NFB FILM MAKES A STRONG CASE FOR DECRIMINALIZING DRUGS

Regulation, Treatment More Effective, Police Lobby Group
Argues

DAMAGE DONE: THE DRUG WAR ODYSSEY

Time and channel: Tonight at 7 on Global

VANCOUVER - It's a familiar scene on TV newscasts: wads of cash, rows
of guns and bags full of drugs displayed neatly on a table by police
officers seemingly posing by their latest set of trophies.

One more drug bust, another haul and big-time traffickers facing the
prospect of hefty jail time.

But some former law enforcement officials in Canada and the U.S.
who've spent years fighting the ongoing war on drugs say it's a losing
battle.

Their views about how prohibition has failed to make a dent in the drug
supply while millions of dollars continue to be wasted on criminalizing
recreational drug users are told in the National Film Board documentary
Damage Done: The Drug War Odyssey.

Most of the police officers featured in the film are part of a growing
U.S.-based organization called LEAP -- Law Enforcement Against
Prohibition -- which also includes corrections officers, retired and
sitting judges and prosecutors.

Mike Smithson, a spokesman for LEAP, said from Medford, Mass., that
about 330 of the organization's 7,000 international members are Canadians.

They include Senator Larry Campbell, a former RCMP drug squad officer
and Vancouver mayor who ran on a platform of reducing harm from drug
use. Campbell, whose views are featured in the film, said in an
interview that drug laws need to be reformed so addiction is treated
as a health issue that's exacerbated by other problems including
poverty, homelessness and mental illness.

He said his law-and-order stance about criminalizing junkies as a
Mountie changed radically when he became Vancouver's chief coroner in
1996 and saw the devastating effects of drug overdoses in the city's
seedy Downtown Eastside.

"When I really took a hard look at it, I realized that what we were
doing was not saving lives. In fact, we were seeing the deaths
increase," he said.

Campbell is a proponent of Vancouver's safe-injection site, which
provides a harm-reduction approach to treating people who may
otherwise overdose or pass on blood-borne diseases such as HIV from
shared needles. At Insite, the only such facility in North America,
addicts shoot up heroin in the presence of a nurse and are offered
referrals for treatment.

Campbell noted that various studies published in top international
journals have hailed the positive effects of Insite, including reduced
property crime by people desperate for a fix. The facility is
operating as a pilot project until the end of the year, when the
Conservative government is expected to decide its fate.

"I will say this, I will not let it be shut down," Campbell said,
adding the site saves taxpayers $250,000 a year for every addict who
doesn't contract HIV. Like other members of LEAP, Campbell favours
legalization of drugs so they can be controlled and regulated.