Pubdate: Mon, 26 May 2003
Source: Berkshire Eagle, The (MA)
Copyright: 2003 New England Newspapers, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.berkshireeagle.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/897

SENSE AND FOLLY IN THE DRUG WAR

Add Canada to the list of countries the Bush administration is mad at for 
poor reasons. This time it's conflicting policies on illicit drugs. Long an 
advocate of controlling drug abuse through treatment and education instead 
of punishment, Canada is wisely experimenting with new means for combating 
the social harm caused by illegal mind-altering drugs.

One initiative in the works, decriminalizing the possession and use of 
small amounts of relatively harmless marijuana, has the Bush anti-drug 
Cossacks up in arms, with heightened security measures being talked about 
along our northern borders. In the age of al-Qaida, it is boneheaded for 
the administration to spend as much as a dime on protections against pot 
smokers in Manitoba. Yet Bush drug czar John P. Walters has joined with 
Attorney General John Ashcroft and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge in 
decrying the Canadian proposal, which Parliament is expected to pass. Mr. 
Walters said relaxed marijuana laws up north could lead to a flood of 
marijuana heading south -- as if pot isn't already readily available to the 
average American consumer.

Mr. Walters has also labeled "immoral" the city of Vancouver's "safer 
injection sites" for heroin addicts. Based on a successful Swiss model, the 
Vancouver clinics are staffed by nurses who dispense clean needles, swabs 
and sterile water. This cuts down on AIDS and other diseases and brings 
addicts into a setting where they can be encouraged to enter treatment 
programs. Mr. Walters termed the Vancouver approach "state-sponsored 
suicide." His answer is to throw drug addicts in jail. Mr. Walters also 
shares the Bush administration's disdain for Canada's humane policy on the 
medical uses of marijuana, which distinguishes between what in some cases 
is self-destructive behavior and the alleviation of suffering among the 
seriously ill.

It's not that the Canadian government is indifferent to the family and 
social harm that often accompany drug addiction. Canada, however, means to 
do what works, not simply maintain a cruel and demonstrably ineffectual 
multi-million-dollar drug-enforcement and incarceration industry.

Among the many U.S. anti-drug devices that have failed, according to a new 
federally financed study, is drug testing in schools. A study of 76,000 
high-school students found that young people whose schools do regular 
random testing of students do not have less drug use than schools that 
don't test. In declaring student drug-testing constitutional, the Supreme 
Court ruled in 1995 that privacy rights were trumped by the need to deter 
substance abuse among the young. The "efficacy of this means [drug 
testing]" was "self-evident," according to Justice Antonin Scalia. 
Self-evident to Mr. Scalia, but not borne out by the facts.

Perhaps Canada's approach to drugs is so alarming to the Bush 
administration because it may finally expose the U.S. approach as wasteful, 
inhumane, unworkable, ridiculously expensive and otherwise bankrupt.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens