DECLARE A CEASE FIRE IN THIS LOST WAR

The federal government is expected to make the first move this week toward
decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana.

Given the amount of police and court resources that are devoted to finding,
arresting and prosecuting people who prefer herbs to alcohol, it seems a
reasonable step to take.

But just try to convince our neighbours to the south that doing so is a
good idea.

David Murray, who is a special assistant in the U.S. Office of National
Drug Control Policy, was in Vancouver recently to tell a Canadian crowd
that decriminalizing marijuana possession or opening a safe injection site
(for heroin users) there were bad ideas that wouldn't do anything to solve
the drug problems facing the city and this country.

As one of the lieutenants in the United States' decades-old War on Drugs,
Murray is paid to espouse the virtues of a clean lifestyle. But it's a
pretty black and white position to take.

That intolerance to any grey areas has seen the U.S. spend billions on a
failed war, but to what end?

In the past 20 years, the number of drug offenders in U.S. prisons has gone
from about 80,000 to more than 400,000. Housing them costs $16 billion a year.

The fact is, federally the U.S. seems to have a far less humanistic
philosophy when it comes to dealing with drug use and addiction.

We were encouraged when the City of Victoria, the Victoria police and the
Vancouver Island Health Authority announced plans to attack the drug
problems in this city with compassion and common sense, hitting the dealers
and providing counselling and treatment for the users.

They recognized that you can't beat people over the head with the threat of
incarceration to force them to give up drugs, unlike the line that the U.S.
drug czars are preaching.

Besides avoiding a strategy that clearly hasn't worked, saying no to an
American-style War on Drugs and yes to more compassionate, common sense
solutions to the nation's addiction problems is one more way of
communicating to the U.S. that we can handle our own affairs just fine,
thank you very much.