ONTARIO COURT
(GENERAL DIVISION)
(Southwest Region)

BETWEEN:

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN
Respondent

-and-

CHRISTOPHER CLAY
Applicant

AFFIDAVIT OF BRUCE ALEXANDER

I, Bruce Alexander, of the City of Vancouver, in the Province of British
Columbia, MAKE OATH AND SAY AS FOLLOWS:

1. I am a professor of psychology at Simon Fraser University. I have
specialized in the study of drug addiction and drug use, and I have been
doing research in this area since 1970. Attached hereto as Exhibit "A" is a
true copy of my curriculum vitae.

2. In 1990, I published a book on the implications of the war on drugs and
the myths and realities of illicit drug consumption. It is called Peaceful
Measures: Canada's Way Out of the War on Drugs (University of Toronto
Press: 1990). My book has been favourably reviewed by many scientific and
medical journals, as well as other media reviewers.

3. I have done many psychological studies on the attitudes and behaviour of
"addicts". I have also done clinical research on the impact of heroin
addiction on the families of heroin users. My other studies include
psychological research on the attitudes of people towards drug issues and
psycho-pharmacological research on rats who have been administered drugs in
a laboratory setting.

4. I believe, based on an extensive review of the historical record, that
Canada's legislative efforts to control narcotics consumption, including
cannabis, are the result of ill-founded policy decisions made in the
mid-nineteenth century. These policies were based on racism, temperance
agitation, and a developing state ideology designed to scapegoat drugs as
the cause of social problems. In current times, the criminal approach to
narcotics control has been rationalized by health, moral and economic
concerns. However, with respect to marijuana, these concerns have as little
evidentiary support as did the racial and moralistic justifications which
informed the policy decisions of a century ago. Furthermore, the "war"
analogy adopted with respect to narcotics control has become a
self-fulfilling prophecy: society's efforts to control drugs have focused
on war-like measures rather than ordinary forms of social control. As with
any war, one of the results of the war on drugs is the dissemination of a
great deal of misinformation in the form of propaganda.

5. The repressive nature of the narcotics control regime in Canada exists
along the following dimensions: 1) those responsible for Canada's drug
policy employ "war" terminology; 2) violent imagery in the media is used to
portray drug users and traffickers as deranged or depraved (and, thus,
deserving of their often violent fate); 3) Canada's drug laws are enforced
through extraordinary powers of search and seizure in drug cases, such as
under section 10 of the Narcotics Control Act (with an accompanying liberal
interpretation of this section by the courts); 4) instances of illegal
police violence against drug users or those thought to be drug users; 5)
the use of informants as agents provocateurs to entice people into
committing crimes is almost exclusively used in the field of narcotics control.

6. The extreme measures adopted as part of Canada's drug war policy create
several categories of unintended victimization. First, recreational drug
users are subject to arrest and prosecution for simple possession,
notwithstanding the fact that they have committed no crime other than
partaking in the consumption of a prohibited substance. As a result, these
recreational users are stigmatized, incarcerated, and ostracized; this, in
turn, results in the marginalization of many individuals who are
law-abiding citizens save for their propensity to consume illicit drugs. Of
this group, cannabis users form the vast majority of those convicted,
accounting for 93 percent of all convictions of all convictions between
1977 and 1985.

7. Additionally, the nature of the drug trade leads to a form of aggressive
policing which often results in unanticipated violence. In my book,
Peaceful Measures: Canada's Way Out of the War on Drugs, I give examples of
situations in which mere possessors of marijuana are caught up in
aggressive drug raids leading to injury, and on occasion death, to people
who were simply engaged in consumption and possession of marijuana. In
light of the violence which is inherent in drug law enforcement, the police
may also end up being casualties of the war on drugs. In light of the
tactics apparently needed to fight this war, those officers participating
in the war are often required to lie, deceive, and brutalize drug users.
Professor Jerome Skolnick has concluded "the systematic structure of
narcotics enforcement.. will eventually result in police corruption". This
relationship between narcotics law enforcement and police corruption is
outlined in research conducted by J.H. Skolnik and by M. Girado. Attached
hereto as Exhibit "B" is a copy of the 1984 article authored by J. H.
Skolnik, The Limits of Narcotic Law Enforcement (1984), 16 Journal of
Psychoactive Drugs 119. Attached hereto as Exhibit "C" is a copy of the
1984 article authored by M. Girado, Entry and Re-entry Strain in Undercover
Agents, in V.L. Allen and E. Van de Vliet, eds., Role Transitions (New
York: Plenum, 1984)

8. Further, persons suffering from serious diseases are also victimized;
the drug war ideology places enormous restrictions on the medical
application of narcotics in situations where the drug could relieve
suffering. It has become increasingly apparent (and accepted in the
scientific community) that cannabis serves a number of valuable medical and
therapeutic purposes. The prohibitionist policy of the government has made
it virtually impossible for AIDS patients, cancer patients and glaucoma
patients to obtain cannabis for legitimate medical purposes.

9. Finally, children may also be subject to the incidental and unintended
victimization created by a war on drugs. Drug war rhetoric serves as an
easy scapegoat for youth problems. Rather than looking at the real causes
of the problems that many young people face, society can, and does,
simplistically blame drugs. Blaming cannabis and other drugs for the
problems of today's youth only serves to deflect attention away from other
significant factors which must be addressed with respect to high-school
drop-out rates, teenage pregnancy and youth violence. In addition, once
young persons discover the misinformation and overstatement of the dangers
of cannabis consumption, it invariably leads to skepticism and suspicion
about governmental and parental claims about the risks and harm of other,
more dangerous, illicit drugs.

10. It has become increasingly difficult to justify the excesses of the war
on drugs in light of the fact that there does not appear to be a direct
relationship between a prohibitory policy and a reduction in illicit drug
consumption. With respect to the claim that criminal sanctions are the only
method of reducing illicit drug consumption, it appears that where
"decriminalization" of small scale cannabis possession (in eleven U.S.
states and the Netherlands) has occurred, there has been no measurable
increase in use. Indeed, the data for the Netherlands suggests that there
has been a decrease in consumption since de facto decriminalization in the
1970s. For example, in 1976, 10 percent of Dutch youth reported having used
cannabis at least once in their lives; whereas in 1983, after de facto
decriminalization, only 6 percent reported having used cannabis once in
their lives. In the eleven U.S states which have decriminalized small scale
possession and use, several studies have concluded that repeal has had no
discernible effect on the number of users or on their frequency of use.
Furthermore, given that the most dramatic growth in cannabis consumption in
Canada occurred after the most severe penalties were enacted in 1961. The
Narcotic Control Act seems to have had little, or no, deterrent effect.
Consequently, increased cannabis consumption (a result of the cultural
shift in the l960s) does not seemed to be affected by either
criminalization or decriminalization and is instead tied to other social
correlates, such as group differentiation or social identification.
Attached hereto as Exhibit "D", (1991) Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse,
which analyses the rates of marijuana use after "decriminalization" in
several U.S. states. Attached hereto as Exhibit "E" is a copy of the
article by 0. Holthuis, Institutional Tolerance of Marijuana in Holland:
Quasi-Legal Soft Drugs Reduce Hard Drug Crime 91987) Whole Earth Review,
Spring: 54, in which the author discussed the impact of decriminalization
on consumption rates in Holland.

11. It is my opinion, based upon research I have conducted over the last 20
years, that cannabis is not physically addictive. This is an opinion widely
held within the scientific and medical community. Attached hereto as
Exhibit "F" is a copy of my article, Drug use, Dependence and Addiction in
British Columbia University Students (1985) 15 Canadian Journal of Higher
Education 13, in which it is demonstrated that although 85% of the sample
of university students had used marijuana, only 1.9% were daily users who
could be regarded as dependent but not addicted. This figure of 1.9% being
daily users of cannabis was far below the sample group' compulsive use rate
for caffeine and nicotine, which was discovered to be 21.4% and 19.6%
respectively.

12. In addition, I believe that cannabis is not psychologically addictive,
although there does exist a difference of scientific opinion with respect
to this proposition. In my opinion, the agency for psychological addiction
is misplaced if it is placed on drug rather than on the person and on the
personal characteristics which lead to substance abuse. In other words, the
dispositional features of the user, rather then the intrinsic qualities of
the drug, are responsible for addictive behavior. In the same way some
joggers may be psychologically addicted to their daily routine of jogging,
it would be illogical and misleading to ascribe addictive qualities to
jogging as opposed to focusing on the dispositional features of the jogger.

13. I have conducted two published studies on Coroner's data with respect
to overdose deaths in British Columbia, and I have not found a single
instance of death attributed to cannabis. I have, however, found numerous
deaths attributable to other drugs including heroin, cocaine and alcohol.
Attached hereto as Exhibit "G" is a copy of the 1988 article authored by
T.M. MacInnes, B.l. Beyerstein and myself, Methadone and addict mortality:
30 British Columbia Medical Journal (1988) 160. Attached hereto as Exhibit
"H" is a copy of the 1991 article authored by L.S. Wong, and myself,
Cocaine-related deaths: Media coverage in the War on Drugs 21 Journal of
Drugs Issues 105. These articles outline my research into overdose deaths
as chronicled in the corner's reports. In addition, I have been informed
and do verily believe that the Canada Centere on Substance Abuse released a
report, The Costs of Substance Abuse in Canada, in which lists drug-related
deaths for 1992. In that study, we find that there were no deaths
attributable to cannabis abuse or dependence, whereas there were 24 deaths
attributable to opiate abuse or dependency, and 10 deaths attributable to
cocaine abuse or dependence.

13. I have made first-hand observations of drug consuming subcultures in
British Columbia intermittently since the mid-1970s. Some of my research
concerning cocaine consumption has been indulged in a recent report
released by the World Health Organization. My observations of the marijuana
subculture includes visits to some of the new "hemp shops" in Vancouver,
where consumption of marijuana is essentially open to the public and
usually tolerated by the police. Marijuana consumption is such settings
typically leads to passive, subdued behavior. I have seen no instances
where it has led to aggressive criminal activity. The assertion that
marijuana use is not criminogenic was the precise conclusion reached in
1972 by the Commission of Inquiry into the Non-medical Use of Drugs (the
LeDain Commission) in their report Cannabis: A report of the Commission of
Inquiry into the Non-medical Use of Drugs (1972).

Sworn before me at the )
City of Burnaby in the )
Province of British )
Columbia, this 25th )
day of March, 1977. )
Bruce
Alexander