GLOBAL ANTI-NARCOTICS STRATEGY ON AGENDA

Profit from Canadian consumption 'destabilizes' poorer nations, report says

Canada's role in the global illicit drug trade helps destabilize other
nations, said an independent analyst, so it's fitting it is hosting a
34-country meeting that will attempt to build an international
anti-narcotics strategy.

Anti-drug experts from the member nations of the Organization of American
States begin a three-day gathering today in Ottawa. The meeting's goal is to
establish a multilateral evaluation mechanism, which will be a standard tool
for measuring how each member country is faring in its battle on drugs. The
evaluation will cover such areas as seizures, money-laundering and
intelligence-sharing.

Developing any intelligence-sharing forum is useful, said John Thompson,
director of the Toronto-based Mackenzie Institute, an independent agency
which analyses the causes of political instability.

But Mr. Thompson said the Canadian and U.S. drug consumer markets generate
profits that commonly flow to insurgent groups that destabilize or corrupt
the governments of other nations.

"And in some respects, the narcotics industry is greater than some nations,"
Mr. Thompson said. That creates a risk that the new international vehicle
will receive tainted or unreliable information.

"This (new strategy) will still be very useful. But unless we address those
current limitations, it is still going to be an uphill fight."

The federal government acknowledges the challenge, said Jean Fournier,
Canada's deputy solicitor general, and chair of the working group of the
OAS's Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission, which is spearheading
the drive for the new strategy.

"It is the end of fingerpointing," Mr. Fournier said in an interview
yesterday. It means the end of consumer, producer and transit-point
countries blaming each other for the illicit drug trade, he maintained.

He said the new strategy is not about blacklisting, or compiling lists for
sanctions, but about gauging the depth of the problem and assessing the
effectiveness of what different countries are doing to combat the drug
trade.

"All countries have finally now come to the point of realizing that we're
all in this together, and fingerpointing and blaming and sanctioning and
those sort of unilateral approaches won't get us anywhere," Mr. Fournier
said.

As for obtaining reliable data from member countries, Mr. Fournier said the
strategy will ensure "everyone plays by the same rules."

The meeting includes representatives of Columbia and other Latin American
countries that are among the major international suppliers of illicit drugs.
But Canada, far from being simply a consumer of illicit drugs, is also a
significant producer.

The U.S., in the CIA's World Factbook (1998), cites Canada as being an
"illicit producer of cannabis for the domestic drug market" and says its
"use of hydroponics technology permits growers to plant large quantities of
high-quality marijuana indoors." It also says that Canada is playing a
"growing role as a transit point for heroin and cocaine entering the U.S.
market."

Mr. Fournier acknowledges that Canada has an estimated $10-billion illicit
domestic drug market. "All countries of the Americas are producers,
consumers and transit countries," he adds.