Pubdate: Mon, 6 Oct 2008
Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON)
Copyright: 2008 The Ottawa Citizen
Contact: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326
Author: Margret Kopala, The Ottawa Citizen
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/canada.htm (Canada)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Downtown+Eastside
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Insite (Insite)

HOW TO WIN THE DRUG WAR

There has been little mention in this election campaign of the most 
pernicious evil of our time. Yet recent reports from a UN agency 
leave little doubt that the war against drugs is being won and that, 
with full engagement, victory is if not possible, then very nearly possible.

The World Drug Report 2008 launched in June by the United Nations 
Office on Drugs and Crime reveals how opium and cocoa cultivation, 
whose heroin and cocaine extractions are the scourge of Canada's 
inner cities, are now largely confined to rebel-held areas in 
Aghanistan and Colombia. It also reveals how worldwide deaths from 
illicit drugs at around 200,000 a year pale in comparison to deaths 
from legal substances such as cigarettes (five million a year), and 
alcohol (2.5 million). "The drug problem was dramatically reduced 
over the past century," says UNODC executive director Antonio Maria 
Costa, "and has stabilized over the past 10 years."

In other words, prohibition works.

This was apparent when U.S. per capita alcohol consumption dropped 
from 7.1 gallons to 1.8 gallons a year during the 1920s but the need 
to control psychoactive substances was apparent well before the 
American prohibition era. During the 19th century, opium was a 
lucrative, openly traded commodity, with 25 per cent of the Chinese 
male population using and tens of millions addicted. The Shanghai 
Opium Commission successfully assembled world leaders to confront the crisis.

We've come a long way since then but signs are surfacing that new 
kinds of vested interests are seizing the drug control agenda. 
Blogging on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside Enquirer, for instance, 
reveals the menacing ascendance of the medical industrial complex. 
Serviced by numerous medical organizations, it works in tandem with a 
burgeoning poverty industry that residents call the "povertariat."

"Show me a spokesperson touting the success of Insite (the 
controversial supervised injection site), and I will show you someone 
economically invested in the medical-industrial complex," says 
Reliable Source on the Enquirer site. Those profiting "must 
constantly manufacture case files to attract public funding. The 
result is a case file economy." With millions a year available for 
harm reduction-related initiatives that keep addicts on drugs while 
purporting to reduce their harm, the attractions of the case-file 
economy are self-evident.

More disturbing is how major steps toward legalizing drugs are under 
way in British Columbia courts where injection of illicit drugs has 
been made a health issue (the decision is being appealed). As the UN 
report observes, what damage could drugs cause if they proliferated 
the way opium did in 19th-century China?

"Sweden's Successful Drug Policy: A Review of the Evidence," released 
by UNODC last year lights a clear path forward on this issue.

Sweden's drug policies were built on the theories of psychiatrist 
Nils Bejerot. He challenged the view -- widely held in Sweden in the 
'60s when psychoactive drugs were available by prescription as a harm 
reduction measure -- that addiction was a health problem. Deaths in 
the general population where such lethal substances would inevitably 
find their way confirmed Bejerot's argument that addiction was a 
learned behaviour made possible by the availability of drugs, time, 
money, user role models and a permissive ideology. This behaviour 
could be "unlearned," he said; treatment should therefore focus on 
being drug-free and governments should promote zero tolerance.

Sweden has since adopted the vision of a drug free society. Treatment 
for addiction is easily obtained and, under special circumstances, 
compulsory. Schools teach children about the dangers of drugs from a 
very early age. Small-scale, as well as organized crime, is 
prosecuted. The result is drug use figures that routinely score at 
the bottom of European charts while public safety issues around 
disease transmission and crime commission remain firmly in control.

The public policy implications in Canada are clear. Daily drug busts 
demonstrate that Canadian police forces are doing their part to 
control supply. Their efforts, however, are being undermined by harm 
reduction initiatives which merely serve the vested interests of the 
Taliban, drug dealers and Canada's burgeoning medical industrial 
complex while addicts remain victimized -- first by their habit and 
then by those exploiting them.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake