Georgia Straight
for January 1995, Article 3

B.C. Chief Coroner Vince Cain must be taken seriously when he recommends the decriminalization of drugs including hard drugs.

The problem of drugs has beset mankind throughout recorded history but B.C.'s modern version of the problem has been the focal point of law enforcement since I can remember - and that's a bit of time, I'll tell you.

When I was a kid, we were told not to go down on the dikes near what is now McCleery Golf Club because a "dope fiend" would leap out at us and inject us with heroin thus addicting us for life. No kidding. In those days, heroin busts were a big news item, headline news - after all, Vancouver was a small city and yet it was the entry point for a lot of illegal drugs.

Let's start out with the proposition that drugs are bad and some are worse than others. But before we go too far down that road, tell a raging alcoholic or his family that heroin addiction is worse than booze. Tell someone trying to shake a four pack a day cigarette habit that it's easier to kick than a hard drug habit. Those who have fought both will tell you that nicotine is the harder.

And while we are at it - let's put things in perspective. Drugs are drugs. And arguably the most dangerous - the one which causes the most social damage in the world is alcohol.

I have some administrative experience with heroin for I was part of the government which brought in the Heroin Treatment Act of the mid seventies - indeed, I spoke in favour of it in the Legislature. It permitted authorities to arrest and detain heroin addicts and by forcing them to stay off drugs, cure them of the habit. At least that was the theory.

It was bad legislation for many reasons and, ironically, after speaking for it and voting for it became my lot in 1980, as Health Minister, to preside over the dismantling of it.

The police argue that the decriminalization of hard drugs will send a message to young people that drugs are OK. I suppose I would be more impressed with this argument if the message we were now sending young people was keeping them away from drugs. It is not in the nature of many young people to heed the warnings of their elders - and all of us who bought a case of beer from the bootlegger know how much fun it is to defy both the law and your parents at the same time.

The police also argue that decriminalization will bring a flood of addicts to British Columbia. This is a real worry but offset, I think, by the knowledge that most addicts don't ever stray more than a couple of blocks from their source.

The Police point to the UK where, they say, heroin was decriminalized. The trouble with the argument is that it wasn't decriminalized - the British embarked upon a registration system for addicts where they could legally get drugs if they submitted to treatment. It didn't work for a number of reasons but not for the reasons the police say.

There can surely be no doubt about the economic dynamic called supply and demand. Where demand exceeds supply, the price goes up and vice versa. Of course it is rarely vice versa when a huge portion of your law enforcement goes into preventing drugs from being in supply. This means that drugs are expensive and hugely so after a big drug bust.

The cost to society of maintaining this low supply curve is staggering. We spend enormous sums on law enforcement not just to keep out drugs and arrest peddlers, but to pick up addicts and take them to detox centers where they become a drain on the health and social welfare systems. And what, I wonder, does it really cost society in law enforcement when you take into account all the crimes committed in order to raise drug money?

And how much does it cost us as consumers to whom the cost of shoplifting is passed by merchants.

I don't believe that you can simply dismantle the system. I agree with Attorney-General Colin Gabelmann when he calls for serious discussions amongst the country's Attorneys-general and the Minister of Justice.

But haven't we discussed this thing long enough, going back to the LeDain Commission in the 70s?

The answer is that everything has its time. It wasn't time in the period which was really still the 60s to try decriminalization. We weren't ready for it. But perhaps the time has come.

No matter what we do, it will not make things perfect. That's been our trouble, I think - we want to come up with a program which will make the drug problem go away. The plain fact is that we will always have a drug abuse problem - hell, we'll have that as long as booze is available.

What we do know is that the methods stoutly defended by the police have utterly failed. They argue that they haven't failed because the problem would be worse with decriminalization.

The Chief Coroner doesn't agree, neither do I, for whatever that matters.

And perhaps it gets down to this - I believe it is worth a try. If you can "decriminalize" something, you can "criminalize" it again if it doesn't work.

Attorney-General Gabelmann and his colleagues should take Chief Coroner Cain's suggestions to the next stage, encouraging as much public debate as possible.