WHAT'S HARPER SMOKING?

Stephen Harper's announcement Thursday of a new national drug
strategy served at least one valuable purpose: It conclusively
demonstrated that the prime minister knows nothing about drugs or drug policy.

The list of misinformed, misleading or nonsensical statements uttered
by Mr. Harper is long and this space short, so let me skip quickly to
the highlights.

. "If you are addicted to drugs, we'll help you," the prime minister
declared, "and if you sell drugs, we'll punish you." This is an
understandable sentiment. Dealers are victimizers. Addicts are
victims. Punish one, help the other. It seems so obvious -- if you
know nothing about illicit drugs.

The fact that drugs are illegal makes them expensive. To buy drugs,
addicts on the street have to shell out as much as several hundred
dollars each day. Property crime and prostitution are two ways to get
that money. But there is a better option for people with an intimate
knowledge of the local drug market: Sell drugs.

Thus, the typical street-level dealer is a street-level addict -- and
Harper's neat division of the drug world into villainous dealers and
victimized addicts is simply nonsense. If the government passes
mandatory minimum sentences for dealing, it will wind up punishing
the very addicts it says it wants to help. Imagine a man patting a
dog with his left hand while slapping it with his right. That is the
Conservative drug plan.

. Then there's the use of the word "new" in the phrase "new National
Anti-Drug Strategy." What precisely is "new" about it? The image of
evil pushers and their hapless victims has been a recurring theme of
moralizing politicians since the dawn of prohibition a century ago.

Even more familiar is Mr. Harper's juxtaposing of this image with a
rejection of harm-reduction measures. In the 1950s, a growing heroin
problem in Vancouver -- stop me if you've heard this one before --
prompted a national debate. On one side were doctors who called for a
heroin-prescription program. On the other were police officers, who
demanded harsher punishments for dealers and mandatory treatment for addicts.

As usual, the cops got their way. Severe sentences for importing and
dealing became law in 1961, while people caught in possession of
drugs could be given indefinite sentences in specialized treatment
facilities. Did it work? At the time the law passed, illicit drugs
were still a fringe phenomenon. Even marijuana was rarely seen
outside beatnik circles. But then drug use exploded and the
psychedelic '60s were born.

Dismayed by the failure of its drug policies, the government struck
the LeDain commission to reconsider everything. After a huge amount
of research, LeDain called for the decriminalization of marijuana and
the creation of a heroin-prescription program. The police were
furious. The government balked. And the LeDain report was dropped
down the memory hole.

So what does Stephen Harper have to say about this? At the press
conference, he complained about drug references in Beatles songs and
the fact that drugs have been romanticized "since the 1960s." So
naturally he wants to put in place the same policies that failed to
stop Lucy from floating into the sky with diamonds -- a conclusion
that seems perfectly reasonable, I assume, shortly after one drops acid.

. Asked why he wouldn't back harm reduction policies such as
supervised injection, Mr. Harper said he is "skeptical." This is
encouraging. The essence of skepticism is not accepting something as
true until convinced by evidence. That's how public policy should be made.

Now, the harm-reduction policies Mr. Harper questions are supported
by a great many peer-reviewed scientific studies, but perhaps Mr.
Harper simply has very high evidentiary standards. Again, that's
laudable. But what I find harder to understand is that Mr. Harper
embraces law enforcement even though the evidence supporting the
effectiveness of enforcement is generously described as "slim to none."

So is Mr. Harper a skeptic? Or is he a closed-minded ideologue? I
think the evidence is clear.

. Invariably, Mr. Harper said, drug addiction must lead to tragedy.
"If you remain a drug addict, I don't care how much harm you reduce,
you're going to have a short and miserable life."

When William Wilberforce -- the man who defeated the slave trade in
the British Parliament -- died in 1833, he was 74 years old. He was
also an opium addict.

William Stewart Halsted -- a pioneering surgeon and medical
researcher -- was just short of 70 when he died in 1922, despite
being a lifelong addict. Halsted started with cocaine. Later, he
switched to morphine -- a cousin of heroin -- and for the rest of his
long and productive life he took daily injections of the drug.

Of course Halsted, Wilberforce and many others like them lived in a
time when all drugs were legal and so they could easily obtain cheap
and clean supplies. Not so today. As a result, addiction often leads
to bankruptcy, squalor, disease and, as Mr. Harper said, "a short and
miserable life."

So on this last point, Mr. Harper isn't entirely wrong, although I'm
quite sure the connection between his policies and those short and
miserable lives is lost on him. Righteous ignorance does fog the mind.