WE KNOW WAR ON DRUGS ISN'T WORKING

The federal government is moving closer toward decriminalizing the
possession of small amounts of marijuana. It make sense when you look at the
amount of police and court resources =AD devoted to finding, arresting and
prosecuting people =AD which would be saved by such a decision. The problem
is trying to convince our neighbours to the south that this 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 were
bad ideas that wouldn't do anything to solve the drug problems facing the
city and country. As one of the lieutenants in the Americans' decades-old
War on Drugs, Murray is paid to espouse the virtues of a clean lifestyle.
But it's pretty black and white. That intolerance to any grey areas has seen
the U.S. spend billions, 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 the city with compassion and common sense, hitting the dealers
and providing counselling and treatment for the users. 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.