Why Canada's Drug Policy Won't Check Addiction

"Canada's anti-drug strategy a failure, study suggests," read the headline of a brief cbc story that circulated through a handful of news outlets before dying out early this year. The British Columbia Centre for Excellence in hiv/aids had just published a paper revealing that almost three-quarters of the $368 million allocated to Canada's Drug Strategy in 2004 2005 was spent on enforcement initiatives aimed at staunching the supply of drugs. The authors pointed out that despite this war on drugs, the rate of consumption was higher than ever: in 2002, 45 percent of Canadians reported having used illicit drugs in their lives, up from 28.5 percent in 1994.

[continues 1848 words]