DRUG HABITS WE JUST CAN'T KICK

The drug busts at Kelvin High School emphatically demonstrate one thing --
we have learned nothing from 30 years of lessons.

Back when I was a high school student at Fort Richmond Collegiate (When did
I start talking like my father?) kids were dealing drugs out of their
lockers, as I am certain they are today.

Cannabis was the most common drug back then, as it was at Kelvin before
nine "dealers" were arrested as a result of an undercover police operation,
and cannabis no doubt will again be most common after the dust has settled
and students become less fearful of being caught.

And there are plenty of kids who would have reason to be fearful.

According to a survey released by the Manitoba Addictions Foundation in
October, about 40 per cent of school-age kids smoke at least some marijuana.

That means that last Friday, when five students were handcuffed and taken
away by police, there were 520 students at Kelvin (40 per cent of students)
who might have had a joint in their pocket or backpack.

Certainly, there were 520 kids who, technically, were just as guilty of
having violated Canada's drug laws in the past year as the kids in cuffs --
and four others arrested separately -- are suspected to have been.

The foundation report also noted that use of marijuana starts at age 13.3
years, down from 14.1 years six years ago. This, it concludes, is an
indication that use of marijuana is starting at increasingly early ages.
But again, my experience 30 years ago was that it was the kids in junior
high that were experimenting most with drugs.

Older kids were more inclined to get drunk, and sick, which again, hasn't
changed; while about 40 per cent of kids have had some pot in the last
year, about 80 per cent have had some alcohol.

All of which is to say: When are we going to learn?

When are we going to stop the practice of giving some people criminal
records in order to make "examples" of them in the certain knowledge that
the ones we are making examples of are doing nothing different than 40 per
cent of the population is doing -- violating drug laws?

More to the point, when are we going to stop exposing 40 per cent of the
population to criminal activity in a war on drug use that has failed to
change anything in 30 years?

Which is not to say that kids should be allowed to deal drugs in the
corridors of Kelvin High School or all other high schools, as most
certainly happens.

But it is to say that handcuffing an unfortunate few and parading them in
front of television cameras is not the answer, never has been, never will be.

Nor is the perfect answer to legalize drugs. But it is without doubt a
better answer than rounding up kids and locking them up.

The reason that kids are selling drugs in schools is because they can, very
easily.

And the reason they so easily can deal drugs is because the drugs are at
once in demand and illegal -- perfect conditions for the creation of a
black market that cannot be controlled or curbed no matter how many
billions of dollars we spend doing so.

In fact, the harder we try to curb drug use through law enforcement, the
harder it is to curb, because all the activity in growing and distributing
drugs goes underground. Everything about drugs' creation and distribution
becomes secret and clandestine, thus requiring secret and clandestine
methods to, not stop, but disrupt the activity at great cost.

The way to get drugs out of lockers is to put them on store shelves so that
their production and use are open, transparent and more easily regulated.

Doing so would eliminate a great extent the criminals and criminal
activities while generating huge savings in enforcement costs and huge
revenues in taxation, some of which could be redirected to the creation of
effective education and treatment programs.

The bonus is that schools could deal with cannabis use as easily as they
deal with alcohol and tobacco use, without the need to involve the police
and courts, the result of which is that some "examples" are made criminals
for doing something that millions of Canadians do daily and which most
agree is harmless.

In fact, the courts already have decreed that marijuana is an
all-but-harmless, non-addictive drug, the effects of which are benign
compared to the effects of tobacco and alcohol.

Nothing that I have written here is news. Anyone who pays any attention at
all to the issue knows all this and more, including the fact that Britain
six weeks ago took a first step toward the legalization of drugs, beginning
with marijuana, ecstasy and heroin, which will allow doctors to prescribe
heroin in order to prevent addicts from dying as a result of taking impure
product.

In fact, the only "news" contained in this piece is that after 30 years of
learning that it does not and will not work, we are still handcuffing kids
and parading them in front of television cameras in the high hope that this
time, for the first time, it will be effective.

It's a drug habit we just can't seem to kick.