DRUGS AND THE LAW

Reform is long overdue. It's high time Canada enacted drug law reform,
argues a professor at Simon Fraser University.

It is just over 25 years since the LeDain Commission presented its final
report to Canada's Parliament. For those of us who have advocated drug law
reform for the past generation this represents yet another opportunity to
lament how little attention has been paid to the report and how little
current practices have changed -- marijuana users are occasionally still
sent to jail for their crimes; heroin users have yet to see the kinds of
trial maintenance programs first advocated in December 1973.

But it would be wrong to suggest that little has changed in the past
generation. Start with our greatest success in the war against drugs --
tobacco. In 1968, half of all adults in Canada smoked cigarettes: in 1998
only 25 per cent of Canadians are tobacco-dependent. The combination of
aggressive public education and non-smokers' rights initiatives have
eliminated tobacco from our workplaces, our airlines and schools.

We have also made strides with respect to alcohol abuse. Consumption of
alcohol per capita has declined since the mid-1970s, along with deaths from
impaired driving. My generation saw no great harm in adolescent drinking and
driving as we came of age; the generation that I teach today is, for the
most part, more responsible, cautious and sensible than we ever were. They
also drive automobiles with lap and shoulder belts, more pliable dashboards
and ABS brakes.

And what of the illegal drugs? Even here there has been change, if not in
law, certainly in police and judicial practices. In 1973 police regarded
marijuana possession as a very serious crime, typically deserving of
unpleasant treatment. Users were regarded as pariahs and those convicted
risked jail terms for their consumption. In 1998, thanks to the
contributions of the LeDain Commission and many others, we now have judicial
judgments that recognize that the dangers of cannabis pale in contrast to
those of tobacco and alcohol.

At the same time, however, we have shed the blinkered view that marijuana is
entirely benign, a substance that individuals cannot become dependent upon
or suffer any consequences from. Most of us don't have to look very far
afield to find someone who has squandered too much time and energy in a haze
of marijuana smoke.

With cocaine and heroin the picture must seem so much more bleak. In the
last five years we have witnessed hundreds of overdose deaths annually in
Vancouver, the enhanced purity of heroin typically combining with alcohol
abuse to produce unprecedented levels of death among injection drug users.

But even here there are signs of hope. In 1973 heroin users were routinely
imprisoned for their crimes of drug dependence; they were virtually never
regarded as individuals with addictions, who deserved support from the
state's public health apparatus. Rather, they were seen as morally depraved
criminals deserving of punishment, men and women who could be choked to
death if necessary in order to produce the contraband in question.

The injectable use of cocaine and heroin is also confined to a very small
percentage of the population; less than one per cent of Canadians use these
drugs. Cannabis use, while it has become more fashionable in the 1990s, is
still far less prevalent than it was in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

We can best view the past 25 years as an era of progress in relation to
mind-active drugs for two apparently contradictory reasons. First, we have
begun to recognize how serious the problems of drug addiction and drug abuse
are in our society. We have also learned, albeit slowly and often
grudgingly, that the line between legal and illegal drugs is an illusion, at
least in terms of the risk to individual and collective health posed by
mind-active substances.

Second, we have begun to question the social and economic costs of the
manner in which we regulate drugs. If we can reduce the consumption of
dangerous drugs such as tobacco and alcohol with thoughtful regulation and
aggressive education, why not consider the same kinds of strategies for
other drugs?

In the next 25 years we will continue to grapple with these problems. At the
core of the debate is a simple question: Is drug use a criminal law problem
of morality or an issue of public health? In December 1973 Gerald Le Dain
suggested we change how we think about legal and illegal drug use -- that a
model of public health is more compelling. In December 1998 that vision is
far from realized, but we have taken some small but important steps along
the road to a more humane and rational drug policy.

Neil Boyd is a professor of Criminology at Simon Fraser University.

Checked-by: Don Beck