WAR-ON-DRUGS ARGUMENTS BASED ON BIG LIES

Ethan Nadelmann blew into town from south of the border a few days ago to
provide a much-needed antidote for the drug-war hysteria being spread here
in recent weeks by his countrymen. Nadelmann is the New York-based head of
the Drug Policy Alliance, considered the leading drug policy reform
organization in the United Sates.

It's not his first trip to Vancouver. Over the years, he worked with former
Vancouver Mayor Philip Owen and city staff to develop Vancouver's
four-pillar drug strategy. He describes Vancouver as an "outpost of
pragmatic European thinking" and "a symbol of science-based public health
drug policy in North America."

Nadelmann got into the drug policy reform business 20 years ago after a
stint as a PhD student working with the U.S. State Department Bureau of
International Narcotics, where he wrote a classified report on drugs and
international money-laundering.

His book, Cops Across Borders: The Internationalization of U.S. Criminal
Law Enforcement, helps explain the influence and growing presence of U.S.
Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officers in Vancouver. Nadelmann is referred
to as the "anti-czar" in drug policy circles because of his consistent
opposition to U.S. drug czar John Walters, who runs George W. Bush's Office
of National Drug Control Policy.

Between the harm-reduction project here and plans by the federal government
to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, Vancouver has
been a hot spot on the White House war-on-drugs radar.

Two weeks ago, Walters' special assistant David Murray winged his way here
to issue dire warnings about the impact of Ottawa decriminalizing pot
possession and establishing North America's first safe-shooting site here.
Everything, he said, was on the line including, "the integrity of the
hemisphere, regarding our commerce, regarding the implications of trade."
Sounds like the rhetoric we heard when Canada decided to sit out the recent
U.S. war in Iraq.

While some folks in the police community and on the right-wing fringe of
Canadian politics may take Murray's warning seriously, his arguments are
based on a collection of big lies, not least of which is that the U.S. war
on drugs is working.

In fact, America's jails are jammed with people busted for drug possession.
The land of the free and home of the brave has five percent of the world's
population and 25 per cent of the world's prison population, which is
primarily black and Latino. Twenty-five percent of black men can't vote
because the've committed felony offences.

Nadelmann says U.S. drug policy has produced the "closest thing to slavery
in contemporary society." But as Nadelmann points out, the war on drugs is
funded by a growing industry of self interest, including privatized prison
operators, police and now a new multi-billion-dollar collection of
corporations that make money doing drug tests looking for illicit
substances in urine and blood.

Success in Vancouver and nationally on the issues of harm reduction and
decriminalization of pot would seriously undermine the American war on
drugs. It would also make Nadelmann even more dangerous to the White House
as a reformer than he is now.

The announcement from Mayor Larry Campbell's office regarding the
appointment of his third and newest executive assistant Vanessa Geary
overlooked one point, an oversight I'm sure. Geary was on the COPE
executive central committee that engineered Larry's election victory last
November.

Geary, along with Geoff Meggs and Stephen Learey (also senior election
campaign workers), now make up the biggest and most expensive- at about
$250,000 a year-political machine that has ever been on the city's payroll.