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News (Media Awareness Project) - CN SN: Column: Liberal or Tory, Drug Policies Remain the Same
Title:CN SN: Column: Liberal or Tory, Drug Policies Remain the Same
Published On:2007-06-02
Source:Prince Albert Daily Herald (CN SN)
Fetched On:2008-01-12 04:54:34
LIBERAL OR TORY, DRUG POLICIES REMAIN THE SAME

Stephen Harper thinks he's Ronald Reagan. "The Conservative government
is set to launch a regressive war on drugs," a Liberal press release
says.

The war is scheduled to start this week, when the government releases
a new National Drug Strategy that will get tough on drugs. More law
enforcement. More treatment and prevention. But less "harm reduction"
- - including the end of support for "Insite," Vancouver's
safe-injection facility.

And so the lines have been drawn. On one side, those who say they are
defending the liberal Canadian approach against a Reagan-era war on
drugs. On the other, those who say the liberal Canadian approach
amounts to government aiding and abetting drug use and must be
replaced by a strong effort to stop use before it starts.

As emotionally satisfying as it would be to have a good bash at the
Tories, I'm afraid I can't. It's not that they're right. They're not.
Insite and other harm-reduction policies are supported by extensive
peer-reviewed research. The government's preferred package - more
enforcement, tougher sentences, more treatment and prevention - has
failed ever since Richard Nixon's White House first assembled it back
in the days when disco was cutting edge. To anyone familiar with the
history of drug policy, it is bleakly funny to listen to Tories
enthusiastically repeat old platitudes as if they were a brainstorm
Stephen Harper had in the shower this morning.

But there's nothing surprising in this. Ignoring research, evidence
and logic is what the Tories do. So now they're going to do it some
more. Ho-hum.

More interesting are the fantasies on the other side. Take that
Liberal press release. "All the research suggests that an
ideologically motivated war on drugs is ineffective," it says, "while
programs such as the safe-injection site are producing positive
results." It then quotes Liberal health critic Bonnie Brown boasting
that "the previous Liberal government gave $500,000 a year to the
safe-injection site."

Golly, what a humane, thoughtful bunch those Liberals are. They gave
$500,000 a year to Insite. And they are totally opposed to Harper's
stupid war on drugs. They've read the research. They know the score,
man.

But wait. I seem to recall something about how the Liberal government
budgeted money for drug policy. Back in 2001, Auditor General Sheila
Fraser released a report on that very subject.

Fraser discovered that the government didn't have any precise goals it
wanted to accomplish. And it didn't have any way of measuring whether
it was achieving those goals. And it didn't actually know how much it
was spending to achieve the goals it hadn't set and couldn't measure.

So Fraser's staff put together some numbers and came up with an
estimate of how much the government was spending. Total: $500 million a year.

At the time, the Liberals liked to say their government took a
"balanced approach" on drugs - which meant an equal focus on
enforcement, treatment, prevention and harm reduction - but Fraser
discovered that 90 per cent of the $500 million a year went to
enforcement alone. Sit on a stool balanced like that and you're likely
to get a concussion.

Don't get me wrong. I support harm-reduction programs. They save
lives. But despite all the attention they get, they have never been
anything more than earrings on an elephant.

If Stephen Harper scraps harm reduction, he will make it more likely
that some very weak people will die. He will shift the rhetoric. And
he'll save a few dollars he can use to pay for strip searches and
other things that excite conservatives.

But he won't be launching a war on drugs. That war began long, long
ago.
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