SAY GOODBYE TO "JUST SAY NO"

The Drug Laws Have Been Ineffective And Counterproductive. So Change
Them.

A quarter-century ago, the canadian bar association (C.B.A.) resolved
to support the decriminalization of simple possession and cultivation
of cannabis for an adult's own use. It also supported decriminalizing
the nonprofit transfer of small amounts of cannabis between adult
users. The C.B.A. therefore welcomed federal Justice Minister Martin
Cauchon's proposal in Bill C-38, introduced last May, to move toward a
more rational approach to the offense of simple possession of
cannabis. C.B.A. members' initial reaction was that this part of the
bill represented a positive shift in direction. And last week the
Ontario Court of Appeal declared parts of the very restrictive
regulations governing access to medical cannabis unconstitutional.

The result will probably be increased access to cannabis for medical
purposes. Yet these generally positive steps will inevitably meet
opposition, largely because of the sensationalism and heavy-handed
reliance on the criminal law that have too often been the mark of
Canada's drug policies. The proposed changes have been criticized at
home by the Canadian Alliance and abroad by the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security and the Office of National Drug Control Policy,
whose director charged last week that Canada's drug policies were
going in the wrong direction. "It's the only country in this
hemisphere that's become a major drug producer instead of reducing its
drug production," he said.

Our current laws have not stopped people from using marijuana. What
these laws have done is greatly expand the profits of criminal and
even terrorist organizations, promote a violent black-market trade and
waste the time and limited resources of police, prosecutors and the
justice system. They have made the drug use that does occur more
dangerous. Governments have relied on simplistic "just say no"
messages to deal with the complex nature of drug use in our society.
They have distracted us from the central issue--why some individuals
use drugs in a way that causes harm to them and to the communities
around them. In short, the existing approach has been unnecessary,
expensive, ineffectual and counterproductive.

Criminal law is a blunt instrument, inappropriate for dealing with
many of the subtleties of a complex society. The Canadian government's
own statement of criminal-justice policy recognizes this. The Criminal
Law in Canadian Society, released in 1982 when Jean Chretien was
Minister of Justice, stressed that the criminal law was an instrument
of last resort, to be used only when other means of social control
were inadequate or inappropriate. Yet successive federal governments
have chosen to ignore this policy when it came to drugs.

Canadians recognize that using more of the criminal law cannot address
the presence of a wide variety of psychoactive substances in our
society. In 2000 the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington-based
think tank committed to reducing society's reliance on incarceration,
concluded that the U.S. imprisons more individuals for drug offenses
than the entire European Union does for all offenses. Yet U.S. rates
of illegal-drug use remain higher than those in many other countries,
and cannabis is among the U.S.'s most significant crops in dollar
value. We cannot arrest our way out of the drug problem.

Law enforcement's present approach absorbs public resources that are
badly needed elsewhere. It means that the chances of being prosecuted
for drug use vary with geography, and it leads to young offenders
being tried and possibly imprisoned at great public expense. Applying
the criminal law to minor drug problems has led to measures that
threaten important constitutional rights, including the right to be
free from unreasonable search or seizure.

Any change of policy in Canada should be viewed in an international
context. Eleven U.S. states decriminalized cannabis possession in the
1970s. Several Australian states followed suit. Many European
countries have shifted away from criminal prohibition of possession of
cannabis and other drugs. It is time for Canada to look to other
models for deterring problematic drug use; jail-enforced prohibition
has proved to be both expensive and counterproductive.

Cauchon's cannabis-law-reform bill, which was handed to a special
parliamentary committee last week, gives us the chance to hold a much
needed debate on how to react to the use of cannabis in Canadian
society--as well as that of many other drugs, legal and illegal. Drug
policy cries out for a rational discussion, free of the inflammatory
rhetoric that has impeded sensible reform.