Pubdate: Wed, 03 May 2006
Source: North Shore News (CN BC)
Copyright: 2006 North Shore News
Contact:  http://www.nsnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/311
Author: Jerry Paradis, Contributing Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmjcn.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal - Canada)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

NOT ANOTHER DRUG STRATEGY

Stephen Harper's promise to introduce a "national drug strategy," part of 
his recent get-tough-on-crime posturing, was largely ignored in the brief 
debate that followed.

He declared that, along with a couple of other measures, such a move would 
"get drugs off the streets, away from our children and clean up our 
communities."

Sure. For a century, everyone else has failed; but there's a new sheriff in 
town and he's gonna clean up Dodge.

Like almost all other highlights of his famous speech to the cops, that 
proposal ignores a huge amount of research and experience.

In fact, if a new "drug strategy" is to be spawned, it will be the fourth 
in 18 years.

So before this bunch starts its romp in the fields of cannabis, poppies and 
coca, here is a little background.

In 1987, after more than a decade of complete silence on the findings of 
the LeDain report, the definitive work on non-medical drug use, Brian 
Mulroney discovered drugs. Or, rather, he discovered the political 
usefulness of drugs. He suddenly realized, as does Harper, how well 
scaremongering plays in downtown Cowpucky, Alta., or Pancreas Cove, N.S., 
not to mention the North Shore, so he declared that drugs were a scourge 
that would destroy an entire generation.

A year later his government launched the first National Drug Strategy. Its 
centrepiece was the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse.

The centre has done good work. Most of its hundreds of papers and studies 
have dealt with alcohol, tobacco, gambling, AIDS, fetal alcohol syndrome 
and other health issues; but it has often considered questions of illicit 
drug use. One study of the politics of Canada's drug laws carries the apt 
and catchy title, Panic and Indifference.

The NDS was "renewed" in 1992, and became "Canada's Drug Strategy": new 
government, new name. Although it faded into obscurity in the cost cutting 
'90s, it did manage to spend $104.4 million, principally on yet another 
body to study and track Canadian drug abuse: Canada's Drug Strategy 
Secretariat.

Yet in spite of all that research and a decade of experience, the Chr,tien 
government decided more study was needed.

In May 2001, Parliament created yet another Special Committee on the 
Non-Medical Use of Drugs, this time with 13 members, one of whom was our 
own tough guy, Randy White (to be fair, Libby Davies was also a member). 
Its mandate was to study "the factors underlying or relating to the 
non-medical use of drugs in Canada" and to make recommendations aimed at 
"reducing the dimensions of the problem involved in such use." That was 
identical to the mandates of all earlier committees.

Its report to Parliament, tabled in December 2002, is titled Policy for the 
New Millennium: Working Together to Redefine Canada's Drug Strategy. Don't 
worry if you've never heard of it - apparently, neither has Stephen Harper.

The report is important - as an example of a colossal waste of public funds 
to provide the illusion of dealing with an issue. It redefined nothing. It 
was necessarily a rehash of history and old evidence, because nothing could 
be said on the subject that hadn't been said before.

Here is a sample of its work:

"The Committee recommends the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, as an 
independent non-governmental organization, be given the mandate to develop, 
in consultation with federal, provincial and territorial governments and 
key stakeholders, the goals, the objectives, the performance indicators and 
the strategic plan for a renewed Canada's Drug Strategy, which shall be 
comprehensive, co-ordinated and integrated."

Once you have stopped laughing at the govspeak, consider that that was the 
centre's mandate when it was created in 1988. Or consider another 
recommendation that called for the establishment of yet another, separate 
bureaucracy, the office of a Canadian Drug Commissioner, "mandated to 
monitor, investigate and audit the implementation of a renewed Canada's 
Drug Strategy."

An interested observer would be forgiven for asking if the committee 
intended the buck to stop and, if so, where.

In a chapter entitled Substance Abuse and Public Safety, the committee 
purported to deal with "alternatives to prosecution and/or incarceration." 
It discussed drug treatment courts, which are, of course, not an 
alternative to prosecution at all. They are a Band-Aid measure intended to 
reduce court loads by addressing what is really a public health issue: the 
addiction of those who are repeatedly charged. It seriously discussed 
forced treatment of addicts. It quoted as gospel pronouncements from senior 
police officers about the need for "more resources," apparently oblivious 
to the notion of vested interest. And, although it never discussed 
seriously the alternative of legalization and regulation, it concluded 
that, ". . . our society is not prepared or equipped, at this time, to 
abandon (drug prohibition) simply to pre-empt criminal activities, since 
unrestricted use of most controlled substances poses real health risks to 
people."

It's hard to decide where this stunning piece of nonsense came from.

No knowledgeable anti-prohibitionist advocates "unrestricted use" of drugs. 
Of course abuse of mind-altering substances poses a health risk; but that's 
happening right now - and much more so than it would in a regulated market.

And to say that we are "not prepared or equipped at this time" to end 
prohibition is to suggest that, at some future time, we will be. When? Why 
not now? Is it not the legitimate role of government, which got us into 
this mess in the first place by creating the hysteria over drugs, to undo 
that and properly prepare and equip Canadians - in other words, to lead?

Instead, the prime minister proposes yet another "strategy," barely more 
than three years after the last one and ignoring the fact that Mulroney's 
doomed generation is the one that's running the show today and doing a 
reasonable job of it. So much for scourges.

The flow chart of the prohibition-bred drug hierarchy in Ottawa, 
significantly headed by Health, with strong Justice and Solicitor-General 
participation and peppered with various bodies investigating, 
co-ordinating, consulting and enhancing, is already a bureaucratic Rubik's 
cube. What is manifestly not needed is another "drug strategy."

Unless, of course, that strategy will be to look dispassionately and 
objectively at a social issue that has continued to dog us precisely 
because it has not been acted upon but instead hidden in a smokescreen of 
studies and secretariats.

Call me crazy, but somehow I don't think that's what he has in mind.
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D