June 15, 1999
From The Ottawa Citizen
letters@thecitizen.southam.ca
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/
By Dan Gardner

SENATOR DEMANDS REVIEW OF DRUG POLICY

A Tory Senator will launch a campaign today to have the Senate do what the House of Common won’t: review all of Canada’s drug laws and policies.

Senator Pierre Claude Nolin, angry that the House of Commons "hasn’t taken the issue seriously," wants the Senate to strike a special committee to study drug issues and tour the country to discuss its findings. The questions to be asked are sweeping: Should marijuana be legalized? What about other drugs? Does prohibiting the use of drugs do more harm than good? What new public health methods might be used to ease the damage done by drug use? How are other countries dealing with drugs?

Although Mr. Nolin’s motion to strike the committee will be introduced in the Senate today, following a speech to the Senate last night, a vote won’t be held until next fall to give senators time to study the issue. If Mr. Nolin gets his committee, it will be Canada’s first major review of drug policy since the LeDain commission, which called for the gradual decriminalization of drug possession in 1973.

Some recent history gives Mr. Nolin confidence he will get the support of his colleagues. In 1996, a Senate committee reviewing the Chretien government’s new drug legislation, Bill C-8, was rumoured to favour the decriminalization of marijuana. Although a number of senators did go on the record in favour of decriminalizing marijuana, the committee backed off. It did, however, unanimously recommend that the government create a joint Commons/Senate committee to review Canada’s drug policies from top to bottom.

The government balked. A Commons-only committee was asked to look into drug policy, but only on extremely restrictive terms that ruled out asking fundamental questions like whether criminalization works. When the 1997 election was called, the committee was wrapped up without reporting.

Recent events also add momentum to Mr. Nolin’s campaign. Just last week, Health Minister Allan Rock finally announced the government would study the medical use of marijuana.

That decision followed a push in Parliament by several opposition MPs to legalize medical marijuana.

The government was also embarrassed by two court cases in which AIDS patients who smoked marijuana to stimulate their appetites to stave off emaciation argued that the ban on the drug violated their Charter right to "life, liberty, and security of the person." The courts agreed.

Vancouver MP Libby Davies also had a motion before the Commons in April to set up "heroin maintenance" trials, which would supply addicts with a safe source of heroin, an idea modelled on a successful Swiss program. Ms. Davies’ call is a radical response to a staggering dilemma: In Vancouver East, an average of one person dies by drug overdose every day, and the rate of AIDS infections among injection-drug users has soared to 25 to 35 per cent, the highest in the world. Police have responded as they always have, with crackdowns and street sweeps, which even they admit will do nothing to solve the problems.

But even some police are beginning to question aspects of Canada’s drug policies. In late April, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police suggested possession of marijuana be decriminalized so that rather than laying charges, police could just issue a ticket. The RCMP quickly agreed. This call followed the release of startling statistics showing that in 1997, the mere possession of marijuana accounted for one-half of all drug offences. Add in trafficking charges, and marijuana-related offences account for 72 per cent of all drug charges. Canada’s War on Drugs is largely a War on Marijuana.
See
Two Leading Canadian Anti-Prohibitionists Quoted
As Their Papers Actually Report On Canada’s Marijuana Arrest Statistics.
2 Amazing Articles

For Mr. Nolin, that’s just one of the many facts that show how wrong-headed Canada’s drug policies really are. "We’re on the wrong track with the criminalizing of drugs," he says. He wants drugs to be dealt with through public health policy, not criminal law. Using police, courts, and jails not only does not cut drug abuse, it creates its own serious problems, like the enrichment of underworld gangs and the violence suffered by communities as gangs conduct their trade with guns and murder.

To back up this sweeping challenge to official drug orthodoxy, Mr. Nolin has commissioned a report, Drugs and Drug Policy, by Dr. Diane Riley. In cool and methodical language, Dr. Riley examines the origins of Canada’s drug laws, the costs they inflict, their putative benefits, and alternatives practised in other countries. She concludes that criminalization inflicts far more harm than drug abuse itself.

Outside government circles, this is hardly a unique conclusion. In fact, much the same has been said by every major commission ever to examine the issue. And in the past decade, political commentators from the left, who have traditionally fought drug criminalization, have been joined by prominent social conservatives like William F. Buckley and free-market standard-bearers like Milton Friedman and The Economist. Even Canadian arch-conservative Ted Byfield, publisher of Alberta Report, favours marijuana decriminalization. From dreadlocked snowboarders to bow-tied neo-cons, an odd and impressive coalition has formed in opposition to the War on Drugs.
See
How Conservatives Tuned In, Turned On And Took Over The Legalization Debate In Canada;
A Great Overview
and
Decrim Bill Introduced In Canadian Parliament – By Member of A Conservative Opposition Party!
Still, if there’s been any change at all in officialdom, its only a softening of the rhetoric. Governments and political parties have refused to seriously debate criminalization itself. Mr. Nolin thinks that’s because the public, unlike policy wonks and journalists, haven’t seen the sorry statistics that show just how futile and destructive criminalization really is. Without public pressure, parties and governments prefer to pretend the whole issue doesn’t exist.

But the final responsibility is our governments’, Mr. Nolin writes in the introduction to Dr. Riley’s report, because they "consistently fail to provide the public with impartial information about the real effects on people and society as a whole of drug use."

That’s something the senator thinks his committee can help accomplish by gathering the facts and taking them coast to coast. With the facts freely available, he’s confident the public will not only accept but demand change.

He’ll need that optimism. Mr. Nolin faces a government that has steadfastly ignored not only the growing coalition demanding an end to drug war but even the Liberal Party itself. Two party resolutions, in 1994 and 1996, calling for a full review of Canada’s drug policies failed to nudge the Chretien government even an inch.

It’s a heavy stone Mr. Nolin has set out to roll up a very steep hill.

Copyright: 1999 The Ottawa Citizen

GOVERNMENT BUSINESS

(Marijuananews note: The following is the text of the resolution. We really don’t need to study cannabis any further, but the fact that a Conservative MP would has introduced such a move is in pleasant contrast to the situation in DEAland.)

MOTIONS

For Thursday, June 10, 1999

No. 145.

By the Honourable Senator Nolin:

June 2, 1999-That a Special Committee of the Senate be appointed to reassess Canada’s anti-drug legislation and policies, to carry out a broad consultation of the Canadian public to determine the specifics needs of various regions of the country, where social problems associated with the trafficking and use of illegal drugs is more in evidence, to develop proposals to disseminate information about Canada’s anti-drug policy and, finally, to make recommendations for of an anti-drug strategy developed by and for Canadians under which all levels of government to work closely together to reduce the harm associated with the use of illegal drugs.

That, without being limited in its mandate by the following, the Committee be authorized to:

• review the federal government’s policy to reduce the use of illegal drugs in Canada, its effectiveness, and the extent to which it is fairly enforced;
• develop a national harm reduction policy in order to lessen the negative impact of illegal drug use in Canada, and make recommendations regarding the enforcement of this policy, specifically the possibility of focusing on use and abuse of drugs as a social and health problem;
• study harm reduction models adopted by other countries (treatment programs and parallel programs aimed at illegal drug users) and determine if there is a need to implement them wholly or partially in Canada;
• examine Canada’s international role and obligations under United Nations conventions on narcotics and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in order to determine whether these conventions authorize it to take action other than laying criminal charges;
• explore the effects of cannabis on health and examine the issue of whether decriminalizing cannabis would lead to increased use and abuse in the short and long term.
• examine the possibility of the government using its regulatory power under the Contraventions Act as an additional means of implementing a harm reduction policy, as is commonly done in certain European countries;
• examine any other issue respecting Canada’s anti-drug policy that the Committee considers appropriate to the completion of its mandate.

That the Special Committee be composed of eight Senators and that four members constitute a quorum;

That the Committee have the power to send for persons, papers and records, to examine witnesses, to report from time to time and to print such papers, briefs and evidence from day to day as may be ordered by the Committee;

That the briefs received and testimony heard during consideration of Bill C-8, an Act respecting the control of certain drugs, their precursors and other substances, by the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs during the second session of the thirty-fifth Parliament be referred to the Committee;

That the Committee have the power to engage the services of such counsel (researchers, lawyers, medical specialists, addiction workers, and so on) and technical, information technology, clerical and other personnel as may be necessary for the purposes of its examination;

That the Committee have the power to authorize television, radio and electronic broadcasting, as it deems appropriate, of any or all of its proceedings;

That the Committee be empowered to adjourn from place to place within and outside Canada;

That the Committee be granted leave to sit when the Senate has been adjourned pursuant to subsection 95 (2) of Senate rules;

That the Committee submit its final report not later than two years from the date of it being constituted; and