Jail drug smugglers for 25 years with no parole, urges Dosanjh: B.C.'s
attorney general says it's time to `get tougher' and will raise the
issue with other provinces.

B.C.'s chief law-enforcement officer hopes to convince the rest of
Canada that stronger jail terms are needed for people who import and
traffic in drugs.

While the nation's lawyers argue that the criminalization of drugs
hasn't stopped their use, AttorneyGeneral Ujjal Dosanjh says he's
putting his counterparts in other provinces on notice that he will
seek 25year prison sentences, without parole, for anyone including
firsttime offenders nabbed smuggling any illegal substance.
Traffickers would get 10 years for a first offence, and life for a
second. There will be a meeting of attorneysgeneral deputy ministers
next month

``I think that it's important, if we are to deal with the crime in
this province, we have to get tougher with the smugglers,'' Dosanjh
said Sunday. His comments were spurred by a meeting with Vancouver
Mayor Philip Owen, who has complained that drugassociated crime is
escalating and making life miserable in the city.

Dosanjh said he will raise the question of increasing penalties for
traffickers and smugglers at a meeting of provincial attorneysgeneral
next year. He said penalties for simple possession of drugs should not
be increased, and that addiction and detoxification resources should
be expanded.

``We have to treat violent and serious offenders in a tough way while
we're trying to deal with offenders who don't pose a risk to society
in ways that are conducive to their reentry to society so they're
less a burden on our resources,'' he said.

Canada's drug laws are controlled by the federal government in
Parliament, and Dosanjh said it would be up to the federal justice
minister to lead a debate over changes to the law. Some critics of the
current law say this country should decriminalize some or all
drugs, and Dosanjh said he is ``not puritanical at all about these
issues. If we're going to deal with that, we require a national debate
... I would not be leading that debate.''

The Canadian Bar Association, the organization that represents the
nation's lawyers, says Canada's current laws already place too much of
a strain on society. A submission by the association's Criminal
Justice Section last year during hearings into changes to Canada's
drug laws said that ``the criminalization approach to drug control has
proven ineffective for decreasing drug use.''

Longer jail terms, the report said, ``places additional stress on an
already overburdened criminal justice system, and draws resources away
from criminal activities demanding more urgent attention.''

The lawyers say society should focus on health, drug prevention and
treatment, ``while simultaneously minimizing the use of incarceration
for drug offences that cause no evident harm to persons other than the
user.

Criminalization is the solution only when drug use causes harm to
others, or to society in general, and when such harm is claimed, it
should be demonstrable by cogent evidence, bearing in mind the liberty
interests at stake.''

As early as 1978, the Canadian Bar Association adopted a policy
statement that the possession and cultivation of marijuana for an
individual's own use, and the nonprofit transfer of small amounts of
the drug between adults, should be decriminalized.''

In 1974, the association passed a resolution stating that the
``controlled medical distribution of heroin to addicts by approved
institutions'' and a system of heroin maintenance be undertaken as a
realistic method of diversion of drug addicts from the criminal
justice system.''

Serge Brochue, an associate professor at the school of criminology at
the University of Montreal, prepared a paper for an international
symposium on the social and economic costs of substance abuse in 1995.
While violent crime is present in the drug world, Brochue found there
is no evidence to prove that the violence is related to the
pharmacological properties of the consumed products.

``Drug users are forced into the criminal subculture because laws make
them criminals and force them to deal with other criminals, much as
prohibition did with alcohol users,'' he wrote in his paper, published
in French. Some violent crimes are associated with the high cost and
profit associated with illicit drugs, rather than the drugs
themselves, Brochue said.

And while some addicts commit robberies and use the money to buy
drugs, there is evidence to suggest they were committing property
offences before becoming addicted, he said.

Neil Boyd, a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University, said in
an earlier interview that the current criminal strategy is a
``failure.''

He said consumption of tobacco, a legal drug, has dropped from being
used by about 50 per cent of the population to about 25 per cent, not
because cigarettes were made illegal, but because of successful
education campaigns about the dangers of smoking.

``I think that we should try to treat it as a public health problem
... to try to reduce violence in our culture,'' he said.