Pubdate: Thu, 24 May 2007 Source: Winnipeg Free Press (CN MB) Copyright: 2007 Winnipeg Free Press Contact: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/502 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment) WRONG ON DRUGS SPENDING more money on the treatment of drug addicts is perhaps a useful thing, even though it is hardly ever successful. Treatment centres at least offer a hope of rehabilitation to drug users. Spending more money on educating people about the dangers of drug use is certainly more useful. Although its effectiveness is hard to measure -- it is difficult to gauge how many people are not doing something because of a newspaper article or advertisement they once read -- the decline in the number of cigarette smokers in the last 40 years is a clear indication that continuing, relentless education about the dangers of drug use can work. What doesn't work is spending more and more money on enforcing Canada's antiquated drug laws. What is not useful is abandoning the few harm-reduction programs aimed at reducing the likelihood that intravenous drug use will lead to serious -- and costly -- diseases such as HIV, AIDS and hepatitis that can be contracted through dirty needles. What is pointless are drug treatment courts that order addicts into treatment programs as an alternative to jail -- when voluntary treatment has a failure rate of over 90 per cent, forced treatment seems a waste of time and money. It is almost as great a waste of time and money as jailing drug users, whose only fault is their addiction and whose only crimes, usually, are associated with feeding that addiction. The federal government is about to embark on an exactly backwards battle plan in the war on drugs. The budget brought down in March allocates $64 million for this war, some of it to be spent on treatment and prevention, but most of it destined to be allocated to enforcing the anti-drug laws. There is ultimately no greater waste of taxpayers' money than this. Customs officers and narcotics police freely admit that they can intercept only a small fraction of the illegal drugs imported into Canada or manufactured and sold here. Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent every year on this, there is no shortage of dope on the streets. Until the nation is ready to treat drug abuse as the social and health problem that it is -- similar to the way it treats the abuse of alcohol and tobacco -- rather than as a crime, government funds are better spent on education aimed at dissuading people from beginning to use drugs and on harm reduction programs, which minimize the cost of drug use to the health care and social welfare systems. Treating drug use as a crime breeds crime and feeds crime and serves only to provide a lucrative income for the criminal gangs that infest the nation's cities. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake