Pubdate: Fri, 7 Mar 2008
Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON)
Copyright: 2008 The Ottawa Citizen
Contact: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326
Author: Dan Gardner, The Ottawa Citizen
Referenced: INCB annual report http://drugsense.org/url/cgfepnHW
Cited: Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network http://www.aidslaw.ca
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?137 (Needle Exchange)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Insite (Insite)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?142 (Supervised Injection Sites)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Stephen+Harper

CLOSED MINDS

According to what the media described as "a United Nations report 
released Wednesday" - more on that description in a moment - the soft 
treatment of celebrity drug offenders gives young people the 
impression that drug use is no big thing. Thus, it "could undermine 
wider social efforts at reducing demand for drugs."

So that's it. It's all because Robert Downey Jr. isn't in prison. If 
only a judge had done the right thing and sentenced Downey to life in 
San Quentin, young people would know drugs are bad. Chain Downey to 
five convicts and have him dig ditches all day while a fat sheriff 
spits chewing tobacco and makes jokes about Hollywood actors and 
every young person in the Western world will sit up straight, study 
hard and drink beer like decent folk.

It's an interesting theory. But not an original one. I first heard it 
several years ago.

I was in Istanbul, sitting on a patio and drinking some sort of 
Turkish fire water with a federal court judge from California. The 
judge was certain that if the courts were to make an example of a few 
celebrities, our troubles - as Colonel Kurtz put it in Apocalypse Now 
- - would soon be over.

Interesting, I said, and took another sip of a drug that has killed 
far more people than all the illicit drugs combined. But what about 
the Chinese?

The judge was perplexed. What about them?

Well, I explained, every year since 1990, the Chinese government has 
marked the UN's International Day Against Drug Abuse with show trials 
of drug traffickers which end, as show trials usually do, with the 
defendants being convicted and sentenced to death. Then they shoot a 
bunch. This is widely publicized in the state media.

One can accuse the Chinese government of many things but being soft 
on drug offenders is not one of them. And yet, trafficking and abuse 
are rising steadily in China.

It seems to me, I told the judge, that if mass public slaughter 
doesn't do the trick, neither will sending Robert Downey Jr. to San 
Quentin. You will have to be much tougher - tougher even than the 
Chinese - for your theory to have any chance at working.

Perhaps Downey's execution could be preceded by a little 
waterboarding? Thumbscrews? Electric shocks?

That would be excessive, the judge conceded. He promised to 
reconsider his hypothesis.

Sadly, the United Nations is not so open minded. Or at least, the 
International Narcotics Control Board is not.

That "UN report" mentioned above is actually the work of the INCB, a 
UN agency. That may sound like a trivial distinction but it actually 
matters a great deal.

Some branches of the UN are quite sane about drugs. Speak to the UN's 
World Health Organization, for example, and you'll hear that strict 
enforcement often does more harm than good and that harm reduction 
programs - syringe exchanges, safer injection sites and so on - are 
an effective way to reduce the spread of HIV and other harms 
associated with illicit drug abuse. For the most part, the WHO 
follows the evidence. That's what you expect of a scientific 
organization staffed by scientists.

You'll never hear anything like that from the INCB. The board was 
created by prohibitionists to be prohibition's guard dog. For the 
most part, the INCB ignores the evidence. That's what you expect of 
an ideological organization staffed by politically vetted hacks.

Consider the INCB's statement about the damage done by courts going 
soft on celebrity drug offenders. It made headlines around the world. 
"Terrifying Cost of Not Jailing Druggie Celebs" blared a British tabloid.

But what evidence is there that courts let celebrities off lightly? 
Or that such treatment encourages drug use? There's none in the report.

At a press conference in London, one of the INCB's hacks was asked to 
substantiate this serious allegation with, at a minimum, some 
examples of courts going soft on celebs. The INCB's man, reports The 
Guardian, "was unable to come up with a single example. He suggested 
instead that we ask our colleagues in the media."

A Guardian columnist was amazed. "Why did the UN report highlight 
this when they had apparently done no research on the subject and 
come up with no statistics?"

Allow me to answer: Because it's not a "UN report." It's an INCB 
report. And the INCB is as open-minded and intellectually rigorous as 
a growling Rottweiler.

In 2006, Stephen Lewis, the Canadian who was the UN's special envoy 
for HIV/AIDS in Africa, stated publicly that Vancouver's "InSite" 
safer injection facility had helped to reduce the spread of HIV - a 
conclusion supported by peer-reviewed scientific studies. The INCB 
went crazy. According to a report by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal 
Network, the very next day Lewis got "an angry telephone call from 
the INCB Secretariat and a promise that the board would write to the 
Secretary-General (of the UN) to urge that Lewis be censured for 
support of 'opium dens.' In that letter, the INCB president expressed 
disbelief that 'any officer of the United Nation (sic) could have 
made such statements,' and demanded that Lewis recant."

It wasn't that Lewis was wrong about the evidence, mind you. It was 
that what Lewis said was heresy.

Thus, it was no surprise that in the report released Wednesday, the 
INCB's silly comments about celebrity drug users were followed by an 
attack on InSite and other Canadian harm reduction programs. The 
federal government must shut it all down, the INCB insisted.

Why? Neither science nor law leads to that conclusion. No, this is dogma.

The INCB is a ridiculous organization. If it stood alone, the media 
would pay it no attention. But because it bears the imprimatur of the 
UN, the INCB issues "UN reports" and its utterly stupid demands - 
from jailing celebrities to scrapping harm reduction - are publicized 
and taken seriously around the world.

Remember that when Stephen Harper closes InSite and claims he's only 
doing what the United Nations wants.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake