MANDATORY MINIMUMS WON'T CURTAIL ILLICIT DRUGS

Harper's plan to adopt futile U.S. strategy will create more criminals
and do little to end violence

Illicit drugs represent one of the greatest threats to community
health, and recent examples of drug-related violence across Canada
show the toll continues to mount:

A double slaying in picturesque Old Montreal has the hallmarks of a
professional hit. Winnipeg police warn of "imminent" violence after a
crackdown on a Hells Angels puppet club creates a power vacuum that a
rival outlaw motorcycle gang tries to fill. Police directly tie the
increase in gang violence on the streets of Vancouver and other
Canadian cities to the drug cartel wars terrorizing Mexico.

But even with the rising social costs related to illicit drugs, our
response represents Canada's leading example of ideology triumphing
science. And events have recently taken a turn for the worse.

Prior to Stephen Harper's Conservatives taking power, an exhaustive
national consultative process led by Health Canada and the Canadian
Centre on Substance Abuse informed the development of Canada's drug
strategy. This inclusive process, which involved all federal political
parties and virtually all stakeholder groups, aimed to remove the
rhetoric and emotion that have traditionally guided Canada's response
to illicit drugs. Instead, it sought to incorporate the best available
scientific evidence into the fight against the drug scourge.

The central aim of the strategy was "to ensure that Canadians can live
in a society increasingly free of the harms associated with
problematic substance use." It differed from the U.S. approach in that
it put emphasis on reducing harm rather than the less pragmatic goal
of making society "drug free."

However, when the Conservatives assumed power in 2006, the results of
this exhaustive effort were thrown out and a new Tory "anti-drug
strategy" was soon released. Although the pre-existing drug strategy
had been criticized by a 2001 auditor general's report, which
demonstrated that 93 per cent of federal funding already went toward
law enforcement, the Tories' new anti-drug strategy increased the
focus on law enforcement. This realigned Canada's anti-drug efforts
with the long-standing U.S. war on drugs. Documents obtained through
freedom of information requests have demonstrated the close
collaboration between Conservative cabinet ministers and senior
bureaucrats from the George W. Bush White House in helping craft the
Tories' anti-drug plans.

Unfortunately, in addition to having been proven entirely ineffective
at reducing drug supply, the American approach to dealing with drugs
has resulted in a number of severe unintended consequences. Most
importantly, the global drug war has created a massive illicit market,
with an estimated annual value of $320 billion (U.S.). A closely
related concern is the consistent association between drug prohibition
and increased drug market violence. The Urban Health Research
Initiative, of which I am co-director, recently released a study that
clearly demonstrated that these astronomical profits drive organized
crime and related violence.

In terms of additional harms, in the U.S., where the war on drugs has
been fought most vigorously, the incarceration of illicit drug
offenders has helped create 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, despite the fact that ethnic minorities consume illicit
drugs at comparable rates to other subpopulations. Although the U.S.
is now moving away from mandatory minimum sentences, the mandatory
minimum sentences for minor drug offences currently being proposed by
the Harper government should help bring this incredible burden to
Canadian taxpayers.

Why would we replicate this public policy disaster? Unfortunately, in
addition to massive funding directed toward law enforcement and
prisons, the war on drugs has also involved an enduring global
education effort aimed at reinforcing public support for directing tax
dollars toward police funding for dealing with drugs.

This helps makes enforcement strategies politically popular despite
their proven ineffectiveness. A Canadian example is the law
enforcement lobby group known as the Drug Prevention Network of
Canada, which was founded by former Conservative MP Randy White and
receives support from the Drug Free America Foundation. The propaganda
the Harper government has used in its efforts to close the Vancouver
supervised injecting facility was prepared by this group and freedom
of information disclosures have shown it was actually funded by the
RCMP.

The starting point for reducing drug-related harms while avoiding the
enrichment of organized crime and creating associated gun violence is
to accept that law enforcement will never meaningfully reduce the flow
of drugs. Any economist will explain that the drug seizures we see
over and over again as part of police photo-ops have the perverse
effect of making it that much more profitable for someone else to sell
drugs. The laws of supply and demand have simply overwhelmed police
efforts. With youth now reporting easier access to illicit drugs than
to alcohol or tobacco, the situation could not get much worse.

Once we accept that the war on drugs has failed to meaningfully reduce
drug supply and has resulted in a range of destructive consequences,
the next step is to consider the threat of each drug individually,
rather than lumping drugs like cocaine and marijuana together, and to
look toward international models that point the way forward.

In the Netherlands for instance, the de-facto regulation of marijuana
and distribution through licensed coffee shops generates tax revenue
for the country rather than profits for organized crime.
Interestingly, rates of marijuana use in the Netherlands remain far
lower than in the U.S. and Canada. Alternatively, Portugal
decriminalized all drugs so that it could focus taxpayer resources on
prevention and treatment. Five years into this experiment, Portugal
has the lowest rates of marijuana use in the European Union.

A made-in-Canada solution is certainly needed. However, the Harper
government's proposals will only channel tax dollars from health and
education into building prisons - a process that will have long-term
impacts by turning petty drug offenders into hard-core criminals.