CANDID POLICE VOICES MUST BE HEARD IN DRUG DEBATE

Failed enforcement efforts highlight need for new approach to
addiction

Truth is often said to be the first casualty of war, and in many ways
this is true of the war on drugs. There remain critical public health
areas where the gap between scientific evidence and public policy persists.

But this disparity is most evident in the response to illicit drugs --
in Victoria, in Canada and around the world.

For this reason, it is unfortunate that Victoria police Const. David
Bratzer was recently ordered not to share his views at a
city-sponsored forum on drug policy. As a member of Law Enforcement
Against Prohibition, Bratzer is well-positioned to describe how the
war on drugs has resulted in a number of severe, unintended
consequences.

Most importantly, it has created a massive global illicit drug market,
with an estimated annual value of $330 billion. These enormous illegal
revenues are the primary driver of organized crime in B.C. and
threaten the political stability of entire regions, such as Mexico and
Afghanistan.

A related concern is the association between drug prohibition and
violence as organized crime groups try to control these profits. The
recent upsurge in drug-related violence in Mexico occurred immediately
after an escalation in the fight against Mexican drug traffickers. The
recent gun violence on Canada's streets is driven by these same forces.

Paradoxically, despite the U.S. alone spending more than $1 trillion
on law enforcement approaches to drug control, ever-increasing
enforcement expenditures have not prevented the growth of this market.

Instead, a global long-term pattern of falling drug prices and
increasing drug purity and supply has been observed.

Further, according to the World Health Organization's World Mental
Health Survey Initiative, countries with more prohibitive drug
policies do not demonstrate lower levels of drug use than countries
with policies that focus on public-health approaches.

In the U.S., where the war on drugs has been fought most vigorously,
the imprisonment of illicit drug offenders has contributed to the
world's highest incarceration rate. Primarily as a result of drug-law
enforcement, one in eight African-American males in the age group 25
to 29 was incarcerated on any given day in the U.S. in 2007, despite
the fact that ethnic minorities consume illicit drugs at comparable
rates to other subpopulations in the US.

Although the U.S. is now moving away from mandatory minimum sentences,
the Harper government's current proposal for mandatory minimum
sentences for drug offences should help reproduce this pattern in
Canada, with taxpayers footing the bill.

Finally, there is a range of public-health concerns directly stemming
from the war on drugs, chief among them the transmission of HIV among
injection drug users. HIV outbreaks commonly occur in prison and
transmission has been directly linked to policies that priorize law
enforcement over public health. Here again, the taxpayer is the loser,
given that every case of HIV infection leads to an estimated $250,000
in medical expenses.

To date, Canada's law-enforcement community does not have a stellar
track record on speaking out against the expanding societal and fiscal
burden from the war on drugs.

For instance, the Harper government's justification for its efforts to
close the Vancouver supervised injecting facility has been largely
based on purchased "critiques" of the program. Later disclosures
revealed these essays were actually funded by the RCMP and posted on a
website hosted by the conservative law enforcement lobby group known
as the Drug Free America Foundation. The RCMP's failure to publicly
acknowledge these shenanigans has helped prevent Victoria from
initiating an injecting facility evaluation of its own.

In 2001, before the Harper government released its new anti-drug
strategy -- which has redoubled emphasis on law enforcement -- an
Auditor General of Canada report that examined Canada's drug strategy
found 93 per cent of federal funding already went toward law
enforcement. "Of particular concern is the almost complete absence of
basic management information on spending of resources, on
expectations, and on results of an activity that accounts for almost
$500 million each year," it noted.

When law enforcement commands such an enormous share of public dollars
for its unsuccessful efforts to control illicit drugs, it is a
disservice to the public when rank-and-file officers are prevented
from speaking the truth about the war on drugs.