DRUGS: HARM REDUCTION THE BEST SOLUTION, U.S. ADVOCATE SAYS

Vancouver's drug policy is on the right track, says Ethan Nadelmann,
executive director of the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance.

Nadelmann, who wrote the book Cops Across Borders and is sometimes called
the "Drug Anti-Czar," addressed Canadian and American drug policies and
proposed changes to Vancouver's approach to drug use at Simon Fraser
University's Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue last Tuesday.

The harm reduction advocate stressed the importance of Vancouver's success,
saying that the United States government had a tremendous interest in
seeing Vancouver fail so the city would not provide an example of available
alternatives.

"Vancouver is the first major outpost of the European sort of thinking . .
. of pragmatic, science-based, public health driven, compassion-oriented
drug policy," Nadelmann said.

Nadelmann asserted that current drug policies are rooted in racism and
other forms of discrimination.

According to Nadelmann, drug use tends to be demonised when it is perceived
to be a problem of black people or people living in poverty, instead of
middle-class white people. One example he cited was the acceptability of
white women using opiates during menopause in the 1950s. This was followed
by the inappropriateness of using opiates when other drugs became available
for that purpose. Views on opiates changed because of perceptions about the
racial and economic groups who used them.

Harm reduction strategies, Nadelmann maintained, are the way to solve our
drug problems.

"The challenge is not to get rid of drugs . . . but to accept the fact that
drugs are here to stay," Nadelmann said.

"We must learn to live with drugs so that they cause the least possible
harm and the most possible benefit."

In evaluating the effectiveness of drug policy, he said the wrong question
is, "How many smoke or inject some drug?" According to the harm reduction
advocate, the better question is, "Did cumulative death, disease, and crime
go up or down?" The U.S. government's focus on abstinence, he said,
prevents them from solving their major drug problems.

Nadelmann claimed that safe injection sites and heroin maintenance programs
are win-win situations for both police and drug users, because they remove
the incentive for crime and high black market prices, and respond to the
myriad health risks associated with using dirty needles in the unsterile
conditions of back alleys.

After his talk, Nadelmann participated in a one hour question and answer
period with the audience, moderated by the CBC's Kathryn Gretsinger.
Audience members challenged Nadelmann on a variety of topics.

Several people were concerned with the affect of new drug policies on
Canada-U.S. relations, especially considering their differences concerning
policies on other issues, such as national security.

Nadelmann compared the current predicament to the historical situation of
slavery. When the U.S. pressured Canada to return escaped slaves, Canada
decided not to give in because it was unjust. He said Canadians should do
the same today and look to science-based plans for reducing harm rather
than the U.S. methods of spending large amounts of money on ineffective
enforcement and abstinence campaigns.

Others discussed controversial so-called drug courts that operate
separately from the regular court system. Such a system is used in many
countries to provide alternative sentencing options to people convicted of
drug offences. Nadelmann commented that it is important to consider whether
drug courts try to absorb treatment programs into the criminal justice
system or if they allow offences to be treated as a social problem outside
of the justice system. His main concern was that people's progress be
evaluated according to their health and safety, rather than their
production of drug-free urine samples.

Finally, Nadelmann stressed the importance of progress on these issues,
since the death rate from non-therapeutic drug use far exceeds the death
rate from SARS. Our society, he said, is much more willing to put time and
effort into preventing the latter, while under-valuing deaths due to drug use.