IGNATIEFF 'S GATEWAY TO THE STATUS QUO

Remember when the pundits were begging the oratorically inept Stephane
Dion, and then the equanimous professor Michael Ignatieff, to take a page
out of Senator-cum-President Barack Obama's playbook and inspire Canadians
to quiet revolution? It never made a heck of a lot of sense, and we've
heard less and less of it since Mr. Obama began grappling with the cold,
greasy realities of Washington. This week's starboard lurch in
Massachusetts is probably the death of it. "Mr. Ignatieff has been around
long enough for Canadians to know he's not going to excite them," sighed
Jeffrey Simpson in The Globe and Mail this week. "The issue, then, is
whether he can intrigue them -- not by his persona but by his ideas."

Ironically enough, Mr. Ignatieff's recent appearances reveal one notable
policy intersection between him and Mr. Obama: status quo, relatively
speaking, on the war on drugs. Back in March, during the radiant new
President's "online town hall," he played a serious question about
legalizing and regulating marijuana for cheap laughs. While not very
hopeful or changeful, the takeaway message was at least coherent: Get a
job, you bunch of useless hippies.

Then there's our Liberal leader. According to blogger Adrian MacNair,
earlier this month at a stop at the University of British Columbia, Mr.
Ignatieff was asked about Ross Rebagliati's nomination to run for the
Grits in the B.C. interior. In response, he opined that other people's
habits were none of his business; that "possession of small amounts of
marijuana" shouldn't be a criminal matter -- which it is, of course; that
"nobody should suffer consequences for personal recreational uses of
marijuana"; and that if someone was to ask him if he wanted to legalize
it, he'd "say no."

This baffles me. Mr. Ignatieff's nascent pot policy, not unlike his
Liberal forbears', seems to involve driving up the demand through
decriminalization whilst cracking down on its supply, and hoping that
somehow -- perhaps through witchcraft? -- this would not drive up the
price and encourage more criminals to get into the racket.

It's true that the penalties for simple possession would be less serious.
But enforcement of marijuana laws increases under decriminalization
schemes, because cops needn't impose the sort of "personal consequences"
that disqualify people from international travel and all but the smelliest
and most humiliating careers. Are whopping fines not also significant
"personal consequences"? If Mr. Rebagliati is good enough for the Liberals
and (theoretically) the people of Okanagan--Coquihala, why should other
Canadians be punished for partaking of his high of choice?

Moving on from the gateway drugs, Mr. Ignatieff has stood foursquare
behind Insite, the safe injection site in Vancouver that the Conservative
government wants shuttered. "On that our view is perfectly clear. Harm
reduction policies work," he said at one recent appearance. But woe betide
anyone who would "push drugs" on his watch. "We support tough and, if
necessary, mandatory sentences for those people," he intoned. "You're not
going to get me to be anything other than tough on drugs and tough on drug
crime."

It's all very progressive to support Insite, and all very Liberal to
support getting tough on crime, but drug prohibition plays a huge role in
making Insite necessary in the first place. Pure heroin, properly dosed,
causes drowsiness and constipation; the sort of impure heroin your average
scumbag dealer provides your average Downtown Eastside wastrel causes ...
well, the Downtown Eastside.

I'm not sure by any means that legalizing hard drugs would improve
Canada's drug problem, and I wouldn't want to be the politician who tried
to sell such a policy to his party or to the public. But the current
approach, this war on drugs, demonstrably doesn't work. Not even a bit. It
is, in Conrad Black's memorable phrase, a "corrupt, sociopathic fraud." I
know it, and I suspect Mr. Ignatieff knows it too. That he would spout
such painfully conventional thinking on university campuses does not bode
well for the bold, intriguing new ideas people like Jeffrey Simpson, and
me, want to see on the campaign trail.