DRUG POLICY REFORM CANADA SHOULDN'T FOLLOW U.S. MODEL

"So you want to legalize drugs, right?"

That's the first question I'm typically asked when I start talking about
drug policy reform. My short answer is, marijuana, maybe. But I'm not
suggesting we make heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine available the way we
do alcohol and cigarettes.

What am I recommending? Here's the long answer: Don't follow blindly in the
footsteps of the U.S. government when it pushes its zero tolerance rhetoric
and policies. Forget the illusory goal of a drug-free society. Accept that
drug use is here to stay, and that we have no choice but to learn to live
with drugs so they cause the least possible harm and the greatest possible
benefit. More specifically, I'm recommending that:

Responsible doctors be allowed and encouraged to prescribe whatever drugs
work best, notwithstanding the feared and demonized status of some drugs in
the eyes of the ignorant and the law.

People not be incarcerated for possessing small amounts of any drug for
personal use. But also that people who put their fellow citizens at risk by
driving while impaired be treated strictly and punished accordingly.

Those who sell drugs to other adults not be treated by our criminal laws as
the moral equivalents of violent and other predatory criminals.

Marijuana be decriminalized, taxed and regulated, even as we step up our
efforts to provide honest and effective drug education rather than
feel-good programs like DARE.

Top priority be given to public health policies proved to reduce the death,
disease, crime and suffering associated with injection drug use and heroin
addiction - in other words, expanded methadone maintenance treatment,
heroin maintenance trials, ready access to sterile syringes and other
harm-reduction policies that have proved effective abroad and that can work
just as well here.

These beliefs, represent a call for a fundamentally different drug policy.
It's not legalization, but it's also not simply a matter of spending more
on treatment and prevention and less on interdiction and enforcement.
Canadians are a step ahead of Americans when it comes to adopting harm
reduction policies and reasonable reforms regarding medical marijuana and
hemp, but mostly Canada continues to mimic the prohibitionist follies of my
country.

The fact is, there is no drug legalization movement in Canada or the United
States. What there is is a nascent political and social movement for drug
policy reform. It consists of the growing number of citizens who have been
victimized, in one way or another, by the drug war, and who now believe
that our current drug policies are doing more harm than good.

It might be the judge who is required by inflexible, mandatory minimum
sentencing laws to send a drug addict, or small-time dealer, or dealer's
girlfriend, or Third World drug courier, to prison for longer than many
rapists and murderers serve.

Or the nurse in the oncology or AIDS unit obliged to look the other way
while a patient wracked with pain or nausea smokes marijuana.

Or the doctor who fears to prescribe medically appropriate doses of opiate
analgesics to a patient in pain because any variations from the norm bring
unfriendly scrutiny from government agents and state medical boards.

Or the employee with an outstanding record who fails a drug test on Monday
morning because she shared a joint with her husband over the weekend - and
is fired. Or the political conservative who abhors the extraordinary powers
of police and prosecutors to seize private property from citizens who have
not been convicted of violating any laws and who worries about the
corruption inherent in letting law enforcement agencies keep what they seize.

Or the dark-skinned citizen repeatedly stopped by police for "driving while
black" or even "walking while black," never mind "running while black."

Some are victims of the drug war, and some are drug policy reformers, but
most of them don't know it yet. The ones who know they're drug policy
reformers are the ones who connect the dots - the ones who see and
understand the panoply of ways in which our prohibitionist policies are
doing more harm than good.

Most drug policy reformers I know don't want crack or methamphetamine sold
in convenience stores - to paraphrase one of the more pernicious
accusations hurled by U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey.

What we're talking about is a new approach grounded not in the fear,
ignorance, prejudice and vested pecuniary and institutional interests that
drive current policies, but rather one grounded in common sense, science,
public health and human rights.

That's true drug policy reform.