Pubdate: Tue, 23 Mar 2010
Source: Province, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2010 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://www.canada.com/theprovince/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/theprovince/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/476
Author: Suzanne Fournier

'WAR ON DRUGS' BACKFIRING BADLY: UBC REPORT

Roundup Of Gang Bosses Blamed For Bloody Turf Battles

Canada's "war on drugs" has done nothing to stop the supply of street 
drugs and is actually increasing drug-related violence.

This is among the controversial findings of a University of B.C. 
report, to be released today in Ottawa, that has backing from "across 
a political spectrum . . . including high-profile conservatives."

UBC's Urban Health Research Initiative reviewed international 
research and found that "87 per cent of the studies linked strict 
drug-law enforcement to increasing levels of drug-market violence."

Says report co-author Dr. Evan Wood: "The gun violence that we've 
seen in B.C., as in Mexico and the U.S., appears to be directly 
attributable to drug prohibition."

Prohibition "drives up the value of drugs astronomically, thereby 
creating lucrative markets exploited by organized crime," Wood says.

Wood notes that a rash of gun slayings, such as Vancouver has had in 
the past year, appear to "stem from power vacuums created by the 
removal of key players from the illicit-drug market by law enforcement."

Wood points out Vancouver has had a huge "illicit drug market," with 
one of the highest drug-offence rates in Canada, for the past 30 
years, yet drug-related gun violence used to be low, compared with 
other cities.

Then, in 2009, Vancouver had "a surge in gun violence that 
authorities attribute to disputes between gangs involved in the drug 
trade." Now Vancouver has the highest rate of gun crime per capita in Canada.

Wood notes the upsurge in Vancouver's gang violence occurred after 
Canada launched its own "war on drugs," in the form of the 
Conservative government's National Anti-Drug Strategy.

Police "photo-ops" with piles of confiscated illicit drugs look good, 
but only serve to drive down drug supply while the purity and price 
of street drugs continues to soar, says Wood.

B.C. had 140 homicides in 2008, more than in any other year, and the 
RCMP deemed 30 per cent of those deaths were "gang-related".

But the UBC report is dismissed by RCMP Staff Sgt. Dave Goddard, who 
posed last week in front of 1,001 kilograms of cocaine seized from a 
sailboat, leading to charges against a Canadian and a Mexican.

"These intellectuals who come up with these ideas are great at 
pointing out the problem, but what's their solution?" demands Goddard.

Goddard credits the efforts of the police violence-suppression team: 
"We started the violence-suppression team a year ago in March, and we 
have seen a decrease in homicides and, so far, this year has been 
nothing like [the gunslayings] last January to March -- 2009 was pretty scary."

The UBC report was peer-reviewed by the Fraser Institute and is 
backed by prominent Tory Sen. Pierre Claude Nolin, former chair of 
the Senate Special Committee on Illicit Drugs.

Wood emphasizes he is not pushing for "legalization" of drugs or 
nonenforcement of drug laws, but stresses: "We need to address drug 
issues from a public-health perspective.

"We don't have enough resources for addiction treatment," says Wood, 
who thinks spending money on health measures would achieve far more 
than costly law-enforcement efforts that do little to control drug abuse.

The full 26-page report, "Effect of Drug Law Enforcement on 
Drug-Related Violence: Evidence from a Scientific Review," is 
available online at http://uhri.cfenet.ubc.ca.
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