Maxed Out

NEW MONEY, SAME OLD WAR

In this week's speech from the throne, Stevie Hapless, PM of all
Canada, managed to nudge the country further right, throw the
lacklustre Stephie Dion's Liberals into dangerous, uncharted waters -
the kind that need real leadership, a quality apparently completely
lacking in the party - and hang the albatross of yet another likely
election around the necks of Canadians longing for the good old days
of bland, but effective, government.

It was, in many ways, an encore performance. It was also pretty well
done. Stevie obviously honed his political skills at the high school
chess club as evidenced by his deft play. That would be check and
mate, Mr. Dion.

Liberal leader in name only, Stephie's total collapse sets the stage
not only for another general election but most likely another
drawn-out Liberal leadership race. And you thought Canadian politics
couldn't get any more boring.

But it was Stevie's pronouncement earlier this month that
foreshadowed the throne speech's inexorable march south toward
politics American style. That was when Stevie abandoned any pretense
toward rational thought and fell into lockstep behind the bankrupt
drug policies that have filled American jails to overcapacity while
whittling the "drug problem" down not a bit. He might have promised
the Canadian people lower taxes and a reduced GST but his new drug
policy gifted continuing record profits and the promise of even more
to the thugs on both sides of the law who profit from the ineffective
criminalization of street drugs.

Jeez Stevie, put a brain on.

Let's just suppose you ran, say, a cute little resort municipality.
Let's suppose things were not going well for you, tourism was off,
people were tired of your product, mindless gangs from a nearby urban
centre were terrorizing your town on long weekends, the Olympics were
coming. When things seemed as though they couldn't get any worse,
when the situation cried out for leadership and fresh ideas, let's
suppose the mayor of the cute resort municipality said, "I've got the
solution. We'll just keep doing the same stuff that got us into this
fix in the first place." What would you do?

If you were a mindless ideologue you might pat him or her on the back
and say, "Attaboy(girl). That ought to fix the problem."

Otherwise, you might roll your eyes heavenward and say, "Not this
nonsense again."

Stevie dished out $64 million worth of new money for the same old war
on drugs. Given a choice, I'd vote for flushing $64 million down the
toilet or giving it to corrupt Quebec cronies in Sponsorship Redux.
He also promised mandatory minimum sentences for people convicted of
serious drug crimes, whatever those are.

It's probably helpful at this point to review a couple of simple, if
inconvenient, truths. Prohibition doesn't work. It's been the law of
the land since 1929 and it hasn't made a dent in either supply or
demand. Law enforcement doesn't work. You can buy illegal drugs in
every town in Canada. You can acquire illegal drugs in every prison
in Canada. If law enforcement can't control drugs in prisons, it
takes a particular kind of idiot to think they'll be successful
controlling them on the streets of a democratic country. Marijuana is
not a gateway drug, smoking it doesn't lead to using harder drugs.
All illegal drug use combined costs Canadian taxpayers and businesses
less than the effects of smoking tobacco or drinking alcohol.
Everyone who wants to use drugs uses them. The fact that they're
illegal hasn't stopped anyone and I'll bet you've never met a single
person who said, "Ya know, if they'd just make smack legal, I'd
become a junkie."

The final inconvenient truth is this: no matter what the government
says, no matter what the police say, any crackdown on illegal drugs
means more pot smokers get busted. When Little Jean Chretien's
Liberals introduced - but never passed - legislation to
decriminalize, not legalize, possession of small amounts of pot, a
lot of police forces simply stopped laying possession charges,
according to the president of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of
Police. But since the Conservatives formed the government, possession
busts have risen from 20 to 50 per cent in Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa
and Halifax.

That's because no matter what the government or the cops say about
the horrors of meth or heroine or crack or any other drug, busting
pot smokers is the path of least resistance. And who more than
politicians and law enforcement favour the path of least resistance?

So once again, the government has gifted untold wealth to law
enforcement and organized - not to mention disorganized - crime
simultaneously. Carumba!

It's a shame. Canada was so close to adopting a more rational,
evidence-based approach to street drugs, an approach based on
treating drug use as what it is, a health problem, not what it isn't,
a law enforcement problem. But harm reduction - the buzzword meaning
let's all be grown-up and try to treat drug use as a health and
social problem not as a prisoner recruitment exercise - has been
blue-penciled by the Hapless government. Harm reduction is out,
mandatory prison sentences are in.

Fortunately, Stevie has the experience in the U.S. to buttress his
bold new initiative. Clearly that approach has worked miracles south
of the border. Since adopting a hard line against drugs and filling
existing prisons and building lots of new prisons and filling them
with drug users and traffickers, the use of street drugs in the U.S.
has all but disappeared. Oh yeah, and the war in Iraq is going quite well too.

I don't believe Stevie is a stupid man. I do believe he's as morally
bankrupt and ideologically blind as most modern Conservatives. But I
don't believe the Canadian people buy into that dogma. This may be
one of the few places left in the world where small "c" conservatism
manages to live hand-in-hand with small "l" liberalism without making
the entire nation schizo.

You see, real conservatives wouldn't squander the wealth of the state
on policies that have proven, over and over again, to be complete
failures. Real conservatives wouldn't criminalize the lives of over
half a million of its citizens, many of whom hold responsible
positions and lead productive lives - that's the number of Canadian
who currently carry criminal records because of existing drug laws.
Real conservatives wouldn't gift a thriving business - illegal drugs
- - with the prospects of even greater profits. Real conservatives
would find a way to legitimize that business for the benefit of the state.

So where does that leave Stevie Hapless? Up the same old creek in the
same old leaky boat. still no paddle. How sad.