Candid police voices must be heard in drug debate

Candid police voices must be heard in drug debate; Failed enforcement efforts highlight need for new approach to addiction

Times Colonist (Victoria) 
Sun Mar 14 2010 
Page: D3 
Section: Comment 
Byline: Evan Wood 
Column: Evan Wood 
Source: Times Colonist

Truth is often said to be the first casualty of war, and in many ways this is true of the war on drugs. There remain critical public health areas where the gap between scientific evidence and public policy persists.

But this disparity is most evident in the response to illicit drugs -- in Victoria, in Canada and around the world.

For this reason, it is unfortunate that Victoria police Const. David Bratzer was recently ordered not to share his views at a city-sponsored forum on drug policy. As a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Bratzer is well-positioned to describe how the war on drugs has resulted in a number of severe, unintended consequences.

Most importantly, it has created a massive global illicit drug market, with an estimated annual value of $330 billion. These enormous illegal revenues are the primary driver of organized crime in B.C. and threaten the political stability of entire regions, such as Mexico and Afghanistan.

A related concern is the association between drug prohibition and violence as organized crime groups try to control these profits. The recent upsurge in drug-related violence in Mexico occurred immediately after an escalation in the fight against Mexican drug traffickers. The recent gun violence on Canada's streets is driven by these same forces.

Paradoxically, despite the U.S. alone spending more than $1 trillion on law enforcement approaches to drug control, ever-increasing enforcement expenditures have not prevented the growth of this market.

Instead, a global long-term pattern of falling drug prices and increasing drug purity and supply has been observed.

Further, according to the World Health Organization's World Mental Health Survey Initiative, countries with more prohibitive drug policies do not demonstrate lower levels of drug use than countries with policies that focus on public-health approaches.

In the U.S., where the war on drugs has been fought most vigorously, the imprisonment of illicit drug offenders has contributed to the world's highest incarceration rate. Primarily as a result of drug-law enforcement, one in eight African-American males in the age group 25 to 29 was incarcerated on any given day in the U.S. in 2007, despite the fact that ethnic minorities consume illicit drugs at comparable rates to other subpopulations in the US.

Although the U.S. is now moving away from mandatory minimum sentences, the Harper government's current proposal for mandatory minimum sentences for drug offences should help reproduce this pattern in Canada, with taxpayers footing the bill.

Finally, there is a range of public-health concerns directly stemming from the war on drugs, chief among them the transmission of HIV among injection drug users. HIV outbreaks commonly occur in prison and transmission has been directly linked to policies that priorize law enforcement over public health. Here again, the taxpayer is the loser, given that every case of HIV infection leads to an estimated $250,000 in medical expenses.

To date, Canada's law-enforcement community does not have a stellar track record on speaking out against the expanding societal and fiscal burden from the war on drugs.

For instance, the Harper government's justification for its efforts to close the Vancouver supervised injecting facility has been largely based on purchased "critiques" of the program. Later disclosures revealed these essays were actually funded by the RCMP and posted on a website hosted by the conservative law enforcement lobby group known as the Drug Free America Foundation. The RCMP's failure to publicly acknowledge these shenanigans has helped prevent Victoria from initiating an injecting facility evaluation of its own.

In 2001, before the Harper government released its new anti-drug strategy -- which has redoubled emphasis on law enforcement -- an Auditor General of Canada report that examined Canada's drug strategy found 93 per cent of federal funding already went toward law enforcement. "Of particular concern is the almost complete absence of basic management information on spending of resources, on expectations, and on results of an activity that accounts for almost $500 million each year," it noted.

When law enforcement commands such an enormous share of public dollars for its unsuccessful efforts to control illicit drugs, it is a disservice to the public when rank-and-file officers are prevented from speaking the truth about the war on drugs.

Dr. Evan Wood is the director of the Urban Health Program at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and associate professor in the University of British Columbia's department of medicine.

Edition: Final 
Story Type: Column 
Length: 723 words 
Idnumber: 201003140079