Pubdate: Sat, 09 Sep 2000 Source: National Post (Canada) Copyright: 2000 Southam Inc. Contact: 300 - 1450 Don Mills Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3R5 Fax: (416) 442-2209 Feedback: http://www.nationalpost.com/commentary.asp?s2letters Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/ Forum: http://forums.canada.com/~nationalpost Author: David Frum, National Post TARGET 'VICTIMS' TO SOLVE THE DRUG PROBLEM Earlier this week, police announced the largest heroin bust in Canadian history. In two separate raids, one in Toronto and one in Vancouver, they intercepted 156 kilos of heroin worth almost $150-million on the street. I hope it does not traduce the courage and hard work of the police to wonder: What exactly have they accomplished? Daniel Moynihan, a U.S. Senator, likes to tell the following story about his experience commanding Richard Nixon's war on drugs. In August, 1969, he negotiated a complicated deal whereby India, Turkey and France all pledged for the first time to co-operate in stamping out poppy growing and heroin manufacture. "Shortly after my return I found myself in a helicopter with George P. Shultz heading from Camp David. I told him of my triumph. He looked up from his papers and nodded. No, I came back, this is really BIG. Same response. More than a little deflated, I pondered for a moment, and then suggested that what he was thinking was that as long as there is a demand there will be a supply. Whereupon that great statesman and sometime professor of economics at the University of Chicago looked up from his papers, smiled, and said, 'You know, there is hope for you yet.' " Here's what Shultz was driving at. The U.S. government estimates that the poppy fields already in cultivation produce enough opium paste to manufacture some 410 metric tons of heroin a year -- or more than 37,000 kilos. World heroin consumption is estimated at a little less than half that amount. In other words, the world's police forces would have to make more than three 156-kilo busts a day, every single day, with no time off for Sundays simply to blot up the world's excess heroin production. But of course busts on such a scale are unusual and difficult achievements. The biggest single heroin bust in recent years was scored by the Turks in 1998: It netted 480 kilos, or less than five days' worth of heroin production. And if such interceptions ever become more common, the world's heroin producers can easily increase their production. Heroin is an agricultural commodity and as any farmer can tell you, the normal condition of agricultural markets is glut. The surest sign that interdiction is failing to crimp supply is the steady decline in the real price of drugs. Retired general Barry McCaffrey, President Clinton's drug czar, told Congress last year that the average price of a gram of heroin on the street tumbled by nearly half between 1981 and 1998, from US$3,115 to US$1,800. And while that 1981 gram was typically only 19% pure, the 1998 gram was 25% pure. Despite the 20-year war on drugs, supply is pulling farther and farther ahead of demand. And demand, after a welcome decline in the early 1990s, has once again begun to rise. Proponents of the drug-interdiction strategy often argue that minus police efforts to intercept drugs heading our way, the North American drug problem would be even worse than it is. Myself, I doubt that, and sometimes wonder whether drug-interception may not actually be aggravating the problem. The premise behind drug interdiction is this: Drug abuse is something that happens because foreigners are thrusting drugs upon us -- er, sorry, "our children." The pushers are the villains, "our children" are the victims. As victims, "our children" require help and protection. We offer them drug treatment programs to recover from the addiction into which they have been led, but we also try to smooth their way back into society -- by, for example, defining drug addiction as a disability against which employers and landlords may not discriminate. But there's another way of looking at this story. Maybe the foreigners aren't such villains and "our children" aren't such victims. As dreadful as the harm done to us by drugs may be, the harm done to countries like Colombia and Mexico is far worse. North American drug users have thrust hundreds of billions of dollars into the hands of the most evil and violent people in those countries, and they have used that wealth to create vast criminal kingdoms that corrupt justice and overwhelm lawful authority. From the point of view of people in those countries, the drug problem is as much one of our money invading them as of their drugs invading us. Our money will continue to invade them so long as our people continue to use drugs on the scale they do. Drugs will cease to be a problem only when our people cease to buy them. How can we persuade them to do that? Locking them up is, of course, one possibility. But something like 15 million North Americans use illicit drugs in the course of a year. Only a police state could arrest them all -- and with a year in jail costing upwards of $25,000 not even a police state could afford to. We could, as the Americans do, arrest the more flagrant users; people caught with unusually large amounts of drugs or people who sell drugs to other users. But that policy gives the green light to the vast majority who use drugs only occasionally. What, however, if we jettisoned the idea of drug user as victim altogether? What if we treated him as a rational person capable of making a choice -- and encouraged him to understand the frightening (but non-criminal) consequences of his choice? We would then experiment with measures like these: denying drug addiction its status as a disability, freeing landlords to evict drug- users and employers to fire them; testing public employees for drug use and firing them if they fail; testing recipients of welfare and Indian Affairs money for drug use and cutting them off if they fail. Here's one final thought, the most radical of all: Instead of the government trying to lure drug users into free treatment programs, perhaps it ought to consider offering such programs only to those willing to pay for them, either in cash or with labour. The point would be to send potential users a message: If you get yourself addicted, it is going to be your problem. Be warned. For until our people take the warning, our police can stack the kilos of heroin five yards high at their triumphant press conferences -- the drug problem will get no better. - --- MAP posted-by: John Chase