Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Is Harper Organized Crime's Best Friend?

Yes, because he believes in perpetuating the 'war on drugs', even though it supports a lucrative black market, and increases the likelihood of young people being tempted to experiment with drugs.

Harper portrays himself as being tough on crime. But the brand of toughness he advocates is not the answer; it is a major part of the problem. For over 70 years, the "Get Tough on Crime" mantra has been rolled out again and again as the way to address drug use, with the sorry results we see today: Organized crime flourishes as never before, and new and more dangerous recreational drugs like crystal meth have been invented and marketed. These are only two of the undesirable consequences resulting from the combination of bad laws with bad habits. Without the bad laws, the bad habits would be fewer and much easier to treat because black markets do not flourish where there are legal alternatives.

Our MPs are not elected to be our mommies and daddies, they are not empowered to act in loco parentis, but are sent to Parliament to be our servants. It is none of their business which recreational drugs adult Canadians use as long as we do so in a peaceful and orderly fashion. And that peace and order are to be obtained, not through the disastrous policy of criminalization, but through legalization, licensing, and regulation. The Harper Government has made an exceedingly bad choice in continuing to use the Criminal Code to deal with a minor health problem.

Minor? Yes, minor. The worst effects of addiction--disease, homelessness, theft, gang profits and gang wars--arise directly out of the illegality of drug use. Addiction is not desirable; it can have ill effects upon the body, but it only becomes a wide-scale social menace when it is made a crime. (And why is addiction the only medical condition for which jail is the first choice of treatment? The Government should be charged with practising medicine without a licence for usurping the physician's role.)

The single cheapest and most effective move against organized crime is to eliminate its black market, by legalizing all drug use, and using licensing provisions and other regulations to control their production and sale, as we do with tobacco and alcohol. This does not mean that all drugs would be easily available; for some, prescriptions would be required--what it does mean is that anyone who manages to become an addict (more about this in a moment), could go to their family doctor and be treated, including maintenance doses, if required, for both the addiction and the underlying causes which promoted their use of drugs. The police and the courts are not only not required to deal with drug use, their involvement creates the unacceptable conditions we must cope with today--people with addiction and mental health problems languishing in jail or on the streets, a dearth of funds for treatment, and hundreds of millions of dollars wasted annually trying to enforce the unenforceable, while criminal gangs rake in enormous profits.

But don't we have to draw the line somewhere? Shouldn't we discourage drug use by any means we can?

Yes, we should draw a line--between those acts which intentionally (or by willful negligence) cause direct harm to others, and those which do not. Impaired driving, whether due to drugs, alcohol, or fatigue, is properly deemed a crime, because it directly endangers others; the responsible use of, and trade in, marijuana cannot properly be deemed a crime because it directly endangers no one. (This is not to claim that there are never any negative effects from drug use; of course there are; any substance can be abused, some more easily than others. But such negative effects not only lack the direct, intentional damage of true crimes such as theft and murder, but are also much more difficult to deal with, if they are criminalized.)

As for discouraging drug use, take, for example, the control of a legal, although dangerous drug, tobacco. Smoking tobacco (an addiction which, by all accounts is at least as hard to break as heroin use) has successfully and increasingly been reduced among all age groups, through public pressure, and civil laws regulating where smokers can smoke, how cigarettes can be displayed and advertised, and so forth, along with a wide array of methods and products to aid in quitting smoking. Criminal sanctions have not only been unnecessary, but making tobacco use illegal (as a few have suggested) would create a money-spinning new commodity for the black market, and a potent incentive to encourage young people to start smoking (being illegal would make it seem glamorous and 'cool'). Criminalizing drugs does not decrease the danger of young people using them; it increases it.

If drugs were legalized and regulated, it would be much more difficult for young people to get hold of them because no one is going to bother bootlegging drugs when their prospective customers can more easily obtain their products from licensed outlets. Of course, minors can obtain alcohol and tobacco now, and it's also true, especially as taxes on them climb, that some black market activity in cigarettes takes place, but neither occur on the scale they would if the possession and use of alcohol and tobacco were criminal offences. The difference between drug use being a minor medical problem, and being a major social one, lies in the application of appropriate laws; the Criminal Code is not an appropriate law for dealing with either a medical or a social problem.

Because the Harper Tories would rather impose their private morality on the rest of us than recognize the right of adult Canadians to make up our own minds about which recreational drugs to use (why do the Tories only believe in less government when it comes to private businesses; why not less in our private lives?), criminal gangs are assured of a continuing flood of cash with which to finance their moves into legitimate businesses, and their wars amongst themselves. The police and the Government want to continue the hopeless battle, even though, like the Hydra of Greek myth, the more gang leaders are cut down, the more spring up to take their place--the illicit drug trade is simply too profitable for criminals to ignore.

Harper and his Tories believe harsh penalties deter criminals. However, the evidence shows that real deterrence is based more on the perception of the likelihood of being caught, than on the penalty for the crime. Penalties can come into play when criminals are trying to avoid capture, and directly face the prospect of long prison sentences; but this will tend to make them more dangerous, not more law-abiding.

Unfortunately, Harper's Government, wraps itself in the tattered flag of moral self-righteousness, continuing the war, not because it is effective (it is not; even police admit they catch only about 10% of the drug dealing going on), and regardless of the great harm it causes (go to http://www.elizabethrhettwoods.ca/beyond_the_pale.cfm, "Why criminal sanctions against recreation drug use are unconstitutional" and "A Citizen's Response" for discussions of some of the many and various harms arising from the war on drugs), but because they don't want to appear to condone drug use. To maintain a pretence of morality, a Tory Government would rather continue an immoral policy (one which creates the very ills it purports to address), than admit that criminalizing drug use has always been a losing proposition.

The fact is that adult Canadians wish to engage in various activities which others refer to as 'vices'. Making any such activity illegal drives it underground, to the great profit of criminal gangs. The Government is not competent to decide which 'vice' it will approve, and which it will not; that is not its proper function. The Government's proper function is to provide the legal framework within which adult Canadians can enjoy the 'vices' of our choice in a peaceful, orderly, and responsible manner. The Government should, for example, ensure that recreational drugs are pure, accurately measured, correctly labelled (including appropriate warnings, if any), and sold through licensed outlets, including, in some cases, by prescription; that games of chance are honest, and gaming houses do not encourage problem gamblers; that brothels are small, quiet, medically responsible, and co-operatively owned and operated by adults; and that all who profit from 'vice' pay their fair share of taxes.

Under this regimen, the hundreds of millions of dollars saved from no longer trying to enforce bad, counter-productive laws, would be available for education and treatment, and young people would face far less temptation to experiment with drugs.

Is Harper organized crime's best friend? Yes, because the other leaders, while somewhat cowardly on this issue, are potentially persuadable to at least begin to establish a reasonable drug policy by legalizing marijuana. But Harper is a man of convictions, and will never abandon his 'get tough on crime' stance, no matter how ineffective it is, because he believes in it. He believes that using drugs is wrong, and that wrong-doers should be punished. If punishment doesn't 'cure' them, then that's their fault, not Harper's. Therefore, as long as the Tories form Government, they will continue to befriend criminal gangs by continuing, through the 'war on drugs', to support the source of the gangs' wealth, to the detriment of the rest of us. Armoured in self-righteousness, Harper prefers to act as Big Daddy to citizens, and sugar daddy to criminals.

The toughness needed now is the courage to admit the failure of 'the war on drugs', to stand up to the United States, and the inevitable outcry from those who wish to tell everyone else what to do, and to bring in a civil regime of licensing and regulating recreational drug use.

posted by Elizabeth Rhett Woods at 2:19 PM

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