WE MUST CHOOSE TO LEGALIZE DRUGS

Humans have used psychoactive drugs in just about every society in
every time in history. There has never been, and can never be, a
"drug-free world."

If drug use will always be with us, it follows that the harms drugs
can cause will also remain. There is no "solution" to the drug problem.

That might sound resigned, but it's not. We still can, and must, make
important choices: Which drug-related harms will society cope with?
Some are worse than others. Given the range of possible drug policies
we could adopt, which policies will produce the fewest and least
destructive harms? We can't choose solutions, but we can, and do,
choose our problems.

Beginning in the early 20th century, most countries chose the most
extreme policy available: Some drugs were banned and their production,
sale, or possession made a crime. The people who originally made this
choice believed prohibition would create a drug-free utopia. By that
standard, drug prohibition has been a spectacular failure.

But the justification for prohibition has evolved Officials who
seriously talk of "drug-free societies" are now rare. Instead,
government leaders claim prohibition at least keeps down the rate of
dug use and thus limits the damage of drugs. To withdraw the criminal
prohibition of drugs they say, would send the number of drug users and
addicts soaring. Society would suffer horribly.

I don't believe that's true. There is no substantial evidence that
prohibition keeps down drug use. But what if it were true? Wouldn't
criminal prohibition then be the best drug policy? The answer is still
no.

In the broadest terms, there are two basic drug policies: The first is
prohibition, in which the production, sale, and possession of drugs
are crimes. The second is legalization. Although many levels of
legalization are possible, most supporters of legalization want a
policy that regulates drugs at least to the degree that we regulate
(but don't ban) other products that can be dangerous to health.
Alcohol regulation is often cited as a model.

What are the problems caused by these policies? Which is the least
harmful?

The harms caused by prohibition are many and terrible. Third world
countries, where illegal drugs are produced, have to struggle with
drug lords and traffickers whose staggering wealth is used to corrupt
institutions and pay for private armies to murder opponents. Central
governments are weakened, fostering unrest. Billions of dollars that
could go to development are wasted on futile fights with traffickers
and producers. Eco-systems are ravaged by futile efforts to stamp out
drug crops. Many people, often desperately poor, are lured by
black-market wealth into a business where they risk prison or death.
In this way, Columbia stands at the brink of civil collapse. Mexico
and other countries on the traffickers' routes have also suffered
economic distortions, violence and corruption.

In drug-consuming countries such as Canada, police are frustrated by
the impossible task of stopping the flow of drugs, so they ask for and
get more powers, eroding everybody's civil liberties in the process.
Some succumb to the unique opportunities for corruption presented by
black-market drugs. Others turn, in frustration, to vigilante justice
- - lying under oath, planting evidence and committing other heinous
acts to win an unwinnable war.

Prohibition leaves users buying untested, unlabelled drugs that are
often tainted, fraudulent or even poisonous. It encourages users to
favour the fastest-acting most potent varieties of drugs and use them
in the most cost-effective way: injection. It stigmatizes addicts as
criminals, pushing them to the margins of society where they can't get
the help they need. All of this multiplies fatal overdoses and
drug-related deaths, and spreads infections among users. Drug
prohibition is a major contributor to the AIDS epidemic.

Prohibition fuels petty property crime by forcing addicts to pay
black-market prices for drugs. It turns what would otherwise be an
ordinary business such as the alcohol industry into one run by
criminals who settle business disputes with bullets and bombs, turning
streets into battlefields. Prohibition gives organized crime its
largest source of revenue and power.

Prohibition has cost governments worldwide hundreds of billions of
dollars. The U.S. government's anti-drug budget is now more than $20
billion US a year. Of that, almost $13 billion is devoted to fighting
the production, distribution, sale and possession of drugs. That
doesn't include drug-related state and municipal spending on police,
prisons and courts that, by one estimate, has topped $16 billion.

Canadian governments don't itemize drug-enforcement costs, but there
are indications taxpayers are footing an enormous bill. The RCMP
alone has 1,000 officers devoted full time to prohibition. There are
drug specialists in all police forces across the country. Add the time
spent by regular officers, in the RCMP and all other police forces,
dealing with illegal drugs in the course of their duties. And the
specialist who fight organized crime, including the many officers who
have spent years trying to cope with Quebec's biker war. The customs
officials searching for drugs at borders - and putting a drag on the
economy as they slow cross-border traffic - are also part of the bill.
And the forensic accountants tracking money laundering. And the
judges and court officials processing almost 70,000 drug charges each
year. And the guards needed to watch over the nine per cent of
Canadian prisoners behind bars for drug crimes.

The loss of fundamental liberty is surely prohibition's greatest
harm.

These direct monetary costs are only half of what we pay. There is
also all the good that could have been done if these vast resources
had been available for other priorities.

And lastly, there is the fundamental injustice of imprisoning people
simply for choosing to take a substance not approved by the state, or
for selling that substance to those who choose to buy it. If the
right to control one's own life means anything, it must include the
right to choose what to ingest. The loss of fundamental liberty is
surely prohibition's greatest harm.

This is a short summary of a much longer list. But it's enough to
weigh against the harms of legalization. If legalization did not cause
an increase in drug use - and I do not think it would cause one - the
argument is over. But what if it did cause a significant increase in
drug use? Would legalization inflict equal or worse harms and costs
than prohibition?

To answer, we must distinguish between use and abuse. Drug-law
enforcers refer to all illegal drug use as "abuse", but this is
inaccurate. Drug use that does not harm or impair one's health, work
or relationships is generally considered mere, "use". Consumption that
hurts the user or others is "abuse".

Most of us recognize the line between "use" and "abuse" of alcohol.
Dr. Harold Kalant, professor emeritus in the faculty of medicine at
the University of Toronto and researcher emeritus with the Centre for
Addiction and Mental Health, says that alcohol abusers make up between
10 to 15 per cent of the total. Between five and eight per cent of
problem drinkers are addicted, he says, while the other alcohol
abusers drink in ways that are harmful to themselves or others -
drinking and driving, for example, or binge drinking that interferes
with work or family life. That means 85 or 90 per cent of alcohol
users generally consume without significant harm.

The same line between use and abuse exists with illegal drugs. Kalant
estimates that the ratio of use to abuse of marijuana is roughly the
same as for alcohol. But drugs such as cocaine and heroin are more
addictive than alcohol and so, Kalant says, instead of a 10- or 15-per
cent abuse rate, "you're more likely talking of 30 per cent or more".
(Only one drug causes addiction among a majority of its
users:nicotine.)

That's a rough estimate. Unlike alcohol, we don't have detailed
pictures of illegal drug users and the effects of their use, for the
obvious reason that users tend to avoid attention. But it appears the
majority of users of illegal drugs do not abuse them, and their
consumption of drugs, like consumption of alcohol, generally has no
serious ramifications. "If you're a light, casual user," notes Kalant,
"you probably don't have any significant health effects."

There may be more involved in these numbers, he cautions, than just
the effects of illegal drugs. He says the very fact that some drugs
have been made illegal gives them an anti-social image which may
attract people inclined to seek novelty and danger. And "people like
that", he says, "may be more at risk (of problem use) than others."
Thus, the abuse rates we see with illegal drugs may be higher than
they would be if the drugs were legal.

None of this detracts from the real dangers of drug use. It's
difficult for a drug user to know in advance, for example, if he is
one of the minority of users who is susceptible to addiction. And some
methods of drug-taking are dangerous in themselves, injection, for
example, risks infection. And even casual, light use of some drugs may
pose small risks of serious harms. Synthetic drugs such as ecstasy,
for example, haven't been well-studied, but there is evidence that
even one dose has, on rare occasions, done grave harm. These risks
alone are reason enough to avoid drug use.

But the distinction between use and abuse puts things in perspective.
In the unlikely event that legalization led to an increase in drug
use, the majority of that increase would be casual use: health and
social consequences would not be daunting.

Those who see drugs as a moral issue may still consider an increase in
casual use unacceptable. But for people concerned only with limiting
the individual and social damage of drug use, such an increase should
not cause great alarm. How many people are having a Saturday night
toot of cocaine doesn't matter nearly so much as how many people are
ending up in the morgue. Current drug policy cares far too much about
the former, and not nearly enough enough about the latter. The
American government, for one, celebrates the fact that casual cocaine
use is down from its peak - while staying remarkably silent about the
fact that drug-related deaths are at a record high.

Of course, a rise in casual drug use might also be accompanied by a
smaller rise in addiction. That would obviously be a major concern,
but that, too, must be put in context. Most of the horrific harms
that we now associate with addiction - overdose deaths, crime,
homelessness, infections, marginalization - stem for the most part
from the criminal prohibition of the drugs that the addict depends on,
not from the drugs themselves. Eliminate prohibition and these harms
will go as well.

This is not to treat addiction lightly. Even with legal access to
clean drugs and good health care, addiction is a serious burden on
health and relationships. But addiction would not mean, as it so often
does now, squalour, fear, and early death. With the proper
health-care and social programs, individuals and society could cope.
It would not be an overwhelming crisis.

So let's compare the harms of two drug policies: prohibition and
legalization. Prohibition inflicts a horrendous cost, in lives and
suffering and wasted effort, all over the world. And legalization?
Even under the false assumption that it would cause an increase in
drug use, legalization would lead to an increase in casual use,
perhaps accompanied by a rise in addiction: the former would inflict
modest personal and social harms, while the harms of the latter would
be more painful but still manageable.

Which policy causes the least harm? For anyone who looks at the
question intently and honestly, the answer is clear.

A 1998 letter sent to the United Nations by hundreds of statesmen,
Nobel laureates, and drug experts put the answer bluntly: "We believe
that the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse
itself."

That's a conclusion that more and more public health experts,
researchers, and even politicians are coming to as well.

"The criminalization of drug use does not achieve the goals it aims
for," said Dr. David Roy of the University of Montreal when he and
others released a major report in 1999 looking at drug use and AIDS.
"It causes harms equal to or worse than those it is supposed to prevent."

In 1933, Americans came to exactly that conclusion about the attempt
to ban alcohol. They remembered the real harms done by alcohol before
it was banned in 1920. But they also saw those harms weren't nearly
as terrible as the damage done by Prohibition itself. Being able to
contrast the two situations, Americans decided to legalize alcohol.

We can't draw on personal memory as Americans did in 1933, but we can
look carefully at the evidence. It's a difficult task.

It may mean uprooting comfortable assumptions and old ways off
thinking. But so many have needlessly suffered and died. More will
follow. Surely we owe them at least the willingness to try.