Pubdate: Mon, 14 June 1999 Source: Debates of the Senate of Canada ( Hansard) Website: http://www.parl.gc.ca/ Note: Posted in two parts. The debate is also available in French at the above website. Contrast this with the Testimony Of Barry R. McCaffrey, Director, Office Of National Drug Control Policy Before The House Government Reform And Oversight Committee Subcommittee On Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, And Human Resources posted in five parts starting at: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99.n636.a02.html Excerpts from Debates of the Senate (Hansard) concerning motion by the Hon. Senator Pierre Claude Nolin to Establish a Special Senate Committee to REVIEW CANADA'S DRUG LAWS AND POLICIES (Debates of the Senate (Hansard) 1st Session, 36th Parliament, Volume 137, Issue 149) The Honourable Gildas L. Molgat, Speaker Monday, June 14, 1999 . . . Review on Anti-Drug Policy Motion to Establish Special Senate Committee- Debate Adjourned Hon. Pierre Claude Nolin, pursuant to notice given June 2, 1999, moved: That a Special Committee of the Senate be appointed to reassess Canada's anti-drug legislation and policies, to carry out a broad consultation of the Canadian public to determine the specifics needs of various regions of the country, where social problems associated with the trafficking and use of illegal drugs is more in evidence, to develop proposals to disseminate information about Canada's anti-drug policy and, finally, to make recommendations for of an anti-drug strategy developed by and for Canadians under which all levels of government to work closely together to reduce the harm associated with the use of illegal drugs. That, without being limited in its mandate by the following, the Committee be authorized to: review the federal government's policy to reduce the use of illegal drugs in Canada, its effectiveness, and the extent to which it is fairly enforced; develop a national harm reduction policy in order to lessen the negative impact of illegal drug use in Canada, and make recommendations regarding the enforcement of this policy, specifically the possibility of focusing on use and abuse of drugs as a social and health problem; study harm reduction models adopted by other countries (treatment programs and parallel programs aimed at illegal drug users) and determine if there is a need to implement them wholly or partially in Canada; examine Canada's international role and obligations under United Nations conventions on narcotics and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in order to determine whether these conventions authorize it to take action other than laying criminal charges; explore the effects of cannabis on health and examine the issue of whether decriminalizing cannabis would lead to increased use and abuse in the short and long term. examine the possibility of the government using its regulatory power under the Contraventions Act as an additional means of implementing a harm reduction policy, as is commonly done in certain European countries; examine any other issue respecting Canada's anti-drug policy that the committee considers appropriate to the completion of its mandate. That the special committee be composed of eight Senators and that four members constitute a quorum; That the committee have the power to send for persons, papers and records, to examine witnesses, to report from time to time and to print such papers, briefs and evidence from day to day as may be ordered by the committee; That the briefs received and testimony heard during consideration of Bill C-8, respecting the control of certain drugs, their precursors and other substances , by the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs during the second session of the Thirty-fifth Parliament be referred to the committee; That the committee have the power to engage the services of such counsel (researchers, lawyers, medical specialists, addiction workers, and so on) and technical, information technology, clerical and other personnel as may be necessary for the purposes of its examination; That the committee have the power to authorize television, radio and electronic broadcasting, as it deems appropriate, of any or all of its proceedings; That the committee be empowered to adjourn from place to place within and outside Canada; That the committee be granted leave to sit when the Senate has been adjourned pursuant to subsection 95 (2) of Senate rules; That the committee submit its final report not later than two years from the date of it being constituted; and That the committee be empowered to continue to exist after the date on which it is to conclude its work in order to inform members of the Senate and the House of Commons, the Canadian public and any other person or association interested in its work, to disseminate the Committee's conclusions and recommendations by means of press releases, press conferences, information sessions or any other activity members of the committee deem appropriate at a particular time. He said: Honourable senators, before beginning debate on my motion, I would like to introduce an amendment. On June 2, 1999, after my motion was tabled, I was informed that this motion would have to be amended by deleting paragraphs 6 and 8 to conform to the Rules of the Senate. (1850) I understand that His Honour may, with leave, amend the text of motions. I am referring to the paragraphs that read as follows: That the committee have the power to engage the services of such counsel (researchers, lawyers, medical specialists, addiction workers, and so on) and technical, information technology, clerical and other personnel as may be necessary for the purposes of its examination; And paragraph 8, which reads as follows: That the committee be empowered to adjourn from place to place within and outside Canada. I move this motion in amendment because I got a little ahead of myself. In a later debate, I will bring forward a proposal concerning these two paragraphs to the Standing Committee on Internal Economy. The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, Senator Nolin is asking for leave to delete part of his motion: the two paragraphs he just read. Is it agreed, honourable senators? Hon. Senators: Agreed. Senator Nolin: Honourable senators, I am asking for leave to speak for more than my allotted 15 minutes. The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, is leave granted? Hon. Senators: Agreed. Senator Nolin: Honourable senators, I move that this motion, as amended, be adopted. The Hon. the Speaker: The Honourable Senator Nolin, seconded by the Honourable Senator LeBreton, moved that the motion, as amended, be adopted. Do you agree to dispense with actually reading the motion? Hon. Senators: Agreed. Senator Nolin: Honourable senators, on June 19, 1996 - for the benefit of those of you who were not here at the time, and that is why my introduction refers to a debate held three years ago - during the Second Session of the Thirty-third Parliament, during the final debate at third reading in the Senate of Bill C-8, respecting the control of certain drugs. I was strongly critical of the refusal by all previous governments, not just the government that introduced this measure, to consider a serious study of Canada's anti-drug laws. At the time, I maintained that this was almost a deliberate unwillingness to see. I am speaking not just about honourable senators, but also about members of the other place. In my view, this attitude has meant that successive governments of all stripes have viewed drug use in Canada as a criminal rather than a public health matter. My view of this has not changed. Worldwide, the illegal drug industry generates annual sales of $400 billion U.S. This money feeds organized crime, corrupts governments in many countries, contributes to violence, and encourages parallel economic development. In many areas of the world, the fight against drugs leads indirectly to the spread of infections such as HIV, human rights violations, environmental damage, and the mass incarceration of persons charged with possession. As you will read in the document you received, or will receive shortly - it is a briefing paper to provide additional information to those wishing to take part in the debate - an increasing number of countries have given up the fight against drugs because of the negative impact. However, in 1996, Canada passed prohibitionist legislation with criminal provisions that seem to fly in the face of Canadian and international human rights charters. Let us look initially at the situation in Canada. The indirect effects and costs of drugs far exceed the direct ones. They bear little relationship to the level of consumption, and result not from the drugs themselves, but from punitive laws and political policies. The effects are felt primarily by the populations at risk, such as native peoples, young street people, people living in poor neighbourhoods and intravenous drug users. Allow me, honourable senators, to elaborate on each of these four groups of individuals, of Canadians at risk. Among native people, alcoholism and drug abuse are rampant. Depending on the location involved, between 65 per cent and 80 per cent of residents are affected by these problems. The principal cause of deaths among the Amerindian and Inuit populations are wounds and poisoning. The violent death rate is three to four times higher than in the general population. The number of deaths in which alcohol or drugs play a determining role is five times greater among native people than it is among non-native people. Two thirds of the native population dying an unnatural death have alcohol in their blood, compared with 45 per cent of the non-native population. Here are two facts. First, the rate of suicide among native children in Saskatchewan is 27.5 per cent higher than among other Canadian children. Second, young natives are between two and six times more likely to have an alcohol problem than their counterparts in the rest of the population. These two facts, honourable senators, may perhaps explain the despair of their survivors. A second group at risk is that of street children. They are also affected by the use of illicit drugs. A number of adolescents leave home to avoid physical, psychological or sexual violence or negligence on the part of their parents. Once on the street, they take risks, which include the use of illicit drugs and needle sharing. A national study in 1989 revealed that one street child in four used marijuana daily, 4 per cent use cocaine and 4 per cent LSD. In a recent study, nearly ten years later, half the street children in Montreal were found to use intravenous drugs and are hard hit by suicide and overdose. The chance of their dying is 12 times greater than that of their peers. A third high-risk group is people living in poor neighbourhoods. In large Canadian urban centres, these people also suffer the consequences related to the use of illicit drugs. For example, in Vancouver, a state of medical emergency resulted from a rapid increase in the number of HIV cases among users of injectable drugs, more specifically in Vancouver East, where the prevalence rate of such cases went from 20 per cent in 1997 to 35 per cent in 1998, that is in less than one year. This is unfortunately a world record. (1900) Vancouver also has the largest number of deaths by overdose in Canada, with over 300 in 1998 and more than 2,000 since 1991. These rates of infection and drug addiction are related to poverty and social disruptions in downtown Vancouver. The use of injectable drugs poses a direct risk of infection with HIV and other viruses such as hepatitis, through the sharing of contaminated syringes. The absorption of drugs through techniques other than injections poses an indirect risk, to the extent that it may lead to unprotected sexual relations and to the consumption of injectable drugs. The incidence rate, which is the rate of new HIV cases, is very high in certain Canadian cities. It is 10 per cent in Vancouver, the highest in the Western World, and 7 per cent in Montreal and in Ottawa. It is even higher in certain regions of the country, including among aboriginals. The World Health Organization estimates that there is a risk of a general epidemic when the infection rate among injectable drug users reaches 10 per cent in a given region. The situation is so serious in Vancouver that a motion was brought forward at the end of 1998 by Libby Davies, the NDP member for Vancouver East, after the state of health emergency to which I referred earlier was declared in her riding. Her motion called on the federal government to cooperate with the provinces in order to implement clinical, multi-centre heroin prescription trials for injection to opiate users, including protocols for rigorous scientific assessment and evaluation, as is already being done to varying degrees in Switzerland, in the United Kingdom and in certain German and Australian cities. There will soon be such a program in place in Spain as well. Honourable senators, let us look now at the application costs of Canada's drug policy. This war against drugs does not only have negative consequences on the lives of thousands of Canadians. Drug abuse also involves considerable costs to our society. The use of illicit drugs was responsible for the death of 732 Canadians in 1992, which represents 0.4 per cent of Canada's total mortality rate for that year. Forty-two per cent of those committed suicide, 14 per cent died from opiate poisoning, 9 per cent died from cocaine poisoning, and 8 per cent died from AIDS contracted through intravenous injection. In that same year, 1992, the use of illicit drugs was responsible for 7,100 cases of hospitalization and 58,000 days of hospitalization, half of which were the result of a psychosis caused by an assault or by cocaine abuse. Let us turn to the economic cost for Canada. All in all, drug abuse cost Canadians more than $18.4 billion in 1992, that is $649 per capita or 2.7 per cent of Canada's gross domestic product. The economic cost of the drugs themselves is estimated at $1.37 billion, or $48 per capita. These estimates include $823 million in loss of productivity due to morbidity and premature deaths, $400 million in drug enforcement and $88 million in direct health costs. It is important to point out that, although drug use is involved in many crimes, its role is not clear. Users get their supply from a lucrative and violent market where crime is ever present. The use of illegal drugs contributes to the rise of crime and therefore to law enforcement costs. It is one of the motivators of crimes against property and violent crimes perpetrated to ensure control over a territory, like what we have seen recently in Quebec, with the biker wars in Montreal and Quebec City. Canada has had three opportunities to put an end to some of the individual and collective consequences of trafficking and use of illegal drugs that I have just mentioned. First, in 1969, the Le Dain commission held serious consultations on the negative impact of the Canadian drug policy at that time. Since the commission focused mainly on the non-medical use of drugs, it concluded that hundreds of thousands of Canadians found guilty of prohibited drug possession saw their personal freedom restrained for the rest of their life because of a criminal record. The commission also concluded that the huge police resources used to fight prohibited drug trafficking and consumption were mainly aimed at young people. Under the circumstances, the Le Dain commission recommended that sanctions against drug users be gradually eliminated, that the use of marijuana be decriminalized and that control methods other than criminal justice sanctions be used. That was almost 30 years ago. However, former commission chairman Gérald Le Dain is still convinced that its recommendations are as valid today as they were in 1971, even though at that time there was no legislative follow-up of any kind on its recommendations. According to this former dean of the prestigious Osgoode Hall Law School at the University of Toronto and former Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, politicians are the only ones to blame for not having taken initiatives on this issue at the beginning of the 1970s. In 1998, in an interview with The Edmonton Sun, Mr. Le Dain said, and I quote: [English] It was a hot potato for all the parties and they didn't want to run any risk. The position adopted by the politicians was to do nothing. We saw at the hearings the public was worried about their kids. The public saw those current laws as a tremendous injustice. [Translation] A bill to decriminalize the possession of cannabis, Bill S-19, was rejected in 1975. During the 1970s, the number of convictions for possession of cannabis grew from less than 1,000 to over 40,000 a year. Second, in 1978-79, a Health Canada report, kept secret up till the end of last year, recommended that the federal government decriminalize the use of marijuana. This report, as you can imagine, was shelved by the department. With the advent, in the 1990s, of new legislation on narcotics, we could have dealt with some of the problems left by previous legislation and benefited from other countries' experience. However, the new Controlled Drugs and Substances Act was fundamentally prohibitionist and, far from dealing openly with the drugs issue, it reinforced prohibition. The problems arising out of the criminalization of drug users, out of its economic and social costs and out of the non-decreasing supply have still not been dealt with. Therefore, both human and financial costs resulting from illicit drug use remain needlessly high, whereas the costs created by the criminalization of illicit drugs use keep increasing in a regular, foreseeable but avoidable way. With regard to my motion of June 2, you will agree, honourable senators, particularly when reading the document handed out to you, that this situation is intolerable. (1910) It cannot go on like this indefinitely. For this reason, on June 2, I brought forward in this house a motion requesting that a special committee of the Senate be struck to reassess Canada's anti-drug legislation and policies. This committee will carry out a broad consultation of the Canadian public to determine the specifics needs of various regions of the country, where social problems associated with the trafficking and use of illegal drugs are more prevalent. It will also develop proposals to disseminate information about Canada's anti-drug policy and, finally, it will make recommendations for an anti-drug strategy to be implemented Canada-wide, a strategy under which all levels of government will work closely together to reduce the harm associated with the use of illegal drugs. I would now like to say a few words about the report of the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs on Bill C-8 that I just mentioned. On June 13, 1996, the chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, the Honourable Sharon Carstairs, tabled the committee's report on Bill C-8, respecting the control of certain drugs and other substances. In that report, the committee members, including myself, recommended some amendments to Bill C-8. Thank God, and this shows how much of a problem we had, we succeeded in allowing the growing of hemp for commercial purposes in Canada. After an extensive debate in the House of Commons and in the Senate, we finally understood that we were quite stupid to continue to prohibit this substance, which has nothing to do with the Indian hemp referred to when we talk about marijuana. This shows that many prejudices and myths I will now refer to existed back then, prejudices and myths that, I hope, do not exist anymore. After a review that lasted over three months, the committee report proposed several amendments to Bill C-8, but mostly stressed that to carry out a proper study of the principles and provisions contained in the bill it was necessary to complete the inadequate technical, moral and sociological information provided by officials from the health and justice departments, and other agencies involved in the development of Canada's narcotics control policy. In order to fill this gap, the committee proposed to set up a joint committee of the House of Commons and the Senate to scrutinize every national drug act, policy and program. The first part of my motion is a carbon copy of the committee's recommendations regarding the mandate of such a committee. As you know, since we tabled our report, no committee of this kind has been put in place to answer senators' legitimate concerns. The Canadian population also needs complete and non-partisan information on this complex issue. And yet, the situation in this matter keeps on changing. Let us look at the change in the situation in the area of illicit drugs. In the past three years, a number of clinical studies have been done in order to scientifically measure the physical and psychological effects of using cannabis and of methadone substitution treatments. For the first in its history, the Quebec College of Physicians officially spoke out in March in favour of the use of methadone to reduce the risks of infection and the spread of AIDS and hepatitis among intravenous drug users. On March 17, 11 experts from the prestigious National Academy of Science Institute of Medicine in United States published the results of a study commissioned by the White House director of drug control policy. The report concluded that there was definite potential for the use of marijuana for medical purposes. In November 1998, seven American states organized referendums during mid-term elections in order to seek public approval for measures to relax extremely strict regulations on the use of cannabis in the treatment of patients. Six states, with the exception of the District of Columbia, approved the proposed measures. [continued in part two] - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake