Thursday 25 June 1998

Second thoughts on the war on the war on drugs
By Charles Gordon

As June 26 nears, it becomes evident that it will be difficult to find someone around here to mark the occasion properly in print, the occasion being the International Day Against Drug Use and Illicit Trafficking.
(Ed. note: After all of the years that I have been involved in this issue, I had never previously heard of "the International Day Against Drug Use and Illicit Trafficking." The fact that it falls on my birthday is all a part of the international plot to annoy the hell out of me.)

June 26 has been marked since 1988 by the World Health Organization, providing a handy forum for political leaders to stand up and be on the side of right. Canada’s Revenue Minister, Herb Dhaliwal, will be doing that tomorrow at a conference in Vancouver.

Unfortunately, campaigning against drug use has become unfashionable lately, particularly in this newspaper, where the news pages feature portraits of people who heroically grow and distribute marijuana for medical uses and the editorial columns at the top of this page rail against the folly of the drug laws.

So it falls to those of us at the bottom of the page to say that—well, maybe it’s not so bad to have some rules, and maybe not much good would come from getting rid of them.

Aside from the libertarian objection to drug laws—that they are laws—there are other quite intelligent reasons to oppose drug laws and they have been stated often enough: Drug laws make criminals of ordinary people; by creating a black market, they make millionaires of criminals; they feed organized crime; and besides that, they are unenforceable.

The logic is persuasive and has been used even by people who don’t inhabit the top of this page. Just the other day a report to the Church of England said that heroin should be decriminalized. Just a few days before that, an international group of prominent people, including 80 Canadians, many of them not loonies, sent a petition to the United Nations General Assembly urging that world leaders reconsider the so-called war on drugs.

Their logic was persuasive too. The war on drugs, they said, gets in the way of efforts to stop the spread of HIV, hepatitis and other diseases.

But there is more to real life than logic, it is necessary, if somewhat uncool, to point out. Part of real life without drug laws is real life with more drug users. Shouldn’t we be thinking about the consequences of that?

Do we want more drug use than there already is? Do we want more drugs, soft or not, in the schools? Do we want more stoned drivers on the roads?

Those are good questions to keep in mind while we ponder the system we have now. That system has all the weaknesses its critics allege. But it has a certain practicality to it. While critics speak of occasional marijuana users languishing in prison, in fact the law winks at the casual smoker, insisting only that he not be too public about it. The law is more interested in the supplier.

The upshot is that possession of marijuana is decriminalized, in a de facto sense. Sale of it is not. That means, in effect, that you can smoke if you want, but you will have to work a bit to get it. That means, in turn, that marijuana is not everywhere, which is probably about the way most of us would want it, although illogical.

Among those who object, an argument frequently raised is about prohibition of alcohol. Prohibition of alcohol was tried and didn’t work, therefore prohibition of drugs should not be attempted.

Excessive logic: Prohibition didn’t work, true, but the logical extension, that there should be no restriction on drinking, is not exactly in effect. We prohibit minors from drinking. We control the sale of booze. We make it, in fact, not readily available. Some call this a restriction on freedom, but others see it as a practical limitation, a recognition that alcohol is a harmful substance in the wrong hands.

It is not illegal, but it does not flow out of the tap either. Restrictions on pornography, sometimes decried by free speech absolutists, work the same way. It is an illogical system, but probably better than the alternative. You’d think marijuana advocates wouldn’t worry that much about logic anyway.
(Ed. note: Speaking of logic, Charles Gordon commits one of the more common logical fallacies of prohibitionist propaganda, the fallacy of the undivided middle, "all or nothing." This is the ploy of claiming that the only alternative to present policies is to allow crack to be sold in vending machines in nursery schools.
In fact, there is a wide range of opinions in the anti-prohibitionist camp, with support for the decriminalization of cannabis and legalization of hemp cultivation and medical marijuana -- and needle exchange -- being the closest to having a consensus. Almost --but not quite -- all favor the de jure legalization of marijuana along the lines of the Dutch de facto model. Beyond that, there is wide divergence of opinion. The prohibitionist like to pretend that anyone who supports any of the above is part of a plot to "legalize all drugs.")

DRUG LAW CRITICS DON’T SEEK TOTAL LEGALIZATION
From the Ottawa Citizen
letters@thecitizen.southam.ca

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/

June 29, 1998

By Eugene Oscapella
(Ed. note: Eugene Oscapella is one of the brightest and most effective anti-prohibitionists – not only in Canada, but internationally. )

DRUG LAW CRITICS DON’T SEEK TOTAL LEGALIZATION

Unfortunately, Charles Gordon’s column ("Second thoughts on the war on the war on drugs," June 25) typifies much of the rather muddled thinking on this issue. It is also very much out of step with the more rational analysis of drug policy that has appeared in the Citizen in recent times.

Among the many well-qualified researchers and reformers I have encountered over the years, and in the extensive literature I have reviewed during that time, only the tiniest minority call for a complete removal of regulatory controls over drugs. The law has a place in shaping our response to drugs. However, that law should by and large not be the hugely counterproductive criminal law.

Mr. Gordon also comments on the international group, including 80 Canadians, that sent a petition to the United Nations urging world leaders to reconsider the war on drugs. He states that "many" of these 80 Canadians were not "loonies," meaning of course that some of them were. Perhaps he would do us the favour of identifying those he considers "loonies," and explaining why he views them as such.

The Canadian signatories to the letter, which was addressed to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, included physicians, public health workers, members of Parliament, street workers who deal with drug users, a Nobel Prize winner, numerous lawyers and many others from the most senior echelons of drug policy research in this country. It may entertain readers to denigrate some of those who oppose the war on drugs by calling them loonies, but it hardly serves to advance intelligent debate on a critically important societal issue.

Mr. Gordon also implies that changing the drug laws will result in more drugs being available in schools. I need only remind him that the primary motivation for people to sell drugs in our schools is the extraordinary profits engendered by the criminal prohibition of drugs. Our current drug laws, by creating an enormously profitable black market, provide the incentive to sell drugs to kids.

Mr. Gordon argues further that possession of marijuana is decriminalized in a de facto sense. How does he explain the fact that the majority of the tens of thousands of criminal charges for drug offences in Canada continue to be for the simple possession of marijuana? Some drugs, including marijuana, can cause harm under some circumstances, as can caffeine, alcohol and fat-laden foods. However, far and away the greatest damage linked to drugs in our society is that caused by the punitive prohibitionist policies that we have so recklessly constructed around drugs and that we so blindly continue to reinforce.

Eugene Oscapella, Ottawa
Barrister and solicitor, Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy

Copyright 1998 The Ottawa Citizen

Ottawa Citizen Editorial
June 29, 1998

letters@thecitizen.southam.ca

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/

COMMON DRUG SENSE

Common sense is a much-praised quality these days, but it does have its limitations. Nowhere is that more evident than in the debate on drugs.

Writing on this page last Thursday, in response to, well, us, the Citizen’s estimable Charles Gordon used a couple of arguments out of "real life," as opposed to "pure logic," to support the continued illegality of recreational drugs. Unfortunately, they were also wrong. Strange as it sounds, common sense can make for bad drug policy.

Granted, common sense does seem to say that if illegal drugs already available on the streets were made legal, there would be far more of them, and far more people using them. But this is dead wrong.

Between 1973 and 1978, 11 American states decriminalized marijuana— effectively making possession of it no more serious than a traffic violation. Consumption trends did not change. They remained the same as in neighbouring states that kept marijuana possession as a serious offence.

Other jurisdictions that have decriminalized marijuana, including Germany and some Australian states, have had exactly the same experience. In the Netherlands, marijuana can be bought in some cafes as easily as buying a beer, yet marijuana use in the Netherlands is no greater than in America— where mere possession can result in a life sentence. In fact, between 1992 and 1994, only 7.2 per cent of Dutch youths between 12 and 15 years old tried marijuana, compared to 13.5 per cent of Americans the same age.

World-wide experience has proved what drug reformers have long argued: Those who want to use drugs already do; those who don’t, won’t—no matter what the legal status of drugs may be.

Another bit of common sense has it that Canadian law-enforcers already treat marijuana possession as no big deal. After all, with one in four Canadians having used it, most of us know people who smoke it without great fear of the police. The law "winks" at pot, right?

Wrong. Figures for 1995 show that, of 63,851 drug-related charges, 49 per cent, or 31,299, were for marijuana possession. Not sale. Possession.
(Ed. note: Canada’s population is roughly one tenth that of DEAland, so their arrest rate is around one half ours, but the proportion of total arrests that are for marijuana are close to the same.)

The consequences of these charges are serious. A conviction for simple possession, even if it results in a discharge, means a criminal record. First offences carry fines of up to $1,000 and up to six months in jail. Penalties are doubled for second offences. The courts typically do give the first offender a nominal fine—and a criminal record—but repeat "offenders" are still being sent to jail, particularly if they have other criminal offences.

In drug policy, nothing is what it seems. Common sense is not enough—drug prohibition must be put in the crucible of fact.