Paul Weinberg

OTTOWA, Dec 26 2002 (IPS) — Canada is pressing ahead with efforts to decriminalise some drug use despite pressure from the United States to maintain its zero-tolerance federal drug policy

The government of Prime Minister Jean Chretien is examining the option of decriminalising possession of small amounts of marijuana, while the city of Vancouver is leading the country in establishing safe injection sites for heroin addicts.

Canadian courts have issued a series of rulings that allow AIDS sufferers and those with chronic illnesses to smoke marijuana to alleviate their pain. Last week, a Quebec judge ruled that an effort to prosecute Montreal’s Compassion Club for distributing marijuana for medicinal purposes violated patients’ rights.

The policy shift has not gone unnoticed by the United States, which accounts for 90 percent of Canada’s international trade and espouses a hard line against illegal drugs.

In a December television interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Robert Maginnis, a drug policy adviser to U.S. President George Bush, warned that Canada-U.S. border trade faced disruption if Ottawa amends its criminal code.

ôI don’t want to get to the point where we’re calling for a boycott of Canadian products,” Maginnis said.

Critics of the U.S. stance point out that several European countries have gone further than Canada in plans to decriminalise marijuana and create programmes for heroin addicts.

Canada’s geographical proximity and cultural similarity to the U.S. are at the root of the U.S. government’s uneasiness, says Eugene Oscapella, an Ottawa lawyer and a co-founder of the Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy.

ôIf the Americans look at the Dutch, [they say] ‘oh sure, they have changed their laws but they are European.’ It is tougher to dismiss Canadians,” Oscapella told Inter Press Service.

ôIf Canada proceeds with reform, a lot of Americans are going to sit up and take notice, and that is exactly what the U.S. administration is fearful of,” he said.

Some critics of a less punitive drug policy, including Canadian chiefs of police, the socially conservative Canadian Alliance party and high-profile historian Jack Granatstein, are calling on the Canadian government to maintain the status quo rather than incur the wrath of the United States.

But Eugene Oscapella warned of a Canadian backlash if the U.S. tries to impose its ôwar on drugs” ideology on Canadians, who are increasingly skeptical of spending billions of dollars to prosecute addicts and drug traffickers.

It is estimated that Canada spends about 500 million dollars a year to combat illicit drug use, mostly through the use of the criminal justice system to arrest, prosecute and imprison people.

Washington’s campaign under a succession of U.S. presidents ôhasn’t stopped the flow of drugs into the country and has not stopped people from using drugs,” Oscapella argued.

Statements by John Walters, the director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Policy, that a relaxation of Canada’s marijuana regulations poses a grave threat to the United States are simply ômisinformation,” says Robert Sharpe, a spokesperson for the Washington-based Drug Policy Alliance.

Walters has told reporters that decriminalisation north of the border will expand the inflow of marijuana into the U.S. from the Canadian west coast province of British Columbia and worsen ôan addiction problem for us.”

But Sharpe says that most marijuana consumed by Americans is either grown in the U.S. or originates in Mexico.

He also noted that the U.S. has the highest imprisonment rate in the world as a result of the war on drugs. ôThere are a lot of vested interests in keeping things as they are. If you take marijuana out of the equation, you can’t justify a 50 billion drug war gravy train.”

The U.S. drug czar’s focus on Canadian decriminalisation of marijuana is also odd because a number of U.S. states have already gone in a similar direction, says Oscapella.

Much of the pressure to amend Canada’s drug laws comes from Vancouver, which faces a serious heroin problem in its downtown eastside.

ôHistorically, culturally, politically, the police have led the debate on drugs. It has always been viewed as a criminal justice issue,” said Libby Davies, the Member of Parliament for Vancouver East.

Davies applauded the recent election in her city of Mayor Larry Campbell and the Coalition of Progressive Electors party, which swept the Vancouver city council on a platform that cast drug addiction as a health issue.

All the main mayoral candidates, including Campbell, a former city coroner, supported the establishment of safe injection sites as part of a four-pillar drug strategy.

ôThere was an enormous mandate there. Because by the end of the campaign, it was clear that it was only a question of timing and nuance, not whether people supported the four-pillar strategy. Where and when we want to do it.. And the guy in the city who wanted to do it as soon as possible [i.e. Larry Campbell] won in a landslide,” said Geoff Meggs, the mayor’s spokesperson.