FILM TAKES ON WAR ON DRUGS

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 United
States who have 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.

It premiered in Victoria yesterday, to be followed by a showing in
Vancouver today before airing on Global TV on April 28.

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.

Devastating effects

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," said Campbell, who will speak at the Vancouver premiere of
the film today.

Like other members of LEAP, Campbell favours legalization of drugs so
they can be controlled and regulated.

"My position is we legalize marijuana and we tax the living hell out
of it and we put all of the money we get from it back into health
care," Campbell said of British Columbia's $8-billion-a-year industry.