THE WRONG MESSAGE

Losing the war on drugs

Politicians love to brush off uncomfortable issues with a clever sound
bite. Toss out the right line and you can walk away whistling.

Few issues are as uncomfortable for Canadian politicians as the subject of
illegal drugs, and few questions harder to answer than "why is prohibition a
better policy than legalization?" So politicians use a standard brush-off
line: If drugs were legalized, that would mean the government approved of
drug use. And that would be "the wrong message."

It's a great spin line, but it's both stupid and offensive. It deliberately
ignores the reality of governance in a liberal society. In no other area
would anyone suggest that by permitting an activity, the government actively
endorses and supports it.

Some theocracies punish adultery as a crime. Canada's government does not.
Does that mean the Canadian government endorses adultery? Is our government
"sending the wrong message" because this act goes unpunished?

Consider suicide. It was once a crime in Canada for a person to attempt to
kill himself. That law was scrapped. When the government legalized suicide,
did it "send the message" that it wanted Canadians to give suicide a try?

It would be absurd to say so, bizarre to think it. Yet this is exactly the
logic politicians routinely use to dismiss calls for any form of drug
legalization.

But it's particularly offensive because there really is a "wrong message"
being sent. These same politicians are sending it, every day that the
government tells us what drugs we may or may not consume.

Like other Western nations, Canada is, in the broadest and oldest sense, a
liberal society. The state will not dictate the "correct" way to live. We
are free to make decisions about our own lives, no matter how different our
choices may be from those of our neighbours. This is what allows a Christian
to live in peace with a Jew, Muslim, or atheist. It is what allows French to
live with English, yuppie with slacker, vegetarian interior decorator with
aboriginal subsistence hunter. Diversity and tolerance are rare things in
human history, and must be cherished.

To cherish them, we must understand what supports them. The 19th-century
philosopher J. S. Mill identified what that is and called it "the harm
principle." It is the idea that people should be free to do what they choose
provided their actions don't harm others. No government has the moral right
to forbid our private choices, or force its choices on us.

Drug prohibition is a direct violation of the "harm principle." By
criminalizing drugs, governments say that we are, in fact, children who can
be told not to touch things the state deems bad for us. Governments can
respect the harm principle by restricting a person's drug use only when it
risks harming someone else: Alcohol, for example, is legal to possess and
use, but driving under its influence is not. That, however, is not what drug
prohibition does. Prohibition bans everything -- even smoking a joint in
your own bedroom with the blinds drawn.

In doing so, prohibition "sends a message." It says, bluntly, that
government can decide what is best for you and punish you if you disagree.

Abraham Lincoln found that message intolerable. In his era, all drugs were
legal but there were calls to criminalize alcohol. Lincoln was offended.
"Prohibition," he said, "goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it
attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out
of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very
principles upon which our government was founded." (And Canada's government,
too, we might add.)

The principles of freedom are the same now as they were in the days of
Lincoln, Mill and the Fathers of Confederation. So too is the offensive
statement governments make about freedom when they forbid adults from
deciding for themselves what to consume. That's the real "wrong message"
we're hearing about drugs. Anything else is a brush-off line from a
politician who just wants to walk away whistling.