DO THE RIGHT THING

Losing the war on drugs

It's likely that today, somewhere in Canada, one or more people will die
from causes related to illegal drugs. They may overdose. They may take
tainted drugs, or succumb to AIDS contracted by sharing needles. They may be
murdered by drug-dealing gangsters. Whatever the specific cause, people are
going to die today. And tomorrow. And on and on.

As the Citizen has long argued, these lives in most cases will not be taken
by the drugs themselves. Most will be the result of the futile and
destructive policy of drug prohibition. But it doesn't have to happen.
Governments make it happen.

What governments do, they can stop doing. After almost nine decades of
failure and suffering under drug prohibition, what are the prospects for
significant reform of this country's drug policies?

Most Canadians support drug prohibition generally, but don't care for the
gung-ho drug warrior approach that sells so well in the United States.
Majorities of Canadians support medical marijuana, harm reduction measures
such as needle exchanges, and the decriminalization of pot. This shows that
most Canadians are ready to consider modest reforms to the status quo.
That's a start.

Who is prepared to build on that start? The basic argument against
prohibition is by now well understood in public policy circles: Supply gets
to demand no matter how many soldiers and cops we put between them; and in
trying to stop the inevitable, governments breed organized crime, violence,
corruption and a long list of other life-taking harms. More and more
politicians understand this argument and think it is right. So who among
them is prepared to marshal the evidence and present a determined case for
serious reforms?

In an ideal world, we could ask for that leadership from the governing
federal Liberals, but it's not an ideal world. At every turn, the Liberals
have ducked the issue. When they revised Canada's drug laws in the
mid-1990s, they carefully set up the process so that there was no debate
about fundamentals -- which resulted, not surprisingly, in no substantial
reforms. For years, the Liberals refused to even look at medical marijuana
and only moved on the issue, reluctantly, when forced by the courts and
opposition tactics. Not even the horrific death rate among addicts in
Vancouver has drawn the Liberals into serious discussion.

What about Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition? Stockwell Day has garnered
headlines by supporting the decriminalization of marijuana, but the United
Alternative convention that founded the party rejected that policy. The
Alliance has said little else about drugs, and the party's harsh justice and
crime positions do not augur well for rational action. The best we can hope
for from the Alliance is that the party will continue to say nothing about
drugs.

As for the Progressive Conservatives, Joe Clark often argues it is
thoughtfulness and compassion that sets his party apart from the Alliance.
But the Tories' recently released justice policies seem to have been cribbed
from the hanging judges at the Alliance. Let's spend no more time on the
Tories.

There is hope in the form of the NDP. (Yes, we're just as shocked to see
that sentence as you are.) The NDP has passed resolutions favouring the
decriminalization of marijuana and safer injection sites, and Libby Davies,
the NDP MP for the blighted riding of Vancouver East, has pressed for a
heroin maintenance trial project. But most significantly, Alexa McDonough
and several other NDP MPs had the courage to sign a 1998 protest letter to
the United Nations which declared: "We believe that the global war on drugs
is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself." That is the message that
must be thrust into the Canadian political forum.

Will the NDP do that? It hasn't yet. The NDP's statements on drugs are often
sensible, but although many members of the NDP understand that prohibition
needs to be abolished -- not merely tweaked and modified -- they fear to say
so out loud. It sounds so, well, radical. It's much better to push for small
reforms, they think.

But when has the NDP been influential? Only when it dared to say the
unsayable. It took radical ideas such as medicare and pushed them onto the
political agenda. The party took some lumps for doing so but Canadians got
to see genuinely new ideas.

New ideas for drug policy mean risking some hostile press, but for a party
lapsing into invisibility, even bad press would be good press. And more
importantly, it's the right thing to do. The party that prides itself on
being more principled than the others should make real drug policy reform an
issue in the next election.

And if the NDP doesn't? There is one more institution that can challenge the
current, life-taking status quo: the Senate.

Beginning this month, the Senate "Special Committee on Canada's Anti-Drug
Legislation and Policies" will begin a multi-year examination of the problem
of illegal drugs. Thanks especially to the efforts of Senator Pierre-Claude
Nolin, the mandate of the committee is as broad as this enormous subject
demands. The result could be a comprehensive, international review, a
landmark document that would finally put the issue atop the public agenda.

That can happen only if the senators don't pull their punches. We are
confident that a truly open and comprehensive review of drug policy would
reveal that drug prohibition is futile and destructive. Will the committee
members be willing to say so bluntly and publicly? We shall see. Surely it
is the freedom to say what is unpopular but right that is the Senate's very
reason for being.

In the heart of every politician, whether MP or senator, there is an eternal
struggle between the desire to do good and the hunger to do well.
Sometimes, doing what's right risks scorn, even defeat, while that which is
wrong can deliver the cheers of an adoring crowd.

Will ours do what's right and difficult, or will they take the easy path of
the status quo?

That's a decision that this country's politicians will not be able to avoid
for long. Because today, somewhere in Canada, people will die.