'WAR ON DRUGS' BACKFIRING BADLY: UBC REPORT

Roundup Of Gang Bosses Blamed For Bloody Turf Battles

Canada's "war on drugs" has done nothing to stop the supply of street
drugs and is actually increasing drug-related violence.

This is among the controversial findings of a University of B.C.
report, to be released today in Ottawa, that has backing from "across
a political spectrum . . . including high-profile conservatives."

UBC's Urban Health Research Initiative reviewed international
research and found that "87 per cent of the studies linked strict
drug-law enforcement to increasing levels of drug-market violence."

Says report co-author Dr. Evan Wood: "The gun violence that we've
seen in B.C., as in Mexico and the U.S., appears to be directly
attributable to drug prohibition."

Prohibition "drives up the value of drugs astronomically, thereby
creating lucrative markets exploited by organized crime," Wood says.

Wood notes that a rash of gun slayings, such as Vancouver has had in
the past year, appear to "stem from power vacuums created by the
removal of key players from the illicit-drug market by law enforcement."

Wood points out Vancouver has had a huge "illicit drug market," with
one of the highest drug-offence rates in Canada, for the past 30
years, yet drug-related gun violence used to be low, compared with
other cities.

Then, in 2009, Vancouver had "a surge in gun violence that
authorities attribute to disputes between gangs involved in the drug
trade." Now Vancouver has the highest rate of gun crime per capita in Canada.

Wood notes the upsurge in Vancouver's gang violence occurred after
Canada launched its own "war on drugs," in the form of the
Conservative government's National Anti-Drug Strategy.

Police "photo-ops" with piles of confiscated illicit drugs look good,
but only serve to drive down drug supply while the purity and price
of street drugs continues to soar, says Wood.

B.C. had 140 homicides in 2008, more than in any other year, and the
RCMP deemed 30 per cent of those deaths were "gang-related".

But the UBC report is dismissed by RCMP Staff Sgt. Dave Goddard, who
posed last week in front of 1,001 kilograms of cocaine seized from a
sailboat, leading to charges against a Canadian and a Mexican.

"These intellectuals who come up with these ideas are great at
pointing out the problem, but what's their solution?" demands Goddard.

Goddard credits the efforts of the police violence-suppression team:
"We started the violence-suppression team a year ago in March, and we
have seen a decrease in homicides and, so far, this year has been
nothing like [the gunslayings] last January to March -- 2009 was pretty scary."

The UBC report was peer-reviewed by the Fraser Institute and is
backed by prominent Tory Sen. Pierre Claude Nolin, former chair of
the Senate Special Committee on Illicit Drugs.

Wood emphasizes he is not pushing for "legalization" of drugs or
nonenforcement of drug laws, but stresses: "We need to address drug
issues from a public-health perspective.

"We don't have enough resources for addiction treatment," says Wood,
who thinks spending money on health measures would achieve far more
than costly law-enforcement efforts that do little to control drug abuse.

The full 26-page report, "Effect of Drug Law Enforcement on
Drug-Related Violence: Evidence from a Scientific Review," is
available online at http://uhri.cfenet.ubc.ca.