Pubdate: Fri, 13 Sep 2002
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2002 Southam Inc.
Contact:  http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Andy Lamey, National Post

WHY STOP AT POT? LEGALIZE ALL DRUGS

Three cheers for unelected senators!

Last week they released a report stating that Canada's marijuana laws waste 
enormous resources, destroy the lives of drug users, infringe on civil 
liberties, foster organized crime and do absolutely nothing to stop people 
from getting high. Inevitably, critics were quick to offer the usual 
objections in response to the senators' call for legalization. "As a 
parent," Canadian Alliance Leader Stephen Harper observed, "I simply don't 
share the view that alcohol is more harmful than marijuana." For their 
part, The Globe and Mail and National Post published cringing, wishy-washy 
editorials calling for decriminalization rather than outright legalization.

The sole problem with the committee's recommendations is that they apply 
only to cannabis.

When it comes to drugs, the only humane policy is to legalize them all. 
Ecstasy, cocaine, heroin, PCP; prohibition has failed in equal measure for 
all of these substances. Prohibition has enormous social costs and does 
more harm than good. It's time to junk the entire approach.

Prohibitionists say legalization would trigger massive increases in drug 
consumption and addiction.

This reflects an extremely simplistic understanding of the relationship 
between legalization and usage.

As the Senate committee notes in regard to cannabis use among the young, 
"we have not legalized cannabis, and we have one of the highest rates in 
the world. Countries adopting a more liberal policy have, for the most 
part, rates of usage lower than ours, which stabilized after a short period 
of growth." (Italics added.) Similarly, heroin use is almost three times 
higher in the ultra-prohibitionist United States than in freewheeling 
Holland. The idea that legalization means epidemic consumption is mostly 
hysteria.

Of those who do try drugs, many, perhaps most, experiment in their youth 
and then stop. Of those who do keep using, the majority do so without 
becoming addicted. Two years ago, Ottawa Citizen journalist Dan Gardner 
obtained a 1995 World Health Organization study on cocaine, the most 
extensive ever conducted, and quoted one of its key findings: " 'Occasional 
cocaine' use, not 'intensive' or 'compulsive' consumption, is 'the most 
typical pattern of cocaine use.' " (Such findings so discredited America's 
drug policy that it threatened to withhold WHO funding, and the report was 
never released.)

As for actual addicts, prohibition only compounds their misery.

Someone with a drug problem doesn't need a jail sentence, he needs help. 
The Senate report notes that 90% of government spending related to drugs is 
devoted to enforcement. That leaves only 10% for things like addiction 
treatment and harm-reduction programs, where anti-drug dollars would be 
better spent. Several studies have documented that when addicts overdose, 
other users who are present frequently don't call 911, out of fear they'll 
be arrested. Prohibition is a direct factor in such preventable deaths.

That's not the only area where prohibition kills.

As Gardner wrote in 2000, "From 1920 to 1933, the years of [alcohol] 
Prohibition in the U.S., about 800 gangsters died fighting each other in 
the streets of Chicago. In just the last two years in Tijuana, 1,000 people 
have been killed fighting over the drug trade." Tijuana is only an extreme 
example of a phenomenon that takes place around the world.

Prohibition creates a black market.

That gives rise to organized crime and violence, from Quebec's biker wars 
to inner-city shootings in the U.S. to the destabilization of entire Latin 
American countries. Only removing the control of drugs from criminals will 
address the root problem.

This is one reason why decriminalization doesn't go far enough. 
Decriminalization means getting caught with drugs results in the equivalent 
of a traffic ticket rather than arrest.

But selling drugs is still illegal -- so criminal distribution chains 
remain completely untouched. Decriminalization also does nothing to address 
the massive resources that would still be wasted targeting traffickers and 
ticketing users, or the violations of civil liberties prohibition entails.

Endless numbers of innocent people are subjected to the indignity of 
airport strip searches -- or worse -- thanks to the current drug hysteria.

For many of these problems -- especially the carnage afflicting Latin 
America -- we can thank the United States and its tragically misguided "War 
on Drugs." The U.S. has consistently bullied other countries whenever 
they've considered liberalizing domestic drug laws. Aid packages have been 
withheld, official passports denied, threats of trade sanctions issued.

In Canada, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency recently conducted a covert 
sting operation that involved "blatant acts in disregard of Canadian 
sovereign values and law," as a B.C. judge ruled in August. All this in the 
name of a policy that has consistently failed to eliminate drugs.

Wars have victims, and the war on drugs is no exception.

In recognizing this simple, crushingly obvious truth, the Senate has 
produced a rare government document that speaks in a voice of moral sanity.

Prohibition will always fail. Why are we so afraid to try something else?
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D