DRUG OFFENCE BILL IS UNDER FIRE

Interior Health's Kelowna medical health officer is one of more than
550 health professionals from across Canada who are publicly opposing
the federal government's latest attempt to introduce mandatory minimum
prison sentences for drug offences.

Dr. Paul Hasselback has joined physicians, researchers and scientists
from across the country in opposing Bill S-10, which was introduced by
the minority Conservative government in Ottawa Monday.

The opposition, led by the Urban Health Research Initiative, a
program of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and the Canadian
HIV/AIDS Legal Network, argues there is "significant" evidence to show
that the Tories tough on crime approach will not meaningfully reduce
violence or drug use or improve public health and safety. Instead, say
the health professionals, it will only serve to waste taxpayers'
dollars.

The bill, titled the Penalties for Organized Crime Act, proposes a
range of amendments to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and
other acts, including introducing mandatory minimum prison sentences
for drug offenses.

The health professionals are urging the federal government to abandon
what they call ineffective and expensive approaches, such as Bill
S-10, and instead embrace evidence-based policies to curb the harms of
illicit drug use.

"Health, research and academic leaders oppose proposed law's mandatory
minimum prison terms, which do not reduce violence or drug use or
improve public health and safety," said the professionals in their
letter.

According to Richard Elliott, executive director of the Canadian
HIV/AIDS Legal Network and one of the signatories of the letter,
mandatory minimum sentences neither prevent organized crime nor deter
the use of illicit drugs

"The Canadian government is proposing a policy direction that has cost
jurisdictions in the United States billions of dollars without
achieving the desired benefits of lower crime and better public
health."

The letter says mandatory minimum sentence legislation is being
repealed in New York, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Connecticut due to
high costs to taxpayers and the disproportionate harms caused to
ethnic minority communities.

"Bill S-10 will put small scale growers of marijuana in jail for a
minimum of six months, even though the RCMP's study of some 25,000
cultivation files reveals that violence or the threat of violence
among cultivators is rare," stated Neil Boyd, professor and associate
director of the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University who
also signed the letter.

"We will be spending tens of millions of dollars to imprison
individuals who represent little if any real threat to the public."

The letter goes on to say Bill S-10 comes at a time of growing
consensus that drug policy approaches that prioritize public health
are more effective at curbing drug use and drug-related harms than
costly enforcement schemes, such as those proposed in Bill S-10. Data
from Portugal, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and other settings
suggest that public health-oriented illicit drug policies have
resulted in positive and sustained reductions in a variety of harms
from drug use, such as HIV infection, and have not resulted in
increases in illicit drug use.

"Public health experts and academics recognize that `get tough'
policies such as mandatory minimum sentences do not achieve their
intended goals and come with financial, social, and public health
costs that Canadians are not prepared to accept," said Dr. Julio
Montaner, director of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.

"It is time to abandon ineffective `get tough' polices in favour of
scientific, evidence-based policies. Let's trade `get tough' for `get
smart' policies."

Bill S-10 will be before the House of Commons alongside the new
federal budget.