CKNW Editorial
for June 19, 2001

Canadian Society – indeed all society – has to do some serious reckoning. Introspection and considerable thought is needed to solve a huge problem – narcotics.

First off, it would be helpful if we disabused ourselves of some prejudices and we could start with tobacco and alcohol. These are no less drugs than heroin, cocaine or any other prohibited drug. Indeed tobacco is arguably the most addictive of all drugs and the cost of alcohol to society is incalculably high. We have to admit these facts or we’re simply not looking the problem squarely in the eye.

We have all grown up with a prejudice in favour of alcohol, and until fairly recent times tobacco and against other narcotics. I was taught about dope fiends … heroin was such a destroyer of human beings that in my youth there was talk of life sentences for addicts. I don’t for a moment say that criminalized substances are good for one – they’re not. My point is that they are, for the most part, no worse than the ones we declare legal.

I have been part of the prejudiced society – the government of which I was a member passed the Heroin Treatment Act of 1978 – and I supported it in the Legislature. It assumed that heroin addiction was such a serious problem that addicts, for no more than being addicted, should be thrown in jail, kept off drugs on the assumption that this sort of cold turkey treatment would make them well. It was legislation passed with the loftiest of motives but it didn’t work and never could have worked. Let us, then, start with the proposition that a drug is a drug, period.

Next let’s ask ourselves this – how much right does society have to tell people what they can and cannot ingest? We may make it unlawful to smoke in certain places on the grounds that innocent bystanders will be harmed but we take no steps to stop people smoking if they wish … even though it is a deadly habit. We outlaw drinking and driving and other anti-social behaviour associated with booze but we don’t stop people drinking. Indeed, as a society we encourage drinking by supporting alcohol industries and selling their products through government stores. I don’t for one minute suggest that we should ban smoking or drinking – I just think we should cease being hypocrites and admit that for no better reason than historic use, we permit and indeed encourage people to use some forms of drugs while collectively setting our hair on fire if they use others.

This country and the United States especially have permitted a huge industry to develop around illegal drugs. Who can possible count the cost in our two countries dedicated to eliminating illegal drugs? When you think of all the law enforcement money, the policemen, the jailers, the health professionals, the customs people, lawyers and so on involved it’s clear that we have a largely tax funded billions of dollars industry going here. Indeed the industry is so large that one has to think that it’s contrary to the personal interests of thousands of people that anything change.

Now we have become hypocrites. We hassle hell out of anyone buying drugs, jail him if he’s caught, send his seller to jail big time yet at the same time we provide the addict with a safe place to take his dope. Again, don’t misunderstand me – I agree with the route we’re going but it does illustrate our basic hypocrisy.

Perhaps one of the first things we should do as a society is stop making moral judgments. It is these moral judgments on the use of illegal drugs made by people who regularly use and abuse the legal ones that blocks our thinking processes. These prejudices are in part rooted in racism – our narcotics statutes were originally directed at Orientals and what we perceived was a plethora of opium dens in Chinatown. The prejudices are also rooted in social snobbery – those who can afford martinis and single malt Scotch whiskey look askance at the smoking of marijuana or the snorting of cocaine … and, to add even more hypocrisy to the mix, draw a distinction between smoking pot or sniffing coke in the parlours of Vancouver’s west side and the use of illegal drugs on the east side. If we abandoned those prejudices, what would we see?

We would see addiction as a health problem not a law enforcement one for starters. I’m not saying that people can’t avoid getting into drugs – they can. But we treat the unhappy consequences of overeating, over drinking or tobacco use as health problem even those people can choose not to follow those lifestyles – why should it be different for other addictions?

We would also see that we have created the world’s largest and purest marketplace where the profit in the product is so high that addicts must steal and even kill to sustain their habits. The amount we lose to drug related crime is incalculable. In fact, most property crime is drug related and it happens because the drugs sought are illegal thus sold for many times over their actual cost. Goodness knows it’s been said enough times by enough people but surely we must take is to take the profit out of drugs and that can only be done by decriminalizing them. There is no other answer.

But, the law enforcement supporters say, this will only make the problem worse and you will have more and more people taking drugs. But I ask, where is the evidence for that? I think the better argument is that young people are drawn by the mystique of illegality – just as kids when I went to school enjoyed buying the case of beer or bottle of whiskey from the bootlegger as much as the consumption.

Of course, any program of decriminalizing must be fortified with solid education programs, especially in the schools.

What we must also understand is that there is no happy ending to this story. Whatever we do as a society all drugs will present a very serious health and social problem. There is no magic bullet. But what we have to do, sooner or later, is cleanse ourselves of our prejudices, assess the problem rationally, and make common sense decisions.

If we do that, the very first thing that will come clear to us is that the enforcement option has failed us badly. The moment we admit that to ourselves we will have taken a giant step towards making things better, much better.