WE DON'T NEED TOUGHER DRUG LAWS

Claims by politicians and police that we need tougher drug-law enforcement
to stop Canadian marijuana flooding the United States have become pretty
much conventional wisdom. It's time that changed.

Because of this conventional wisdom, we can expect the reintroduction of
legislation raising sentences on growers when Parliament convenes. But
before that happens, we would suggest parliamentarians take note of the
latest RCMP report on drugs in Canada because, ... the report contains
powerful evidence that the conventional wisdom is completely wrong.

Exports of what is described in Canadian law as "marihuana" -- the law's
spelling, like its thinking, is still stuck in the 1930s -- are indeed a
"thriving industry," the RCMP notes in The Drug Situation In Canada, 2003.
But, for the first time, the Mounties put that industry in perspective.
"Most of the marihuana available on the American illicit market still
originates primarily in the U.S. and in Mexico. Canada ranks far below
Mexico as a source for the U.S."

Far below, indeed. In 2003, the report states, U.S. Customs seized more than
400,000 kilograms of pot on the border with Mexico. In the same year, it
netted a little more than 15,000 kilograms on the Canadian border. These
numbers suggest Mexican pot exports are 27 times higher than ours.

The report also notes, briefly, that the single largest source of marijuana
in the U.S. is neither Canada nor Mexico, but the United States itself.

Unlike Canada, no one says the U.S. is soft on marijuana. Under American
federal sentencing guidelines, cultivation offences that might get as little
as a few weeks in jail or even a conditional sentence here are punished with
three to seven years in prison. An estimated 100,000 Americans are currently
behind bars for marijuana offences.

Canadian police often note the disparity in punishments between Canada and
the U.S., but what they never say is what good has all that punishment done.
That's because there's no evidence it has done any good.

A U.S. Department of Justice report noted, "96.9 per cent of state and local
law enforcement agencies nationwide describe the availability of marijuana
as high or medium." The U.S. is awash in weed, probably more now than at any
time in its history. And, as the RCMP admits, the biggest growers of that
weed are Americans. Naturally, the RCMP would rather we not conclude that
the fight against marijuana is a futile and destructive waste of money, but
the Mounties' own report, if read with care and a little background
knowledge, leaves no alternative.

Keep that in mind when Parliament returns and the inevitable clamour for
more enforcement and tougher sentences resumes.