Pubdate: Wed, 16 Nov 2005
Source: North Shore News (CN BC)
Copyright: 2005 North Shore News
Contact:  http://www.nsnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/311
Author: Jerry Paradis
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?420 (Cannabis - Popular)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?196 (Emery, Marc)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE ON DRUGS

A symposium on drugs was held in Vancouver last month.

Yes, I know, the issue seems to be as addictive as the drugs
themselves. But this one was different.

The outfit that sponsored it, Keeping the Doors Open: Dialogues on Drug Use
describes itself as a "multi-stakeholder coalition of individuals and
organizations" that aims to present "innovative, evidence-informed research
to diverse audiences in order to reform Canadian drug policy and prevent
and reduce the harms associated with problematic substance use".

In other words, an interest group trying to get its message out.

Noteworthy in that mouthful is the reference to evidence-informed
research. At the core of the conference was a report by the Health
Officers Council of British Columbia. Theirs was a succinct,
well-written argument, supported by extensive research that sets out
all of the grounds for the establishment of a system of legalization
and regulation of psychoactive drugs.

Just as important, though, was the international supporting cast.

A visiting professor from the University of Liverpool addressed the problem
of effecting domestic change in the face of international treaties on drug
enforcement. A professor of economics and a senior fellow of the Fraser
Institute discussed the economic imperatives of B.C.'s huge illicit
marijuana market. A report from England's Transform Drug Policy Foundation
made many of the same points as the health officers' paper. A couple of
Aussies (one also a visiting professor at UVic) discussed tobacco and
alcohol. And from Seattle, just next door, came Effective Drug Control:
Toward a New Legal Framework, the result of the King County Bar
Association's drug policy project.

Keeping the Doors Open and Transform may exist for the very purpose of
disseminating that point of view, but the same can't be said of the
other participants. Like the physicians of the health officers
council, the various academics and the lawyers of the King County Bar
were there because they had looked at an intractable social problem,
in different corners of the world, and come to the same conclusion:
What we have doesn't work and never will; and, worse still, it
actually creates or enhances most of the ills that plague us. Equally
important was the logical progression in each presentation from
fact-based premises to that conclusion.

Arguments in favour of continued prohibition, on the other hand, tend
to rest on conditioned reflex and emotion, both of which are very
effectively nurtured by public reports of skirmishes in the drug wars.

A couple of recent examples.

Authorities referred constantly to last summer's Great Tunnel Under
the Border as "sophisticated" and spoke darkly of "organized crime."
The reality was that its builders sensibly wanted to make sure that it
would: (a) not fall down on them; (b) be well lit so they could see
what they were doing, and (c) serve the purpose of transporting
clandestine goods.

It was clever, maybe even ingenious, but "sophisticated"? Similarly,
they may have been "organized," in that they sought out suppliers and
purchasers of those clandestine goods; but since its discovery,
nothing has come to light that suggests any connection with what the
public generally regards as organized crime. Months after the event, a
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency spokesperson referred again to the
"organized" nature of the project and promised "more arrests will
follow." Two more months have now gone by. Do not hold your breath.

In the same vein, it is tough to understand why an 18-month
"investigation" was needed to nail Marc Emery, a man who, for years,
had been selling marijuana seeds openly on the Net and from a retail
outlet on downtown Vancouver's main drag.

With apparently no sense of comedy, the Vancouver police and the DEA
solemnly announced that they "raided" the store after "undercover"
agents had repeatedly bought seeds there for more than a year. The DEA
said that it devoted 40 of its offices to this operation (U.S.
taxpayers may well be outraged), apparently ignoring the fact that, as
was revealed at Emery's bail hearing, its "undercover" agents had
bought more than 3,000 seeds from him over the Net in 2000 for some
$7,000 which were grown into plants specifically to be used later as
evidence.

That storefront has been an open invitation to a bust for years (an
invitation the Vancouver police had hitherto pointedly declined). If
that was a "raid," then so is going to the movies; and those
purchasers no more needed "cover" than do Safeway shoppers; and the
DEA agents who bought those seeds online were about as "undercover" as
Hugh Heffner is gay.

One Jeff Sullivan, an assistant U.S. attorney, at the press conference
to announce the corralling of the Prince of Pot, provided the piece de
resistance when he said, "The fact is, marijuana is a very dangerous
drug. People don't say that, but right now in America, there are more
kids in treatment for addiction to marijuana than every other illegal
drug combined."

I'm not making this up.

Remember The Truman Show? The concept was the televising of the life
of Truman in an idealised small town, a complex fiction invented by
the producers of the TV show - but Truman is the only one unaware of
it. He lives in a sort of parallel universe, a world that is real only
to him.

To give Sullivan the benefit of the doubt, maybe, like Truman, he
lives inside his own fiction and really believes what he says. He may
well be unaware that he is trafficking in embarrassingly dumb propaganda.

Unfortunately, that seems to be the norm with the public face of the
drug wars. The self-aggrandising is necessary to maintain the status
quo; but it bears no resemblance to reality - unlike the work of the
many who participated in the KDO symposium.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin