Pubdate: Sat, 18 Feb 2012
Source: St. Albert Gazette (CN AB)
Copyright: 2012 Great West Newspapers
Contact:  http://www.stalbertgazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2919
Author: David Haas
Note: Local writer David Haas is a retired lawyer.

THERE'S NO ELIMINATING DRUG USE

Four former Attorneys-General of British Columbia - spanning two 
political parties (NDP and Liberal) and fourteen years in office - 
have called for the legalization of marijuana. The federal government 
(Conservative) continues to move towards harsher drug penalties 
including for the marijuana trade. This political split mirrors 
opinion in the country, where periodic polls do not show a solid, 
sustaining majority one way or the other on the issue.

Marijuana and harder drugs were not much of a concern in Canada more 
than half a century ago when I went through my school years here in 
Alberta, then moved on to military colleges in Victoria and Kingston, 
without encountering any drugs or users. But the recreational 
narcotics climate began shifting in the latter part of the 1960s. 
Whether this was part of a world trend, a North American loosening up 
in reaction to the Vietnam War, or whatever, the winds of change had 
a distinct burning leaf odour. My first close awareness came in the 
summer of 1971, soon after U.S. President Nixon famously proclaimed 
the "War on Drugs." Having a health issue requiring surgery, I shared 
a room in an Ottawa military hospital with a chatty airman from the 
local military aviation base. He explained that the junior ranks 
quarters there commonly reeked of marijuana fumes. Some years later 
as a lawyer I had to review the transcript of a court martial from 
our army in Germany - the barracks scene ! depicted sounded pretty 
much what the airman had described earlier.

My professional involvement with the world of drugs began in 
September 1973 when, as a law student, I started working with the 
student legal aid service in Ottawa. Practising law back in Alberta 
from 1975 to 2001, including five years as one of the controllers of 
the provincial legal aid operation, I had ongoing experience with the 
local profile of the campaign against drug usage. My last completed 
trial as a lawyer, in 2001, was of a drug trafficking charge - the 
usual dreary scenario of an undercover police purchase from a street seller.

Out of slightly more than three decades around the front lines of the 
battle, I thought the war on drugs as utter a failure as the Charge 
of the Light Brigade. The current move of the federal government 
towards harsher penalties is apt to be as ineffective as cavalry 
charges in the first and second world wars - increasingly out of date 
tactics applied at high cost, with occasional local successes making 
no overall difference. Read up on the American drug law experience: 
harsh penalties, prisons crowded, drugs flowing like a river.

It is a mistake to concentrate the legalization debate on marijuana 
alone, since there are harder drugs in common use and one argument 
normally applied to marijuana suppression - that the massive profits 
it makes available generate huge and ruthless criminal cartels - 
applies with a vengeance to the stronger natural and synthetic drugs.

As the failure of the war on drugs demonstrates, drug usage is going 
to occur. Indulgence carries known harmful impacts on the human body. 
So does the widespread use of alcohol; but all booze produces the 
same effects, whereas drugs have varying degrees of potency and 
differing physiological and psychological results. Still, it would 
make more sense to approach the matter as one of monitoring and 
control - and forget about widespread elimination. It is not going to happen.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom