NOT ANOTHER DRUG STRATEGY

Stephen Harper's promise to introduce a "national drug strategy," part of
his recent get-tough-on-crime posturing, was largely ignored in the brief
debate that followed.

He declared that, along with a couple of other measures, such a move would
"get drugs off the streets, away from our children and clean up our
communities."

Sure. For a century, everyone else has failed; but there's a new sheriff in
town and he's gonna clean up Dodge.

Like almost all other highlights of his famous speech to the cops, that
proposal ignores a huge amount of research and experience.

In fact, if a new "drug strategy" is to be spawned, it will be the fourth
in 18 years.

So before this bunch starts its romp in the fields of cannabis, poppies and
coca, here is a little background.

In 1987, after more than a decade of complete silence on the findings of
the LeDain report, the definitive work on non-medical drug use, Brian
Mulroney discovered drugs. Or, rather, he discovered the political
usefulness of drugs. He suddenly realized, as does Harper, how well
scaremongering plays in downtown Cowpucky, Alta., or Pancreas Cove, N.S.,
not to mention the North Shore, so he declared that drugs were a scourge
that would destroy an entire generation.

A year later his government launched the first National Drug Strategy. Its
centrepiece was the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse.

The centre has done good work. Most of its hundreds of papers and studies
have dealt with alcohol, tobacco, gambling, AIDS, fetal alcohol syndrome
and other health issues; but it has often considered questions of illicit
drug use. One study of the politics of Canada's drug laws carries the apt
and catchy title, Panic and Indifference.

The NDS was "renewed" in 1992, and became "Canada's Drug Strategy": new
government, new name. Although it faded into obscurity in the cost cutting
'90s, it did manage to spend $104.4 million, principally on yet another
body to study and track Canadian drug abuse: Canada's Drug Strategy
Secretariat.

Yet in spite of all that research and a decade of experience, the Chr,tien
government decided more study was needed.

In May 2001, Parliament created yet another Special Committee on the
Non-Medical Use of Drugs, this time with 13 members, one of whom was our
own tough guy, Randy White (to be fair, Libby Davies was also a member).
Its mandate was to study "the factors underlying or relating to the
non-medical use of drugs in Canada" and to make recommendations aimed at
"reducing the dimensions of the problem involved in such use." That was
identical to the mandates of all earlier committees.

Its report to Parliament, tabled in December 2002, is titled Policy for the
New Millennium: Working Together to Redefine Canada's Drug Strategy. Don't
worry if you've never heard of it - apparently, neither has Stephen Harper.

The report is important - as an example of a colossal waste of public funds
to provide the illusion of dealing with an issue. It redefined nothing. It
was necessarily a rehash of history and old evidence, because nothing could
be said on the subject that hadn't been said before.

Here is a sample of its work:

"The Committee recommends the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, as an
independent non-governmental organization, be given the mandate to develop,
in consultation with federal, provincial and territorial governments and
key stakeholders, the goals, the objectives, the performance indicators and
the strategic plan for a renewed Canada's Drug Strategy, which shall be
comprehensive, co-ordinated and integrated."

Once you have stopped laughing at the govspeak, consider that that was the
centre's mandate when it was created in 1988. Or consider another
recommendation that called for the establishment of yet another, separate
bureaucracy, the office of a Canadian Drug Commissioner, "mandated to
monitor, investigate and audit the implementation of a renewed Canada's
Drug Strategy."

An interested observer would be forgiven for asking if the committee
intended the buck to stop and, if so, where.

In a chapter entitled Substance Abuse and Public Safety, the committee
purported to deal with "alternatives to prosecution and/or incarceration."
It discussed drug treatment courts, which are, of course, not an
alternative to prosecution at all. They are a Band-Aid measure intended to
reduce court loads by addressing what is really a public health issue: the
addiction of those who are repeatedly charged. It seriously discussed
forced treatment of addicts. It quoted as gospel pronouncements from senior
police officers about the need for "more resources," apparently oblivious
to the notion of vested interest. And, although it never discussed
seriously the alternative of legalization and regulation, it concluded
that, ". . . our society is not prepared or equipped, at this time, to
abandon (drug prohibition) simply to pre-empt criminal activities, since
unrestricted use of most controlled substances poses real health risks to
people."

It's hard to decide where this stunning piece of nonsense came from.

No knowledgeable anti-prohibitionist advocates "unrestricted use" of drugs.
Of course abuse of mind-altering substances poses a health risk; but that's
happening right now - and much more so than it would in a regulated market.

And to say that we are "not prepared or equipped at this time" to end
prohibition is to suggest that, at some future time, we will be. When? Why
not now? Is it not the legitimate role of government, which got us into
this mess in the first place by creating the hysteria over drugs, to undo
that and properly prepare and equip Canadians - in other words, to lead?

Instead, the prime minister proposes yet another "strategy," barely more
than three years after the last one and ignoring the fact that Mulroney's
doomed generation is the one that's running the show today and doing a
reasonable job of it. So much for scourges.

The flow chart of the prohibition-bred drug hierarchy in Ottawa,
significantly headed by Health, with strong Justice and Solicitor-General
participation and peppered with various bodies investigating,
co-ordinating, consulting and enhancing, is already a bureaucratic Rubik's
cube. What is manifestly not needed is another "drug strategy."

Unless, of course, that strategy will be to look dispassionately and
objectively at a social issue that has continued to dog us precisely
because it has not been acted upon but instead hidden in a smokescreen of
studies and secretariats.

Call me crazy, but somehow I don't think that's what he has in mind.