CALL OFF THE WAR ON DRUGS

Does anyone remember Gerald LeDain?

He created more stir in this country in his time than most would ever
do. He was a Supreme Court of Canada justice and the author of what
became known popularly as the LeDain Commission Report on the
non-medical use of drugs in Canada, In simple terms, it stated there
was no evidence that the moderate use of moderate amounts of
marijuana harmed anyone's health, was addictive, led to crime or to
the use of more potent drugs. On the other hand, apart from the
obvious and significant financial cost, the prohibition of the use of
marijuana entailed extraordinary means of enforcement that has the
potential of leading to corruption and brutality.

It suggested that enforcement costs might be better spent elsewhere.
It urged the feds to repeal possession laws and let people grow their
own supply for personal use. And guess what came of the report....
Nothing. I am sure no one is surprised.

At about the time the report was published (1972) the Mounties, in
their eagerness to protect us from evil, used to sit in rented
second-floor rooms at busy downtown intersections. They would spy on
kids on the street corners peddling pot to each other.

They caught dozens, if not hundreds, in this way and charged them
under the Narcotic Control Act. When you went down to headquarters to
speak to the police they showed you all the caught-dead-to-rights
photos of kids exchanging drugs, for money. The poor kids didn't
stand a chance. The best that hapless defence counsel could do was
stumble, mumble and throw him/herself on the mercy of the court.

It was an exercise in bullying, if not persecution. The Mounties had
their operation down pat and the youngsters were out-gunned from the
get go. Lambs to the slaughter. And we in the (mostly unpaid) defence
bar became effectively part of the system. We knew the kids were
being singled out. We knew that no one older than 30 was ever
prosecuted and we knew that no one from the Union Club in Saint John
or its equivalents elsewhere was ever going to be charged. It was
class war right under our very noses, and there wasn't a thing we
could do about it. I suppose the defence bar was making a living out
of it, too. Unwittingly, we were part of the system.

Besides, it played perfectly to the self-righteous middle class
prejudices of the time. The judges didn't think twice about it - at
least, not until their own kids and their friends' kids started to be
picked up. Then the logic of the self-righteous came home to roost.
The more successful the police operations, the more "nice kids" were
caught in the dragnet.

If the Mounties thought this was going to solve the problem (however
they might define it), they were wrong. It went from bad to worse for
them. No judge in the land was going to imprison a nice middle class
youngster for having a joint in his possession; penalties went down
and use went up. The police actions produced exactly the opposite of
what they wanted. And the pattern, in roughly those terms, continues.

The historical record of prohibition has been abysmal. Think alcohol.
It simply doesn't work, yet we persist in using it as our model. The
definition of madness is when you repeat the same behaviour over and
over again and expect a different outcome each time. That is
precisely what we have been doing in our war on drugs.

The arguments against prohibition are old and oft repeated, but we
keep forgetting - or at least the prohibition people do. Do we try to
regulate mountaineering, scuba diving and rock-climbing... to say
nothing of rugby or hockey? They are more dangerous than many illegal
drugs. We discourage smoking and obesity, but we don't make them illegal.

The Late Chief Judge Hazen Strange of the N.B. provincial court used
to complain that alcohol-related offences made up about 40 per cent
of his case load. You would think people could be educated off
alcohol, but we make little or no attempt to do so. And we set an
atrocious example. Our idea of a good time is to get drunk out of our minds.

But there have been improvements for all that. It's not a straight
line graph any longer. Drug epidemics come and go, as, for example,
with heroin and crack. And statistics for drug use have become fairly
stable. It will be a long time before we can overcome the urge to
tell people what's good for them. But surely it is time to recognize
that the costs of enforcing drug prohibition are too high, no matter
what we choose to include as a cost.

We have a particular problem here in Canada. The States would
probably send in the Marines if we tried to legalize drugs. But even
they are coming to the realization that the whole idea of a war on
drugs simply isn't working and probably never has.

There is a comparatively progressive incumbent in the White House.
It's an opening and we should take it. It's time for a re-think.