AN OPEN LETTER TO THE NEXT LEADER PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA

Prime Minister:

Canada's current drug strategy is bankrupt. Anyone familiar with history
would have recognized that drug prohibition could not work for the same
reasons -- and with the same deleterious consequences -- as prohibition of
alcohol. After nearly 25 years of a "war on drugs" we have more drugs, not
less; we have drugs of greater purity and many more sources of supply than
we had only 10 years ago. Furthermore we now have an epidemic of HIV
infection in our major cities that is a direct consequence of
prohibitionist social engineering.

Police crackdowns simply multiply sources of supply and only temporarily
drive up costs. Drug prohibition, just like alcohol prohibition, has fueled
a powerful underground economy presided over by some of the most
violent-prone individuals in our society whose enormous profits --
guaranteed by prohibition -- are directly subsidized by taxpayers. Yet even
the most dramatic evidence of failure (more drugs, better quality) only
encourages prohibitionists to demand more police, more draconian laws, more
non-violent people in jail. From the standpoint of prohibition, nothing
succeeds like failure.

Only Canada and the US have refused to apply a calm cost-benefit analysis
to their drug policies. Europe, Australia and New Zealand are slowly
awakening from this nightmare -- albeit in the teeth of US resistance.
Canada can lead the US, which is deeply implicated in the prohibitionist
death-grip, out of irrationality and into sanity and humane public policy.

Here's my proposal for your "first hundred days" regarding the so-called
"war on drugs":

Phase 1: Win a general election, of course, preferably with a sizable
majority.

Phase 2: Visit the US president as soon as politically possible -- make no
mention (or as little as possible or only in the strictest confidence if
you have his trust) of the so-called "war on drugs". The US is also looking
for a way to de-escalate but is stymied by the entrenched interests of
prohibition, on the right, and the stranglehold of drugs-mythology in the
public generally. US leaders know that their drug policy is in the same
dead-end situation, but are terrified -- having painted themselves into a
corner -- of now appearing to be soft on drugs and crime. Currently there
is no escape but more of the same, irrespective of the demonstrated failure
of the last 25 years to either stem the tide of drugs coming into the
country or reduce demand within their population.

Phase 3: Announce in your first Speech from the Throne that you are
declaring victory in the war on drugs, and will immediately implement
federally-funded medicalization and harm reduction strategies -- as experts
on social and drug policy around the world have been advocating for years.
Don't leave it to the provinces because they are weak-willed and too easily
captured by ultra-conservative interests. Withdraw from international
treaties that restrict your freedom of action in this regard -- do not be
bullied into passivity by US congressional pressure that Canada persist in
a futile strategy. Use the advantage of surprise to catch your opponents
flat-footed. Then move quickly to implement.

Phase 4: You have now captured the high ground, both morally and from the
standpoint of rational public policy. The opposition (domestic but
particularly US) will be ferocious -- all the more important that it be
done early so that you can reap the rewards (lower crime, reduced influence
of criminal gangs, arrested rate of spread of HIV) before your first
mandate expires. It is quite possible that were Canada not so
geographically close to the US we might have made some fundamental changes
years ago, as LeDain and others urged and as Australia and New Zealand are
currently doing. The time is now. One must not make bold changes in public
policy in a half-hearted manner but with great and imaginitive leaps across
political divides. This means coming clean with the Canadian people.

Great leaders are seldom recognized for what they do in their time but
because of what they set in motion. Only the US and Canada among the
industrialized economies are still entrapped in the prohibitionist black
hole that affords no solution but more prisons, more cops and more social
damage and continued ignorance of the real issues. Our European allies and
trading partners are extracting themselves from unworkable policies, having
finally taken account of the enormous unintended consequences of a policy
that did not and could not work.

Prohibition is futile and counterproductive and no one even knows how
wasteful and destructive because many of the costs are hidden, particularly
in the loss to social productivity of people with criminal records who may
have been non-violent offenders when they were first incarcerated.

Holland and Switzerland are leading the world on drug policy. There is a
lot of information that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (and the
RCMP too) would probably you rather not know about the success of their
programs for the health of drug users, the slowed rate of HIV infection,
and the drop in user-related crime, the ability of ordinary people to hold
jobs and be productive members of their communities while maintaining their
heroin addiction. They have proven that, compared to drug prohibition, drug
use itself is a small and comparably manageable social problem once
pragmatic considerations displace black and white moral declarations.
Prohibition gives incentives to all the wrong political actors and cannot
deliver under any circumstances short of totalitarian rule.

The strategy demands a leader with vision and conviction: the short term
rewards will be small, the long term rewards will only materialize if this
strategy is accompanied by a vigorous education campaign. Your predecessors
have invested a lot of political capital in the mythology of drugs and drug
use -- so you will have a lot of damage to undo. But you have powerful
allies too, in places like the Addiction Research Foundation and in the
experience of other countries where pragmatic approaches to the drug
problem were from the outset preferred over hysteria.

If, after three or four years, you are not rewarded with a dramatic drop in
drug-related crime, a more tolerant (because informed) public opinion about
the drugs-crime nexus, fewer young people being destroyed by a criminal
justice system that is compelled to do what it knows is wrong and
counteproductive, you can always reverse yourself and return to the status
quo ante.

I see very little likelihood of your having to reverse course.

You can put Canada on the international map. You can give the United States
a face-saving way to wind down their own insane drug strategy and you can
reverse 80-odd years of bad, racist and counter-productive public policy.

It is not risk free: The opposition from the usual quarters will be
ferocious. But it is the right thing to do.

I hope that you're enough of a visionary to consider some version of this
strategy. I, and many other reformers and progressives, could vote for such
a leader.

Sincerely, Craig Jones

Craig Jones holds a Ph.D. in politics from Queen's University and is
currently preparing a book on Canada's experience with drug prohibition
tentatively entitled "Democracy, Power and Marijuana: The Unintended
Consequences of Prohibition in Canada."
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Checked-by: Richard Lake