ONCE AGAIN, THE SCIENCE IS TRUMPED BY POLITICS

Politicians often go through the motions of soliciting the advice of
public health specialists when developing drug policy. Then they
routinely ignore those experts.

Such is life in politics. Spend untold amounts of public money on
hearings, consultations, studies and royal commissions and then pile
all the evidence on a dusty shelf somewhere.

Fiscal conservatives are supposed to be fervently committed to the
wise use of taxpayers' dollars and rabidly opposed to wasting money on
lost causes.

It's all the more curious, then, that the Harper Conservatives are
hell-bent on mandatory minimum sentences for various drug-related
crimes and building more prisons.

Guess who's going to pay for all this, folks? You are, with higher
taxes. So much for a fiscally responsible government.

If only people knew that we could save enormous amounts of money, cut
crime and reduce health-care waiting lists with one simple shift in
policy. Decriminalize the possession of drugs.

Consider that almost all hepatitis C transmission is now through
injection drug use. And, according to local infectious disease
specialist Dr. Stan Houston, hepatitis C is the most common reason for
liver transplants at University hospital. Such transplants, including
follow-up care, likely cost more than $100,000 each.

The criminalization of drugs is fuelling the spread of injection
drug-related disease, especially in federal prisons where about 5% of
inmates have HIV and one-third have hepatitis C. That's a lot of sick
people using up a staggering amount of health-care dollars because our
government is too pig-headed to listen to advice.

Some of that advice came from a UN official, who recommended this week
that illegal drugs be decriminalized. "Drug use may have harmful
health consequences but . the current drug control approach creates
more harm that the harms it seeks to prevent," writes Anand Grover,
the UN's special rapporteur on physical and mental health.

"Criminalization of drug use, designed to deter drug use, possession
and trafficking, has failed," he explains. "Instead, it has
perpetuated risky forms of drug use, while disproportionately
punishing people who use drugs."

This makes perfect sense to Houston, who treats people with HIV - many
of whom have contracted the disease through injection drug use.

Decriminalizing drugs would result in more responsible drug use
because people wouldn't be injecting in unsafe conditions and they
wouldn't be afraid to seek help, says Houston, director of the
northern Alberta HIV program.

"It's common sense if you have to scrounge a needle and do it in a
back alley looking over your shoulder, those are not optimal
conditions for safety," he says.

"I am absolutely certain that if we (decriminalized drugs), we would
rapidly start reducing many of the broad negative impacts of
criminalization."

That kind of harm-reduction approach would save scads of money because
we could steer addicts into treatment instead of the expensive
revolving-door justice system. Politicians like happy citizens who, in
turn, expect fiscal responsibility.

Portugal, Mexico and Argentina have decriminalized the personal use of
drugs, the UN report notes.

Drug use, drug-related deaths and new cases of HIV among young drug
addicts have dropped in Portugal, it adds. And thousands of more
people there have entered drug rehab.

Ottawa is stubbornly rejecting science, laments Houston. "It appears
to be the most clear-cut, imaginable case of a triumph of ideology
over experience and common sense."