PROHIBITION DOESN'T WORK, FRIENDS

Evil Brain

Hello, front-of-the-book WestEnder readers. This week I've been given
Evil Brain's space, so as to talk politics to you. Delighted to be
here. First, note, unlike the Brain and so many others, your Mother is
bored with the USA, and no longer has opinions on the subject.
Canadian and Vancouverite issues, resolvable, tangible and relevant,
are a lot more interesting to get into, anyway. It is Godly and proper
to look to our own affairs first.

Take drugs. Or rather, don't take drugs - please. Especially the hard
ones. We'd be better off if harsh powders like heroin and cocaine,
with their virulent corruption of their users, got uninvented somehow,
or otherwise scourged from the good Earth.

This will never happen, though. The fantasy of those who wrote the
Criminal Code's controlled-substance sections is that the genie of
pharamacology can be rebottled. What a childish wish this is!
Marijuana grows wild in every province; a chimpanzee could be coached
to refine cocaine; drugs are here to stay.

Although based on wistful ideals, Prohibition is brutal in practice.
Expensive, impure drugs make addiction a much worse Hell. Banning
narcotics enriches armed criminal syndicates, which then make open war
on each other and the police. The prisons fill, paramilitary squads
have heat sensors in the sky, and the Charter is daily undermined. The
War on Drugs is a fiasco, a campaign that goes on forever, although it
was lost long ago.

Strange it's not the war most Vancouverites are thinking about these
days, eh? It's the conflict we're all paying for on a daily basis,
after all. And it hasn't reduced hard-drug use. Not even a bit.

Sometimes it seems like our Mayor Larry Campbell and a few other
select politicians might have some inkling of this truth. Chief
Constable Jamie Graham, not so much. Your Mother reads the Chief's
recent $5 million VPD budget overrun as (a) an insolent challenge to
the civilian authority, and (b) an indicator that Chief Graham really
believes his force needs more resources to combat the Junkie Menace
(particularly in the Downtown Eastside). Does the Chief, in his heart,
believe the Drug Warrior dream, that the solution to a crime problem
created by the threat of cops and jail is: more cops and more jails?

I choose to believe better of Chief Graham, and of such excellent VPD
constables as the Through a Blue Lens crew, and indeed of Canadian
police officers in general. They wouldn't support a policy just
because it creates demand for police services, right?

In Vancouver, Chief Graham has been assigned to the Canadian front
where the War on Drugs has created the most atrocities, and failed
most completely. One hopes he will soon have the honour to admit it,
rather than chiselling out $5 mil here and there in jobs for the boys.
It would be nice in fact, if all the cops who know from personal
experience that Prohibition is a failed policy, would speak out and
say we need a radical change in the law. Constables-?

Sigh. Politics get in the way. Elements of the Canadian right and
left, who might organize a serious anti-prohibition movement, are
e-flaming each other about Iraq. The big Vancouver media don't treat
the subject seriously; the Sun runs crime-scare stories and asks, "How
friendly is your municipality?" There's no political support for a
rational shrinking of the narcotics laws. That's why your Mother
Confessa retreats relievedly to the back-of-the book advice column,
with thanks to the real Evil Brain.