BLAME IT ON THE BEATLES

How The Conservatives Plan To Get A Majority Government By Hating The
'60s

Bob Dylan once insisted "everybody must get stoned." The Rolling
Stones' extended family used to include "cousin cocaine" and "sister
morphine." While Lou Reed was boasting that shooting heroin made him
feel "just like Jesus's son," Jefferson Airplane enjoined us to "feed
our head."

And then there were The Beatles, singing jolly little ditties about
"Lucy in the sky with diamonds" and the "little help" they got from
their "friends."

Harmless musical artifacts from a by-gone era? Hardly, says Stephen
Harper.

"We are up against ... a culture that since the 1960s has at the
minimum not discouraged drug use and often romanticized it, or made it
cool," Harper said earlier this month when he announced the
government's new anti-drug strategy. "My son is listening to my
Beatles records and asking me what all these lyrics mean ... I love
these records. I'm not putting them away ... But we have to change the
culture."

Of course, Harper doesn't want you to think it's just the Beatles'
fault Canadians are hopped up on drugs - because it's the Liberals'
fault too. By toying with the decriminalization of pot in the early
part of the decade, Paul Martin and Jean Chretien spread the mistaken
impression it was legal. That's all over now, and Harper wants the
message spread far and wide.

"It's time to be straight with Canadians," he said, "so Canadians who
use drugs can get straight."

So far, being "straight with Canadians" has meant a sharp rise in the
number of pot-related arrests in Canadian cities. Toronto, Vancouver,
Ottawa and Halifax saw some of the biggest jumps in 2006, with the
number of arrests up as much as 50 per cent from the previous year.

As for Harper's large-scale anti-drug strategy, of the $64-million the
Conservatives have earmarked for it, about a third has been dedicated
to enforcing existing drug laws, with the rest going to public
education and addiction treatment programs. Along with the money, the
Conservatives are also planning a legislative push to implement
mandatory minimum sentences for people convicted of making or selling
drugs like methamphetamines and cocaine.

In the timeless words of Health Minister Tony Clement, "the party's
over."

After watching his law-and-order agenda vanish into thin air during
the last session of Parliament, Harper made it clear during Tuesday's
speech from the throne he wouldn't back down a second time. The "tough
on crime/drugs" label is one he's been pining for since the last
election and he's got every intention of earning it - if only because
it may eventually mean a majority government. "From a political point
of view, [the anti-drug plan message] is really targeted at suburban
Canada...soccer moms, kids-at-home [types]" says pollster Nik Nanos,
the CEO of SES Research. "When it comes to Canada's high-density urban
areas, it's still a political wasteland.. Sometimes there are policies
that are hypothetically focused on those areas, but the real audience
is voters who live in the suburbs who might be accessible to the
Conservatives."

However, the Conservatives' tough take on illegal drugs isn't exactly
being greeted with open arms. Both the Liberal and NDP critics on drug
policy characterized it as little more than an "ideological,"
U.S.-style, "war on drugs." Former Vancouver mayor and one of the
chief boosters of the city's safe injection site Philip Owen warned
"You just can't incarcerate your way out of [the drug problem]." And
the B.C. Civil Liberties Association went a step further, calling the
plan a "significant threat to" - you guessed it - "civil liberties."

The problem with the Conservatives' new anti-drug strategy, say critics, is
that not much about it is new at all. Take, for example, the very duality on
which it relies: that dealers can be punished while users are helped.
According to Neil Boyd, a professor of criminology at Simon Fraser
University and the author of The Road Ahead: Drugs, Violence and Making our
Communities Safer, it's a well-worn dichotomy in the drug policy world.
Unfortunately, it's also a false one.

"I think the reality is that, when you look at who appears in Canadian
courts charged with drug offences, they're users," Boyd says. "Even if
they' re dealing, they're user-dealers. These aren't wealthy
non-addicted people taking advantage of an addicted
population."

But there's no sign the Tories will back down, no matter how poorly
the tough-love approach plays with the downtown crowd or how
ineffective it appears to those on the front-lines of the "war on
drugs." Still, it's hard to believe a good number of suburban voters
haven't themselves succumbed to the same Fab Four charms Harper has
admitted indulging. And, to those who have, the Conservatives'
ostensible war on the '60s will come across as hokey and incoherent -
the same way their kids feel about "Puff the Magic Dragon".