CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES AND CONTROLLED LIBERTY

Drug Regulation - The Law And Expectation From A University
Student

A university campus is a very dynamic place; the mystical force which
a university life exerts on a student not only teaches textbook
knowledge, but more importantly, also educates about life. During
one's university career, he or she is pressed to make independent and
wise judgments.

The drug issue, posing an ethical dilemma about choosing what is good
over what may be pleasant does exactly that. In addition, it would be
interesting to observe the existing drug control laws in place and if
the government's intervention in such a victimless crime is motivated
by a sensed threat that drugs may pose to our nation's intellectual
capital.

Awareness and knowledge of the law is a prerequisite for defending
one's rights and facilitating an engaging dialogue about the issue.

Therefore, a brief outline of the legislation, as it stands is
appropriate. In an effort to make drug regulation more effective and
efficient, lawmakers in 1996 constructed the Controlled Drugs and
Substances Act. It repealed the Narcotic Control Act and some sections
of the Food and Drug Act. Under the CDSA, a law claimed as being
carefully articulated and molded, controlled substances are
categorized in eight schedules of drugs and two classes of drug
precursors (substances used to manufacture drugs). The classification
is based on the degree of potential harmful effects of the substance
(as perceived at the time by lawmakers, experts in public health and
pharmacological domains). Scheduling also outlines the nature of the
various possible offences and their penalties.

Namely, these offences are: if a person possessed the drug, was
seeking to obtain it or possessed it for the purpose of trafficking.
For instance, the most serious punishments are for schedule I drugs
such as cocaine, codeine, morphine etc. and trafficking, as one might
expect, carries much more serious punishment associated with it.
Schedule II consists only of marijuana and its derivatives. A belief
which sometimes surfaces in casual conversations is-that it is
"probably legal" to have a small amount of marijuana such as a joint;
it is important to point out that possession or distribution of any
amount of weed is in fact illegal.

For anyone who is further interested, more information about the law
can be found on the Department of Justice's website and accessible to
everyone.

Nonetheless, the efficiency of the law in actually preventing drug
abuse and creating deterrence from engaging drug trade is a topic of
much debate.

St. Thomas Aquinas, a very influential medieval legal-philospher,
defined law as being "chiefly ordained to the common good, any other
precept in regard to some individual work, must needs be devoid of the
nature of a law." Put in simpler words, according to Aquinas, law is a
tool which must only be used to protect the society as a whole and
should not concern itself with actions in the personal sphere.

Much of Aquinas' ideas hold true today.

Hence, the issue of drug related offences, often referred by many
socio-legal authors as a victimless crime, raises questions about the
need for the government to step into the personal domain to control
behaviour of citizens. The reasons are either viewed as political or
logical, depending on which side of the debate a person is on.

As it relates to the youth, such intervention may be explained if one
weighs them as an intellectual resource in themselves. Building up
reserves of a country's intellectual capital is neither a coincidence,
nor a by-product of any haphazard social mechanism.

Rather, it is an end product of diligent planning and vast amount of
resources that have been vested upon each young man and woman.

The hope is simply that strong minds and shoulders will be able to
carry our nation forward when the aging ones are done contributing
their due share.

If certain measures are required to protect such a massive, and on
occasion vulnerable, investment, then their implementation becomes
justified.

Narrowing the focus on university students, marijuana's usage and
small-scale distribution has escalated and even become normative in
the present Canadian campus culture.

To the anti-legalization and pro-regulation camp, this trend is
especially perplexing and even counter-intuitive to some extent.

It is perplexing because the group that they expect will rectify the
infiltration of drugs amongst other more exposed sections, is instead
advocating their usage through their actions.

A university campus is often seen as an environment intricately
designed to breed intellect and innovation. With infinite scientific
discoveries, transforming political ideologies and sweeping social
movements having born on campuses, high expectations of a society's
future prosperity remain ingrained here.

The emergence of student-neighbourhood dealers is perceived as
counter-intuitive; since relative financial security and
implementation of fairly successful government financial aid programs
should warrant any student from falling back on street trafficking.
Also, the growing overt advocacy for legalizing weed by various youth
action groups may be another blow to the government's efforts in drug
eradication effort-a battle which has been in a situation of stalemate
for decades.

In summary, the government's position on drug control, as it relates
to us, can be encapsulated by the fact that even though the state
might not have any business in the bedrooms of the people, it may have
a business in our classrooms; to assure that they remain a place of
undiluted learning, something the government believes they ought to
be. Hence, any idea about deregulating, decriminalizing or legalizing
a drug should be thoroughly scrutinized.

In order to protect our generation from a substance or drug that could
erode our competence or a penal system that is overly invasive and
disproportionate, there is a need to have an inclusive dialogue.

Keeping this in mind, Imprint anticipates to initiate an intellectual
discussion on campus by publishing an article shedding light on both
sides of the issue in next week's opinion section.