In October 2007 the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper signalled its tougher stance on illicit drug use when it announced its National Anti-Drug Strategy.
Earlier strategies had stood on four pillars: prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and enforcement. The 2007 plan dropped “harm reduction.” A study published in the International Journal of Drug Policy (March 2009) calculates that, “law enforcement initiatives continue to receive the overwhelming majority of drug strategy funding (70%) while prevention (4%), treatment (17%), and harm reduction (2%) combined continue to receive less than a quarter of the overall funding.”
Under the new act, traffickers face longer prison sentences and judges will no longer be able to offer alternatives to jail.
Criticism of New Rules for Drug Offences
Those who favour the decriminalization of drugs say Bill C-10 will lead to criminal records and incarceration for minor drug offences as well as those involved in trafficking.
Here’s Eugene Oscapella, a lawyer who was a founding member of the Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy speaking at a forum on Bill C-10 and quoted by the National Post (October 2011): “I teach a criminology course at the University of Ottawa. Eighty percent of my students [would be] criminals under [Bill C-10]. About 10-20% of them would be liable for a mandatory minimum sentence of two years for simply passing a tablet of ecstasy at a party.”
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association criticizes the new law saying: “The drug provisions include low-level drug offences – producing as little as six marijuana plants – and extremely broad aggravating factors which would target all those who rent or live in a house they do not own.”
Diversion from Prison Works for Drug Addicts
More generally, the Open Society Foundations prefers options other than putting people behind bars for most drug offences saying many users are driven into addiction by poverty.
In prison “Drug dependencies largely go untreated…HIV and Hepatitis C spread easily. Large numbers of inmates take up drug use in prison, and many overdose shortly after release. Prison is simply not the answer to drug use and minor drug-related offences. We need to find a better, more humane response.”
In August 2005 the U.K.’s Drug Policy Alliance noted in a report that, “Drug treatment is demonstrably more effective than incarceration in reducing substance abuse and crime and helping people improve their lives. It’s also cost effective. In California, it costs an average of $31,000 to incarcerate a person for a year but only about $3,300 to provide treatment.”
U.S. Example Shows Problems with Incarceration
California went down the road of getting tough on drug offences with punishment rather than harm reduction. The prisons rapidly filled to overflowing and then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006 declared a “state of emergency.” He said, the state’s prisons, had become places “of extreme peril.”
And, in December 2010, the New York Times commented: “There is almost unanimous condemnation of California-style mass incarceration, which has led to no reduction in serious crime and has turned many inmates into habitual criminals.
“America’s prison system is now studied largely because of its failure…”
Justice Minister Defends Law
Canada’s Justice Minister, Rob Nicholson, says critics of the crime bill are misinformed.
In a December 2011 interview with the National Post he said Bill C-10 was not aimed at young people smoking a little dope: “I want to make that very clear because it was not clear in some of the criticisms. If somebody was thrown in jail under this bill, they were in the business of trafficking.”
Nicholson adds that most laws covering marijuana are not changed unless someone is caught with an “eight pound joint.”
Sources
- “Canada’s New Federal ‘National Anti-drug Strategy’: an Informal Audit of Reported Funding Allocation.” K. DeBeck, et al., International Journal of Drug Policy, March 2009.
- “Tough on Crime, Short on Facts.” Jonathan Kay, National Post, October 20, 2011.
- “What is Bill C-10.” Canadian Civil Liberties Association, undated.
- “Drug Policy Alliance 10 Year Review.” Drug Policy Alliance, August 1, 2005.
- “Drug Policy in Portugal.” Artur Domoslawski, Open Society Foundations, June 2011.
- The Crime of Punishment.” New York Times editorial, December 6, 2010. “Omnibus Crime Bill Will Target Gangs not Teens, Justice Minister Says.” Tobi Cohen, National Post, December 30, 2011.
Rupert Taylor - Rupert Taylor is the editor of a magazine that provides background to current events.
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