Pubdate: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 Source: Toronto Star (Canada) Section: A15 Contact: Website: http://www.thestar.com/ Author: Kathleen Kenna, Toronto Star Washington Bureau CANADIAN WARNS AGAINST `HYSTERIA' IN WAR ON DRUGS Individual rights trampled: Economist UNITED NATIONS - Amid more than 100 countries declaring war on drugs, a lone Canadian has urged an end to anti-drug ``hysteria'' he says is trampling individual rights. Dozens of speakers at a U.N. conference billed as the first global drug summit called for more laws, more enforcement, more spending and more treaties to nab drug suspects across national borders. But Montreal economist Thomas Naylor sounded a note of caution. ``This whole drug war hysteria is getting quite dangerous,'' said the McGill University professor, one of four experts reporting to the summit on money laundering by drug criminals. ``We're ramming through emergency legislation'' that allows police and other authorities to ignore law and justice, especially individual rights, he said in an interview. ``There are horrible cases (of rights abuses) in the (United) States, real abominations.'' Seizure laws are ``turning police forces into looters, into self-financed bounty hunters,'' because they allow police to keep seized property and cash, he said. Earlier, on the final day of the three-day summit, Naylor told U.N. delegates that countries are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to fight drug-related crime. However, ``we don't know if the cost to society doesn't exceed the benefits . . . we don't know if it's a serious problem or a tremendous crisis.'' And small nations simply can't afford the anti-drug measures urged on them by powerful countries and tied to aid or trade, he said. The report, co-written by Naylor and three American experts, names 48 countries as ``major havens'' for phony corporations and secret bank accounts of drug traders. It was immediately attacked by some Third World delegates as imposing Western values and unreasonable demands on poor countries. Naylor was the only report author to warn that current laws and proposed measures may violate civil rights. He cited a trend among some democracies to seize assets of suspects before they're tried, and then forcing citizens to prove their innocence. ``It reverses the burden of proof,'' Naylor said in the interview. ``You can't seize their money and their property and trample their civil rights and call them drug criminals without proving it. It's utterly Orwellian.'' Naylor advised countries to use existing tax laws and financial investigators to catch people hiding, moving and trying to clean ``dirty money,'' rather than rely on inexpert police. Canadian Solicitor-General Andy Scott, speaking to delegates last night, acknowledged that Canada has become a drug exporter, thanks to a booming marijuana business. U.S. and Canadian officials believe marijuana now ranks as British Columbia's most lucrative agricultural product, with illegal revenues estimated at anywhere from $400 million to more than $3 billion a year. Scott said Canada must do more to prevent young people from trying drugs, boost treatment for addicts and stop the drug trade. A new money-laundering law is to be introduced this fall and will be followed by a ``national strategy on organized crime,'' Scott said. Canadian officials released statistics estimating drug abuse costs each Canadian about $48 a year - a total of $1.37 billion - for health care, prevention and law enforcement, and lost productivity from illness and premature death. - --- Checked-by: Melodi Cornett