DATE-RAPE DRUG AWARENESS MP LEADS INITIATIVE

Earlier this week, members of the Mount Allison Canadian Alliance
Campus Club began handing out pamphlets and organizing petitions to
raise awareness of the dangers of date-rape drugs on university
campuses throughout Canada. The efforts are part of a Canada-wide
effort by CA MP James Moore, working with students in Canadian
Alliance clubs across the country, to organize support for a Private
Members' Motion (M-458) directed towards creating:

" . . . A comprehensive plan of action to address the issue of drug
facilitated sexual assault, which should undertake to (a) to recommend
to cabinet that the substances GHB and Rohypnol be identified in the
Criminal Code as date-rape-drugs; (b) introduce amendments to the
Criminal Code creating a separate Schedule recognizing "date rape
drugs" as a weapon; (c) establish, in cooperation with the provinces
and territories, a national initiative to educate women on the dangers
of date-rape-drugs and related substances; (d) establish, in
cooperation with the provinces and territories, a national task force
to establish new guidelines in the collection and documentation of
evidence in RCMP sexual assault investigations."

The above named drugs, Rohypnol and GHB (Gamme Hydroxy Butyrate), are
two of the many drugs used across Canadian campuses to facilitate
date-rape and sexual assault. Most are odourless, tasteless, and
colourless, dissolving in liquids almost immediately, and severely
affect the capacities of those persons ingesting them. In many cases,
memory loss is a side-effect of the drugs, leaving victims unclear as
to what occurred, and in many case unaware that they have been assaulted.

While statistics as to the precise incidence of date-rape drug use in
Canada are difficult to establish, in the four-year period since the
first reported seizure of Rohypnol in 1999 (a Vancouver arrest
involving the seizure of over 3500 doses of the drug), the number of
reported cases of date-rape drug-use on campuses throughout Canada has
been rapidly increasing.

Regarding criminalization, the classification of date-rape drugs as
weapons would likely allow persons caught using them to be charged
under section 272 of the criminal code, Sexual Assault With A Weapon,
a charge that carries with it a sentence of up to fourteen (14) years
in jail.