Pubdate: Thursday, 7 May 1998 Source: Kingston Whig-Standard Contact: Craig Jones AN OPEN LETTER TO THE NEXT LEADER PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA Prime Minister: Canada's current drug strategy is bankrupt. Anyone familiar with history would have recognized that drug prohibition could not work for the same reasons -- and with the same deleterious consequences -- as prohibition of alcohol. After nearly 25 years of a "war on drugs" we have more drugs, not less; we have drugs of greater purity and many more sources of supply than we had only 10 years ago. Furthermore we now have an epidemic of HIV infection in our major cities that is a direct consequence of prohibitionist social engineering. Police crackdowns simply multiply sources of supply and only temporarily drive up costs. Drug prohibition, just like alcohol prohibition, has fueled a powerful underground economy presided over by some of the most violent-prone individuals in our society whose enormous profits -- guaranteed by prohibition -- are directly subsidized by taxpayers. Yet even the most dramatic evidence of failure (more drugs, better quality) only encourages prohibitionists to demand more police, more draconian laws, more non-violent people in jail. From the standpoint of prohibition, nothing succeeds like failure. Only Canada and the US have refused to apply a calm cost-benefit analysis to their drug policies. Europe, Australia and New Zealand are slowly awakening from this nightmare -- albeit in the teeth of US resistance. Canada can lead the US, which is deeply implicated in the prohibitionist death-grip, out of irrationality and into sanity and humane public policy. Here's my proposal for your "first hundred days" regarding the so-called "war on drugs": Phase 1: Win a general election, of course, preferably with a sizable majority. Phase 2: Visit the US president as soon as politically possible -- make no mention (or as little as possible or only in the strictest confidence if you have his trust) of the so-called "war on drugs". The US is also looking for a way to de-escalate but is stymied by the entrenched interests of prohibition, on the right, and the stranglehold of drugs-mythology in the public generally. US leaders know that their drug policy is in the same dead-end situation, but are terrified -- having painted themselves into a corner -- of now appearing to be soft on drugs and crime. Currently there is no escape but more of the same, irrespective of the demonstrated failure of the last 25 years to either stem the tide of drugs coming into the country or reduce demand within their population. Phase 3: Announce in your first Speech from the Throne that you are declaring victory in the war on drugs, and will immediately implement federally-funded medicalization and harm reduction strategies -- as experts on social and drug policy around the world have been advocating for years. Don't leave it to the provinces because they are weak-willed and too easily captured by ultra-conservative interests. Withdraw from international treaties that restrict your freedom of action in this regard -- do not be bullied into passivity by US congressional pressure that Canada persist in a futile strategy. Use the advantage of surprise to catch your opponents flat-footed. Then move quickly to implement. Phase 4: You have now captured the high ground, both morally and from the standpoint of rational public policy. The opposition (domestic but particularly US) will be ferocious -- all the more important that it be done early so that you can reap the rewards (lower crime, reduced influence of criminal gangs, arrested rate of spread of HIV) before your first mandate expires. It is quite possible that were Canada not so geographically close to the US we might have made some fundamental changes years ago, as LeDain and others urged and as Australia and New Zealand are currently doing. The time is now. One must not make bold changes in public policy in a half-hearted manner but with great and imaginitive leaps across political divides. This means coming clean with the Canadian people. Great leaders are seldom recognized for what they do in their time but because of what they set in motion. Only the US and Canada among the industrialized economies are still entrapped in the prohibitionist black hole that affords no solution but more prisons, more cops and more social damage and continued ignorance of the real issues. Our European allies and trading partners are extracting themselves from unworkable policies, having finally taken account of the enormous unintended consequences of a policy that did not and could not work. Prohibition is futile and counterproductive and no one even knows how wasteful and destructive because many of the costs are hidden, particularly in the loss to social productivity of people with criminal records who may have been non-violent offenders when they were first incarcerated. Holland and Switzerland are leading the world on drug policy. There is a lot of information that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (and the RCMP too) would probably you rather not know about the success of their programs for the health of drug users, the slowed rate of HIV infection, and the drop in user-related crime, the ability of ordinary people to hold jobs and be productive members of their communities while maintaining their heroin addiction. They have proven that, compared to drug prohibition, drug use itself is a small and comparably manageable social problem once pragmatic considerations displace black and white moral declarations. Prohibition gives incentives to all the wrong political actors and cannot deliver under any circumstances short of totalitarian rule. The strategy demands a leader with vision and conviction: the short term rewards will be small, the long term rewards will only materialize if this strategy is accompanied by a vigorous education campaign. Your predecessors have invested a lot of political capital in the mythology of drugs and drug use -- so you will have a lot of damage to undo. But you have powerful allies too, in places like the Addiction Research Foundation and in the experience of other countries where pragmatic approaches to the drug problem were from the outset preferred over hysteria. If, after three or four years, you are not rewarded with a dramatic drop in drug-related crime, a more tolerant (because informed) public opinion about the drugs-crime nexus, fewer young people being destroyed by a criminal justice system that is compelled to do what it knows is wrong and counteproductive, you can always reverse yourself and return to the status quo ante. I see very little likelihood of your having to reverse course. You can put Canada on the international map. You can give the United States a face-saving way to wind down their own insane drug strategy and you can reverse 80-odd years of bad, racist and counter-productive public policy. It is not risk free: The opposition from the usual quarters will be ferocious. But it is the right thing to do. I hope that you're enough of a visionary to consider some version of this strategy. I, and many other reformers and progressives, could vote for such a leader. Sincerely, Craig Jones Craig Jones holds a Ph.D. in politics from Queen's University and is currently preparing a book on Canada's experience with drug prohibition tentatively entitled "Democracy, Power and Marijuana: The Unintended Consequences of Prohibition in Canada." - -- Checked-by: Richard Lake