on drugs
doesn't limit crime; it promotes it. It increases the sense of insecurity
in North American cities. It breeds disrespect for the law and for
hypocritical lawmakers such as McLellan.

The situation with marijuana is slightly different. Because pot is
non-addictive and no harder to grow than broccoli, even the harshest law
enforcement has limited power to control supply or drive up prices. British
Columbia entrepreneurs grow about $4 billion worth of cannabis every year -
that province's largest agricultural crop.

By lavishing law enforcement efforts on this benign drug, all McLellan will
accomplish is to waste precious public resources and give criminal records
to an unlucky minority of the millions of otherwise law-abiding Canadians
who enjoy the odd puff of grass.

She certainly won't limit marijuana use. Despite the UN's misplaced
umbrage, pot use among young people is higher in the United States than
Canada, and higher in both countries than in Holland, where the selling of
small quantities has been allowed for years.

McLellan isn't as stupid as she tried to make out this week. She doesn't
need me to tell her that all the cops in the world won't put a dent in the
drug problem, that they will only cause increased hardship and human misery.

She's embarked on this senseless course not because she thinks it's the
right thing to do, but because the Liberal caucus, or more likely the Prime
Minister's Office, has made a calculated political judgment that the
ever-shrinking rump of Canadians who resist legalization of drugs is less
tolerant of opposing views than the solid majority who want an end to the
war on drugs. What a stupid waste. What spectacular political cowardice.