Pubdate: Tue, 08 May 2012
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2012 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Author: Peter McKenna
Note: Peter McKenna is a professor of political science at the University of
Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.

CANADA'S WAR ON DRUGS IS GETTING NOWHERE

Having just returned from Colombia - once known as the cocaine capital
of the world - it's not hard to see why impoverished Colombians turn
to the cultivation and production of coca leaf and opium poppies.

The climate is most receptive, the scarcity of money is palpable, and
there are few substitutes for such lucrative crops. The so-called
"balloon effect" also makes any crackdown on production ineffective,
since crop cultivation, drug laboratories and transportation routes
squeezed in one area will inevitably pop up somewhere else.

Is it time, then, for the Canadian government to revisit our
endorsement of a "war on drugs" approach to the illicit drug problem
in Latin America? Such a hard-line, and often militarized, strategy to
narcotrafficking has produced precious little in terms of tangible
results.

Mexico has been fighting the drug war for almost six years now and the
supply to the U.S. market has remained largely intact - or even
increased. But on the Mexican side, there is violence and seemingly
irreducible carnage in certain parts of the country, and more than
50,000 drug-related deaths mark Mexico's failed efforts thus far.

For the law-and-order government of Stephen Harper - who has,
incidentally, made inter-American affairs a key priority of his
foreign policy - any softening of a robust supply-side approach is
simply not on.

Harper's communications director, Andrew MacDougall, was blunt when he
spoke to one media outlet: "The prime minister would be a strong voice
in that debate against the decriminalization of drugs. The
government's strategy is in fact completely in the opposite direction."

Some political leaders and opinion-makers in the Americas, however,
are now speaking out loud about the possibility of legalization and
regulation of the drug market or, at least, the decriminalization of
the region's robust drug trade.

In a mid-April interview with Agence France Presse, and just before
the beginning of the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia,
Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina explained: "The war we have
waged over the past 40 years has not yielded results. It's a war
which, to speak frankly, we are losing."

Even the summit host country's president, Juan Manuel Santos (a Harper
ally), pushed for a vigorous discussion around the table of drug
legalization.

In the end, the summit nations agreed to punt the drug football down
the field for the time being by calling for more study of the various
alternatives. Nonetheless, there is a growing mood in the region for
something radically different - and this desire for change is not
likely to disappear soon.

But as Harper said during his concluding summit news conference: "Let
me remind you of why these drugs are illegal. They are illegal because
they quickly and totally - with many of the drugs - destroy people's
lives and people are willing to make lots of money out of selling
those products to people and destroying their lives."

The issue here, however, is not about the harmful effects of heroin
and cocaine. It's about how best to regulate, confront and diminish
the negative ramifications of illicit drugs.

Obviously, Canada has important interests at stake here, since drugs
from Latin America make their way to our streets - accompanied by
criminal behaviour and the devastation of Canadian lives and families.

So if Canada is to jettison the "war on drugs" paradigm, what should
our new strategy be?

First, the Canadian government needs to acknowledge that the
militarization of the drug war has been unsuccessful and
counterproductive. After that, we can start to think about providing
meaningful financial assistance to improve the region's police and
justice systems, halting programs that spray harmful chemicals on
farmers' fields, and assisting in finding alternative cash crops to
coca leaf and poppies.

More to the point, we should not rule out the possibility of working
with our Latin American partners to decriminalize (beginning with
marijuana) or legalize the drug business - especially if it serves to
undermine the transnational criminal groups that control it.

As of today, though, Canada (and the United States) stands out as one
of the major dissenting voices on how to combat the drug problem. By
doing so, we risk of damaging our image in the region, of being seen
as obstructionist and overly U.S.-friendly, and even undermining our
efforts to widen and deepen our linkages with the Americas. We should
"just say yes" to new thinking.

Peter McKenna is a professor of political science at the University of
Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown. 
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D