 Good evening everyone. Welcome to the Schulich School of Law at Delhousie University. My name is Archie Kaiser and I'm a member of the faculty here. This lecture is part of our mini-law series. We invite members of the community to join us to hear our professors talking about a wide range of issues. Next in this fall's lineup is Professor Vaughn Black and on Wednesday, October 22, Vaughn will be talking about the legal regulation of research on animals, so you are warmly welcome back for October 22. Tonight I'm going to be talking about Canada's war on drugs and I'll be presenting arguments suggesting that it indeed is time for a ceasefire, perhaps for a permanent end to the kind of hostilities that the state has practiced for about the last four generations. A couple of disclaimers and notes at the start. First of all, I'm not a drug policy expert. My teaching subjects are in criminal law and mental health law generally, so although I've written in this area, I'm sure some of you in the audience have more experience and expertise. Second, I don't purport to have a blueprint for change with such complex issues, although I do have the motive for change and I have a sense of general direction. Third, my slides aren't perfect and some typos, etc., may have escaped my editing. They will be available both with the video when it's posted and separately for printing if you choose to use them. And finally, in this category, many thanks go to Molly Ross who did all the hard work in preparing my slides. I'm a PowerPoint abuser, I should tell you, there are 80 of them. Don't be afraid, I'm not going to read them. There's too much text and there's too much information. But for class notes, they're not bad. But Molly is the producer of the quality of the slides, not the editorial content. I want to thank as well Elizabeth Sanford. I think she may have stepped out, but she has always ensured that our events run well. And finally, I want to thank Jordan Urquhart, our videographer at the back of the room. So, my plan tonight is to talk for no longer than an hour and I'll take a very broad swipe at the issues. Then I'm going to actually make you feel uncomfortable and turn to you. I have what I've called verdict sheets to hand out to you. And I'm going to ask you to break up into groups of four or five or six or whatever suits you. And I have tried, when I prepared these verdict sheets to do what a judge might do in a jury trial to give you a sort of rough decision-making tree of public policy options. And after I've squirmed with them this evening, I'd like you to reflect on them and say what you would do. Worry you to be the Minister of Justice or Health. And then if possible, I'd like to hear from some of the groups to report back and say what you have concluded would be the proper direction for public policy in Canada. So, hope that doesn't make you feel too uncomfortable. Well, not too. Good. So, in terms of my actual substantive direction, this is where it goes. First of all, I'll start with a glossary of terms, right? Because I think too many terms are bandied about too imprecisely. Then I'm going to talk basically about the nature of the criminal law in Canada, the limits of the criminal law, and how drug policy is dissonant compared to our basic traditions of criminal law. I'll look at our dependence on the criminal law, some possible cracks that are emerging in the Canadian criminalization dyke. I'll look at the actual statistics of how we use the criminal law in Canada vis-à-vis drugs. I'll look at the war metaphor, which has become an actual war in many senses quite extensively. It oxygenates the criminal law. I'll look at its pitfalls, its costs, how we portray users in the war, its futility. I'll look at the intrusions upon autonomy that are presented by the war. I'll look at harms to families and communities. I'll look at adverse health effects of the war on drugs, damage to the justice system, and some final assessments that have been made by others about the war on drugs. I'll ask you to think about how we move forward. Do we accept failure or maintain the status quo? I'll look at alternatives, and in particular I'll center upon public health principles as alternatives that might provide a more progressive way forward. In doing so, I'll point to the need for everybody to liberate the discourse that surrounds drug law in Canada and to assert some new general principles that will help guide us properly. In so doing, I want to talk about the proper role of the law because law will still have a role even if we decriminalize or we legalize. I'll be particularly vigilant about the need to avoid what I call, and others have called, hollow decriminalization. I'll examine harm reduction, prevention, and treatment as essential cornerstones of a change in our drug policy. I'll look at some examples that have emerged from other countries that haven't fallen apart at the seams that have actually liberalized their drug laws. And then I'll look for classwork from the audience. I'll look to your assessment of how these issues should be resolved. So a question then that all of you would ask is, is it time for the war on drugs? And in some ways it depends on whom you ask. The next slide provides a sort of rough list of some of the people who have an interest in the war on drugs. The person on the left, the police officer, maybe would say not necessarily because of the budget issue. The person in the middle, foreign banks, not Canadian banks because we're so proud of them, they would never launder drug money. But the foreign banks that do draw, launder drug money, they don't want an end to the drug war. And of course the drug cartels and everybody beneath that who profit from the production and sale of drugs don't want an end to it. But some people do. This is from a Detroit park where anybody can put up signs in front of this character that I'm about to introduce to you. And for him, it's not me with hair. For him, he says cease fire on the drug war. So I moved from there then to the glossary I promised. When I talk about drugs, I'm simply saying this from a very legalistic perspective. I'm talking about illegal drugs or illicit drugs or psychotropic substances or narcotic drugs, but particularly controlled substances as included within our controlled drugs and substances act. The opiates, cannabis, hallucinogens, barbiturates and propyl hexadrine, which I had to look up, which I believe is some kind of stimulant. When I think about drug policy, I am really now talking about dealing with problems that are directly associated with the non-medically authorized use of drugs and for historical reasons that includes what we've talked about tonight, but not alcohol and tobacco, which many have said is an entirely artificial and historical distinction. Whereas we all understand that looking at this diagram, they may cause even greater harms measured in deaths, ill health, and social breakdown. Indeed, this is from the Surgeon General of the United States in 2004, suggesting that it's about equal actually in terms of the difficult task of measuring economic costs to society due to substance abuse. I don't know what the Surgeon General included in his or her estimates, but it looks about equal there between illegal drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. But I'm only talking about illegal drugs, not alcohol and tobacco. They're lawful and the harms that they cause are not subject to the criminal law. I'm going to be talking about decriminalization. Basically here, it's setting out acts or omissions that are prohibited, convicting people who have proved to have contravened these prohibitions, and imposing sentences upon people that are convicts. The use of the justice system to control drugs. When I talk about decriminalization, I'm talking about the removal of sanctions under the criminal law. This could include the optional use of administrative sanctions, but we're really discussing the removal of the imposition of a permanent criminal record, and this includes both de jure, legal, and de facto. Factual approaches to decriminalization. Now, even if we, as I'll explain later, even if we do decriminalize, there's still a role for the law. You still may punish persons who increase tangible risks by using drugs or in the drug trade, let's say. When I talk about legalization, what I'm trying to describe there is a very wide range of proposals. It could mean complete legalization, which would make any psychoactive substance available to any willing buyer. Most often it includes legal availability to adults and applying the new policy to only some of the currently illicit substances. So usually now, when we talk about legalization, we are not necessarily, but we are talking in the first instance about marijuana. The whole notion is that for the production and sale of drugs, there will not be criminal offenses, at least to the same extent that we have it now. I'm also going to be mentioning public health measures. There, what we must have in mind is harm reduction approaches, where we appreciate that something different has to be done if we focus upon the harms but see it through a public health lens. And the Vienna Declaration from, well, 10 years ago, approximately says, public health systems may be undermined when law enforcement drives people away from prevention and care services as opposed to public health imperatives. And when I speak about harm reduction, there we're talking about recognition that drug use isn't an escapable fact. It's not so much a moral issue. What we try to do then from a harm reduction perspective is reduce the individual and societal costs of abuse rather than to eliminate all drug use. And we're emphasizing from a harm reduction public health perspective scientific standards of rationality rather than in terms of ideology. That's what has been missing in the debate in Canada so far. A rational discussion about harms and about solutions as opposed to an ideologically, politically fired discussion. So those are my terms. The next few slides deal with the limits of criminal law. The impulse of society at times in a parliament is to use the criminal law almost indiscriminately. People identify a problem du jour in a sense. I'm not saying that there isn't a harm but that they identify a problem and they say, well, the solution to suppress this harmful conduct must be to use the criminal law, the heavy hand of the criminal law. This is completely inconsistent with, as is the use of drug law in Canada, some of the essential declarations of principle on when we should use the criminal law in Canada. There's a trilogy that, you know, I trot out for my first year criminal students that we may report from 1969, a very forward looking report on substantive and procedural criminal law in Canada. It said we should use the criminal law to control antisocial behavior as a last step. An unavoidable necessity when you, an act can't be controlled by social forces other than the criminal process. When we think about using the criminal law to control psychoactive substances, most people would say it's not the last step. It's not an unavoidable necessity. We could do something else using other social forces. The Law Reform Commission of Canada says when you use the criminal law you should be recognizing that it's a blunt and costly instrument. It should be something that is again used as the last resort, use it as little as possible. Indeed, use it with restraint. That's the watchword for harm that's best dealt with, you know, through the criminal law. And when they talk about restraint, they're talking about restraint in terms of creating offenses from Parliament, in terms of enforcing legislation, and in terms of punishing offenders. Restraint should be the byword throughout the justice system, not at the level of creation only. So when we think about the Law Reform Commission of Canada and the control of drugs through the criminal law we'd be saying to ourselves, perhaps, that the criminal law inflicts harm because of its bluntness and its cost, because it's invoked too readily, because these harms are not best dealt with using the criminal law. The 1982 Government of Canada statement invokes some of the same principles. We should confine the criminal law to conduct for which other means of social control are inadequate or inappropriate. We should interfere with individual rights and freedoms only to the extent necessary. And we should use the, when we use the criminal law, I would say to control drugs, with defiling some of these principles. Other means of control could be adequate and appropriate. And the way in which the criminal law has been created and wielded in Canada is excessive in terms of its interference with our rights and freedoms. So our Canadian drug policy is anchored firmly in the criminal law. But this is a relatively recent phenomenon. It didn't come down from, I don't know, somewhere. We haven't always had it here or in other countries. Until the early 1900s, even opiates were unregulated. And alcohol and tobacco were often considered to be more severe threats to public health. Our legal laissez-faire attitude had ancient foundations because drugs had been recognized over the years as being suitable for pain relief, for relaxation, for physical stimulation, for spiritual enhancement, as a food source, a means of exchange, a source of economic activity. This is real. I didn't make up this slide. This is from 1885. It's an ad in a newspaper offering cocaine as toothache drops, perhaps for these little children here. Anyway, it did offer an instantaneous cure, it was thought. And the price was 15 cents and it was for sale by all drugists. That's another era, which obviously we've moved well beyond. We did have a rise of criminal regulation and a gradual embrace of the criminal law from 1900 forward. And what propelled this? Many social forces, new or invigorated notions of restraint and sobriety, in part religiously few. The redefinition of some substances as evil, addictive, productivity sapping, unhealthy, degenerate, the growing influence of the United States on international policy and economics. The effects of racial discrimination and political scapegoating, you know, that propelled criminalization, forces which endure still in the enforcement and punishment of offenders under the criminal law for drugs. And Canada marched in lockstep, largely speaking with the world stage, including R.B. in a signatory, which is an interesting international legal problem to the major drug control conventions, which I've mentioned there. In terms of the ongoing discrimination in the war on drugs, it's well documented. And these cartoons or pictures capture the notions quite accurately of the way in which the drug war has been enforced, at least in some jurisdictions. The message of the war on drugs is black and white. Or war on drugs is a war on us. There has been criminalization creep in Canada. I think that's quite apt. Both the creep in this sense, and it's creepy, if you ask me, in terms of what it's done to this country. So the Opium and Drug Act prohibited opium in 1908, cocaine in 1911, marijuana in the period of gradually 1908 to 1923. And then since then, we've had new waves of punitive legislation, with regularity. The 1987 Canadian Drug Strategy, the Control Drugs and Substances Act, which continues to be made more virulent in the way that it labels and treats people who are in possession or involved in the drug trade. In its newer versions, we've had gradually escalating penalty provisions, which to me, Strike One, at least as this relative outsider, would say as observed at times. The 2012 amendments of the Control Drugs and Substances Act provide it for penalties, heightened penalties for production. For example, if you have more than five plants of marijuana, and I'm looking at some of you students out there, keep this in mind, more than five plants and up to 201, you go to jail for a minimum mandatory term of six to nine months, depending upon certain factors which surround your production of marijuana. The current government policy continues to be dependent on the justice system. The Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs says criminal legislation occupies a symbolic and determinative place. It is the backbone of our public policy in Canada. Our national anti-drug strategy has several elements to its action plan, prevention, treatment, and enforcement, but again, enforcement receives the greatest commitment and investment to enhance the capacity of the justice system to investigate and prosecute offenders and ensure that serious penalties are in place. There may be, I hesitate to say very much here, I was going to leave this out, but there may be some cracks in Canadian criminalization. For example, I looked at the websites of the Conservative Party of Canada, the Liberal Party of Canada, and the New Democratic Party, federally. The Conservative Party said in 2013, these drugs are illegal because of their harmful effects. We'll continue protecting the interests of families. We have no interest in seeing marijuana legalized or made more easily available to youth in particular. And then in 2014, in March, the Conservative government was said to be looking at potentially changing policies to allow officers to issue tickets rather than lay charges under the CDSA, the Control, Drug, and Substances Act. And in August of 2014, the Minister of Justice said the federal government is still assessing whether to allow police to ticket people caught with small amounts of marijuana instead of pursuing charges. But, he stressed, the government remains opposed to decriminalizing, which I don't know how it quite fits with the issuance of tickets under the Control, Drugs, and Substances Act, because that's not a criminal statute, but be that as it may for the time being, we'll have that debate some other time, I suppose. And the government remains opposed to decriminalizing or legalizing. The Liberal Party has a different outlook. This is from a draft policy in January 2013. It's time to confront how, time for, to change how we confront marijuana use. It's time to have an adult conversation that was said by Justice Critic Sean Casey in 2013, and they said, there are five reasons that we think we should end the current prohibition. To fight organized crime is a source of revenue, because the current law does more harm than good, because we want to be committed to evidence-based policies and because millions of people are using cannabis. The New Democratic Party, according to its policy, says decriminalizing marijuana possession with the goal of removing its production and distribution from the control of organized crime is a central part of their outlook on the drug's issue. It's incomplete, but that's at least one plane. The current leader, Thomas Volcair, said in August 2014, the conservatives are taking a very 1950s approach. We want to make sure no one is ever charged again for use or possession of marijuana for personal purposes. Now, I hesitate to put these slides in. They were kind of a last minute thought, because, you know, the drug policy becomes kind of a silly football, you know, that the parties will play with, rather than something that involves a neutral analysis, you know, from a rational point of view of harms and ways of responding. But that's just the way it is in Canada. This might be the beginning of some cracks in that dyke. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police in 2004 checked their website and looked through their, you know, their stances over the years, wrote to the Prime Minister and said, we're concerned about the ramifications for Canada's health and safety posed by your government's initiative to decriminalize marijuana. Loosening it will come at a high price for our society. Because at that time, it was in play, at least, to consider decriminalizing marijuana. In 2007, they said we're continuing to prioritize those who profit and those who are dangerous, basically, in our society. But the image at the bottom actually still captures the stance of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. A bit of overkill, perhaps, but in 2013, they said that decriminalization or legalization is not the direction. However, but they would like to have, according to the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, which has motivated the government to think about this, at least, an alternative to attending court as being beneficial. They said most simple possession cases could be more efficiently dealt with using the CDSA ticketing scheme pursuant to the Contraventions Act. That's their current stance. So opposed to decriminalization, although this is a form of decriminalization, opposed to legalization, obviously. That's the Association of Chiefs of Police. In terms of what we actually do in Canada, this is what we do. And let nobody continue to fool you about being unsafe in Canadian society. There is a general decline in crime rates in our country. Police reported crime has been declining as measured by Statistics Canada. The Crime Severity Index, which measured not only the incidence of offenses, but their severity in terms of effects on people, has decreased for the 10th consecutive year, falling 9% in 2013. Police reported crime continued the downward trend that began in the 1990s. In 2013, it was at its lowest point since 1969. So one way or the other, maybe because we're all becoming older, or I don't know, population isn't increasing in the same way as it was when we baby boomers were active criminals, I'm not sure, but the crime rate, the crime rate is, we're just tired now. We can't commit offenses at the same rate. The crime rate is going down. But on the other hand, that decline has not been represented by our Statistics on Drug Offenses. Over the past decade, stats can report that there's been an increase in police reported drug offenses. The rate in 2013 was 13% higher than it was a decade previously, and 80% increase in drugs other than cannabis, 28% increase in cannabis, and 8% increase in cocaine. In 2013, we still had 109,000 CDSA offenses, 67% relating to cannabis, primarily possession. I can't do the math as quickly as you, but I think that would be about 70,000 CDSA offenses for marijuana. Is that about right? That's the mainly possession offenses. And there is, as they said, an upward trend that varies according to the policies, practices, and resources that are made available. So there's a general decline in crime, except drugs. And it's a choice to continue policing and enforcing to the same extent that we are doing now. So let's talk about the war on drugs. I suggest that it oxygenates the criminal laws I mentioned. In the 1980s, Canada, like many other nations, subscribe to this nebulous war agenda. And even Canadian courts have been swept up in this metaphor. That's where I become involved more often than not. Just I write case comments on things that the Supreme Court of Canada has done. And they're not always on the police state side of things. But at times they are. Read the Cornell case if you're interested. Read my article on it if you're really interested. Anyway, war was declared before other options were explored. And what may have started as a metaphor was transformed to, as Ben Mostin and others have said, a very real and deadly global military and law enforcement offenses. So it went from metaphor to reality. There are problems with the war, ethos, always. And they are no less visible here. Ask yourself some basic questions. What's the true enemy in this war? Where is the tabulation of the cost on a societal basis? In terms of blood, treasure, principle, rationality, and constitutional values. Is the scope of the war contained now? Or is it widening? I think I just told you the answer to that. How is progress being assessed? Well, not very often and not very closely. And what's the exit strategy obviously? There is no current exit strategy. The war grinds on. You think about these issues, or at least you ought to think about these issues. Think about collateral damage. That's always part of a war. How do you reduce it? Where is or what is the place of evidence and analysis in determining whether the war should continue to be prosecuted? Currently in our public policy, frankly, expert opinion is usually not very relevant. So there isn't much evidence and analysis, you know, that drives government policy on drug law. Skeptics are often denounced as heretics, cowards, counselors of evil. Yes, that's me. But governments still recommit to the prosecution of the war, and I don't really understand why. Well, I understand, but I'm trying to blot it out. Does the war sensibility encourage delusion rather than clarity of observation and reality testing? Always. Why are we attracted to this war response? We all know that war relegates nuanced solutions to dark psychic recesses. We end up with bad answers to remediable problems. As Chris Hedges says in his book, War is a force that gives us meaning. War makes the world understandable, whether it's metaphorical or physical. The moral certitude of the state and wartime is a kind of fundamentalism, which on the one hand we say we loathe, but on the other hand we embrace, at times when we face social problems like drug use and distribution. What does the war notion do to our perception of reality, as Lawrence LaChan said in his book? We end up creating two realities, the mythic reality of war, where words can no longer be relied on, where no real communication is possible. And we abandon the sensory reality of peacetime. Peace time perceptions reexamine the war mentality. Wartime attitudes are then seen often as illegitimate and stupid. We see events for what they really are in a peacetime as opposed to a wartime mentality. We should look at the costs of prohibition as a country. Although, you know, this is part of a chapter in a book I've written, or it's incomplete actually, but it's coming. In any event, cost-benefit issues can be misleading when you bring them to bear on such complex social problems, but tangible costs have to be examined obviously, those involving monetary payments, but intangible costs also have to be included. Non-monetary costs, the costs of fear, pain, suffering, lost quality of life, intrusions on autonomy and privacy, and criminal profiteering. Those are all, in many ways, non-monetary costs. And war always imposes more burdens than its strategists and prosecutors imagine, or than they reveal. In my opinion, and that of many others, I'm not alone in this, I can assure you, although I suppose we are a minority, the war on drugs is a quicksand for society. It sucks in anything that rests on it. If we think about how users are portrayed, governments tend to universalize participation in the drug world. Users and addicts are often conflated, and users may even be, in the worst examples, confused with organized crime. Like this poor woman here. She's obviously on the road to destruction. But the UK Drug Policy Commission says quite sensibly in 2012, that actually most users do not experience significant problems. Drug use can have its benefits. That was the UK Drug Policy Commission that said that. We should think about the futility of war. That's a good cartoon in the corner showing the explosion of costs. Prohibition was intended to reduce supply and demand. But there has been no appreciable gain on either front in Canada. The supply is largely unimpeded, production has increased, prices have declined, potency has been upgraded. So on the supply front, the most authoritative sources say, I'm sorry, we haven't made significant gains. In terms of demand, no surprise, it's relatively stable. There are roughly as many users now of cocaine and heroin as there were before we prosecuted the war on drugs. And there are more cannabis users. As the RCMP said, in its report in 2009 assessing the Canadian drug situation, the Canadian illicit drug market has remained relatively stable, despite the enormous investment by the justice system. So it looks like what we've done so far has not worked to control such simple measures of success as whether we've reduced supply and demand. Well, there's our late friend Richard Nixon, who complained that public enemy number one in the United States was drug abuse in his era. And that's the former First Lady saying, no to drugs. We have to think about the effect of overgeneralizing and mislabeling them with respect to users and other people involved. Users are often blamed for their own economic health and criminal justice problems, as if it's all down to them and nobody else is responsible, without exploring the state's responsibility, particularly by prosecuting the war on drugs. And demonization often fuels more aggressive criminalization. This is from, this is again real, but from an earlier era, the Interstate Narcotic Association, it reminds all of us, young and old, people in all walks of life to say, this thing here, this joint may be handed to you by the friendly stranger. It contains the killer drug marijuana, a powerful narcotic in which lurks murder, insanity, and death. And it tells us that dope peddlers are shrewd, etc. Actually, the cases still use some of this language. I could show you references where they talk about the exceptional sophistication of drug traffickers. Well, some maybe at the top are, but a lot of them, no. They're totally disorganized criminals and very unsophisticated. We have to think as well as we prosecute the war on drugs about intrusion upon decision-making of adults. In Canada, we value liberty and autonomy. And liberty means more than just freedom from physical restraint. Liberty involves, as Malmo Levine said from the Supreme Court of Canada, the right to an irreducible sphere of personal autonomy where an individual's may make inherently private choices free from state interference. The criminal law does not normally interfere with decisions which may only minimally damage your health or social or vocational interests. But we intrude massively upon your autonomy when it comes to personal use of drugs. There are harms to families and communities by the war. Criminal law affects the most marginalized people most severely. When we think of the poverty, unemployment and destabilization that describes many people's daily lives, we understand that they are often the most heavily policed communities. There are maladaptive incentives in some disadvantaged communities to commit drug offenses, notwithstanding the heightened police attention that they get. Just watch the wire if you want to see examples of that. And we will see that through season four. Don't tell me how it ends. Crime prevention and community development can also be ignored as we prosecute the war on drugs. How many times have you seen these particular cartoons acted out very prominently even here in celebrity impoverished Canada compared to the United States? If you're poor and get caught with drugs it's a crime and you're doing time for possession. If you're rich and you get caught with drugs it's a scandal and you're going to rehab in the darkened limo and you're going to come back rejuvenated and you won't be criminalized. We have to think about the adverse health effects of prosecuting the war on drugs. This is a major cost concentrated on enforcement rather than public health. The spread of HIV, the overdose deaths in our big cities and otherwise, the aggravation of physical health problems by the prosecution of the drug war. Look at the insight case from the Supreme Court of Canada again. Where the Supreme Court said no we're going to order that a permit be issued to insight, to permit them to have this controlled safe injection site. Notwithstanding the cabinet's unjustifiable withdrawal of that permit. The Supreme Court said the need for an immediate fix or the fear of police discovering and confiscating drugs can override even ingrained safety habits. And people get sick and they die or they use substances that are adulterated or they overdosed. As Hathaway and Erickson claim the livid prohibitionist claims of the past are increasingly inappropriate in the contemporary context of national debate where we should be looking at adverse health effects among other things. Well here are two dated posters but I suppose they thought it was discouraging people at the time but you know the notion that it's a burning question that it unleashes passions that it makes our innocent youth victims of a new sex craze. That's a vicious racket with its arms around your children. That's the devil's harvest that again leads to degradation, vice and insanity. Anyway that leavening aside of this discussion we need to return to the sober issue of what it does to the justice system where I work at least as an educator. We know that the black market in drugs produces crime, violence and corruption. We know that the chief beneficiaries of the war on drugs are as I said in my little cartoon way back large criminal organizations but penal law, criminal law, has not reduced their power. As the UN Commission on Narcotics Drugs says sensibly the financial incentives to enter the drug market at every level are enormous right. You'll get much better return on your investment than being a wage slave like me. I should have been a drug dealer. No that was the Narco traffic as the global as the global commission says Narco traffic at its worst threatens to metastasize into broader political and security challenges. We know of some countries that are now seen as narco states because of the dominance of criminal gangs that defy the armed forces defy the police corrupt every level of those societies. One of the effects of the drug war has been diminishing reverence for the law. It's solemnity, it's fairness, it's equality. Overdependence on the criminal law erodes public and police reverence for the law. People are exposed to extensive intrusions in the name of public security. Citizens are marked with the less eradicable stain now less eradicable because of changes in the criminal records act of a criminal record and users are labeled as criminals even though the public doesn't associate their behavior very often with conventional perceptions of criminality. I don't know whether it's the first law of drug prohibition but unfortunately this is an apt illustration of some of the things that happen in law enforcement our country that the action is simple but the overreaction is swift. I mentioned the Cornell case some time ago. I'll quote from an author. I shouldn't do that. I never self refer but on the other hand the Cornell case is a case that really disturbed me in when was it 2010. It was an instance where the police conducted a I think what is called euphemistically a hard entry into a residential premises and this little quote tells you what happened next. Cornell seems fairly typical of the court's acceptance of the constitutional dishevelment in a wartime context. An implicit excuse of necessity lurks everywhere and other aspects of the war metaphor appear to be apt such as the concept of collateral damage. How else is the experience of Robert Cornell at the hands of the hooded police officers into his home tolerable in the national conscience. The image of this then 29 year old man with a mental disability without employment alone at home being taken down pushed to the floor pruned out and handcuffed with his hands behind his back causing him acute distress requiring a finally unmasked officer a paramedic and his mother to be contacted to return home to care for her distraught and very scared son ought to haunt the justice system. That really bothered me then and indeed in my article I said for me that image was so terrifying that I thought of the the napalm girl as we may have come to think of her you know fleeing you know from the American bombers you know towards the end of the Vietnam War. To me that image was similarly haunting you know and look at the damage that that napalm girl did to our understanding of the misuse of American war powers then. To me it's the same thing in Cornell they got this guy on the floor in the shape that he was in. Anyway the editors would let me put that in or they advised against it Archie you're going over the top this time put in a softer image which I did of course but nonetheless when we think about the notion of overreaction think about Mr. Cornell on the floor and think about what that kind of image does to respect for the law and in Cornell a majority of the Supreme Court said it was fine it's they said that we're not going to micromanage the police we're not going to be Monday morning quarterbacks and what the police did was perfectly acceptable in the circumstances. Fortunately there was a vigorous dissent but I was talking about the court's acceptance of the war mentality Cornell is a good example. So there may well then be a police loss of vision and aspiration the message which devalues drug participants may cause amnesia among the police they may lose their aspiration for a restrained and respectful use of police powers. Racial profiling, brutality, diminished respect for privacy and corruption may appear with the result in increasing disrespect of the law. War rhetoric obscures the boundary between legitimate and intolerable measures and state violence can become normalized. There has been such a global increase in criminalization that 10 million people now are in jail in prisons for drug offenses across the world. In terms of final assessments then of the war on drugs these are other people's assessments not mine. The war on drugs has proven ineffective resulted in much health care related harm there's no hope the battle will be ever won. Canada's revitalized has revitalized this war on drugs it has over relied on the criminal law causing more harm than good we should be joining forces around the world calling for change. This is a 1998 source the National Institute on Drug Abuse the economic cost to do the war on drugs. Note that it highlights the criminal black markets illness and death and health care costs as some of the costs of the war on drugs. How do we move forward then? Can we accept failure? Canada is at a crossroads we can continue with prohibition or we can commit to an approach that emphasizes efficacy public health and human rights but so far Canada has remained one of the last advocates of the failed war on drugs approach and notice that Nancy Reagan slipped into my slides again I'm not sure what's psychically going on here that gets her there twice but again she just says no and the other you know slide part of the slide points to the fact that more people are killed by the war on drugs and are killed from drugs. There are alternatives the obvious one is to dedicate ourselves to the utilization of public health principles as the UK Drug Policy Commission said in 2012 there's a perspective positive function for law we can use regulatory law to encourage responsible behavior to tackle structural problems and we can use evidence-based prevention programs. We can reconceptualize most of the problems associated with drugs as public health challenges as again the Detroit spokesperson says the cost of the drug war is killing our children. We can liberate our discourse we can face the now deeply embedded untruths about the war we can break the taboo we can pursue an open debate as the global global commission on drug policy is advised. We can stop insisting on the unattainable goals of elimination and abstinence. All drug use we can accept is not invariably problematic and many problems appear to be linked to inequality and social exclusion. We can stop seeing users as pariahs and outcasts to be vilified and imprisoned and I did by the way I thought oh I should be throwing my research I did watch Reef for Madness yesterday. I encourage you well not necessarily I'm one of those cinematic aficionados or addicts or something I never walk out on a film and I watched Reef for Madness start to finish and it truly is one of the worst films ever made so actually I shouldn't have recommended it to you that was irresponsible and uncaring but it does actually try to make out the case again that women cry for it and men die for it and that it's drug-crazed abandon that that it it promotes. I'll never do it again I'll never watch Reef for Madness again. We need to then think about asserting general principles in terms of how we go forward in Canada. What we should be doing is fairly obvious we should be insisting on evidence as a base for our policies and not supposition and not ideological stances. We should be ensuring the protection of human rights as a fundamental goal no more Mr. Robert Cornell's. We should be establishing new indicators of success that are quantified and described by public health principles when we should be giving those principles and those agencies for public health the lead role. We should be able to innovate but we should always be doing so with a view to reducing harm which we don't have our eye on now. We should be experimenting as befits Canada's needs you know recognizing that you know we won't necessarily get it right the first time but if we have an energetic approach now we may find the right way or begin to find the right way. We should be scaling up our investments in health promotion and social services. We should be working to eliminate stigma, discrimination, social and health inequities that directly lead to the kinds of for example discriminatory policing that we've seen. We should be modernizing legislation steadily retreating from the use of the criminal law and substantive law policy and enforcement. We should be determining what the proper if reduced role of law is. We should probably be halting the arrests of users simple possessors. We should probably be crafting alternative sentences for low-level dealers not the drug lords I suppose drug ladies we don't hear about them as much. Drug women we should be refocusing the law on violent and organized crime. We should probably eliminate our national anti- drug strategy and devise a new plan. We should be thinking about consistency which we refuse to do now among harmful substances drugs alcohol tobacco and similar substances. We should be repealing minimum mandatory sentences for you know the six plant possessors etc and permit judges to use their discretion to determine a fit sentence when somebody does come into conflict with the criminal law. But a reassertion of liberty doesn't oust the role of law. Criminal law may properly be used in relation to some concerns that are associated with drugs. We have a duty to protect especially vulnerable people. We should be using legal constraints for non-autonomous people or people whose autonomy is not recognized fully. We should be thinking about controlling dangerous behavior that's associated with drugs. We should be protecting society against the externalities of drug-related activity. Impaired driving, use of violence and furthering the drug trade, theft of property and other offenses to support drug purchases. Another 40s movie poster pounding on the door, thousands being turned away from the film marijuana, the weed with roots in the hell. At least I'm captured by the symmetry. I may be alone. I mentioned before that in this battle to change to something more positive and progressive we should be avoiding hollow decriminalization. The literature talks about this in a number of different ways. If we decriminalize and do it clumsily then for example we might have more criminalization. If we have absurdly low quantities only as being exempt from the criminal law. If we introduce harsh penalties for those above any exemption limit. If we substitute sanctions or controls which while not criminal substitute other violations of liberty. For example in Nova Scotia we still have on our books although in force although the statutes are not used the inebriates guardianship act and the narcotic drug addicts act. Both permitted voluntary institutionalization and treatment you know for substance dependent people. We don't want to reintroduce legislation like that just because we decriminalize. We don't want to continue to permit disparate and discriminatory enforcement patterns. We do have to think about a continuum of respectful interventions. If we're going to decriminalize that should be accompanied by broad harm reduction programs. We should think about human rights promoting interventions not the simple use in the reflexive use of the criminal law. We should ensure that we identify risk and protective factors. We should enhance health and prevent substance abuse as part of our drug strategy. We should be creating special prevention programs for vulnerable groups. There should be high quality treatment and rehabilitation programs. In terms of harm reduction we should find humane and effective ways to reduce the harm caused by drugs to people and societies which we must recognize and we must deal with. We need to decrease the negative consequences of substance abuse. We do think about reducing the health and social problems as the Canadian Center on Substance Use said, associate it with the use and control of alcohol and other drugs among individual families and societies. We need to promote health and welfare including techniques of harm reduction recognizing that prohibition itself exacerbates many of these harms. And as Jay Levy says, what's required is an end to prohibition. As this slide asks us to remember prohibition and remind ourselves it didn't work then. And we look back on the Elliot Ness era and say how silly that was and it still doesn't work. We should be encouraging safer practices as part of our approach to harm reduction especially for harder drugs. We need more safe injection sites, needle exchange, methadone treatment for people, heroin prescription for people, the use of oral rather than injectable drugs. We need to think about how people who are substance dependent and who are not yet responding to treatment who are in the process, how we can reduce the quantities that they may be used. We can think about how to encourage abstinence for some people and who just don't seem to be able to use harmlessly for themselves. For harder drugs we think about bleach and paraphernalia distribution, drug content testing, straws and foil for some types of ingestion, information dissemination, peer education, condom distribution obviously, counseling and testing, legal services and overdose prevention drugs. Those are harm reduction techniques. Those will conduce to the public welfare because they will reduce health hazards, they will reduce overdoses, they will reduce deaths, they will reduce infections. But that's using a public health lens, not a criminal justice lens. Times are changing in the world. There are emerging trends. It is said that there's a new wave that are moving towards criminalization because they recognize the failures of criminalization of prohibition. There's a strengthening political wind that is blowing in the direction of a historic paradigm shift. And I just chose one article that listed, partially, 26 countries that are moved towards liberalization. I'll bring you a sample of those and look at some of the ups and downs in liberalization that they follow. And the responses and effectiveness of the models will vary as you'll see. But for Canada there are many lessons to be learned. And it's not as if some of these other countries, which are similar to us in the OECD, and which have other broad bases of comparison. It's not as if they haven't tried them. We can look to them and think about, well, maybe we should experiment with that here. Or maybe we should do something in that direction. Again, these societies have not been torn asunder by liberalizing their drug laws. So for example, you think of Portugal, which decriminalized drug possession and use in 2001 and refocused on a public health model. Where they introduced harm reduction measures, such as drop-in shelters, mobile units, prescription programs, needle exchange, and some data indicates, although you always have to examine the data carefully, that there's been a decline in use of drugs, HIV infections and deaths, and increases in people seeking treatment. In Portugal, police may refer persons with more than 10 days of supply, more than a small amount, as is generally required by the drug control conventions that we talked about, to dissuasion commissions, which focus on health in terms of their range of sanctions, and they still permit possession of larger quantities of drugs to be referred to criminal courts. Italy decriminalized over 30 years ago, but it's had some ups and downs in terms of drug policy from harsh to lenient penalties, depending upon the era. In 1990, there were administrative sanctions only for small quantities based on a daily average dose guide, and increased penalties when you went beyond that. In 1991, judges were given more flexibility in determining whether drug possession beyond that limit involved an intent to sell, and hence invoked the criminal law. In 1993, there was a referendum that eliminated custodial measures and extended judicial discretion for simple users. In 2006, a more conservative parliament reinstituted stricter measures for quantities above the maximum allowed. That's why I said that this nation, Italy, was obviously torn in both directions. What the researchers say is that neither harshness or leniency has had much of an impact in terms of drug use. It hasn't gone up exponentially, but nor has it been decreased significantly. The Netherlands has a legal distinction between hard and soft drugs. They use enforcement guidelines only that de-prioritize prosecution for the amounts below a threshold. They have not introduced statutory decriminalization. Fines are still available, but what they have found is that at least with respect to hard drugs, there's a lower death rate. There are lower numbers of young problematic offenders and there's a low injection prevalence. There's been some increase in cannabis use in part due to the rise of coffee shops, but they're now under stricter controls. The Czech Republic formally decriminalized possession in 2010. Penalization had not affected availability they determined. Drug use was, if anything, in the Czech Republic increasing and the social costs of prohibition were increasing and they said it's time for us to face this. Public health predominated in their new approach to control of drugs and after that there were lower imprisonment rates for users. Administrative and non-criminal offenses were introduced for small quantities of drugs, but all sales and possession of larger amounts remain criminal. In the Czech Republic with this level and type of liberalization there was no explosion of drug use. Uruguay is a very interesting example. They never criminalized possession for personal use there. Trafficking was and still is an offense, but as of 1974 there was an exemption from punishment for any reasonable quantity that's suitable for personal consumption only. In Uruguay they had harm reduction strategies that accompanied their policy with respect to drugs. Administration of justice issues have it is said complicated reform. You know they still have problems of selective enforcement and bailed denial and you have to think about discrimination in the legal system approaching those kinds of reforms. But in 2013 parliament legalized the production, sale and use of marijuana although implementation has been postponed. The government itself, the president of Uruguay said this is an experiment we'll see how this goes, but at least they wanted to make this fundamental change to legalize as opposed to merely decriminalize which you know they in the sense didn't need to do it because they'd never criminalize it in the first place. In Mexico and Mexico as we know is a state that's been fraught with social problems that's been associated with organized crime and its involvement in the drug trade, but in 2009 there was a decriminalization of drugs for immediate consumption and personal use under the general health law. No prosecution for small quantities of cannabis, heroin or cocaine and the encouragement of treatment, more intensively if you were caught more often. There was there as there has been in other nations a controversy over the threshold for personal possession which would not be criminalized and it is said there that low limits and ambiguities may increase corruption and imprisonment because it gives more discretionary latitude to enforcement agencies. The United States has been a leader in terms of the drug war in their own country and also in their influence on the public policy of other nations but they've had extremely harsh drug laws and over incarceration has been the trend until very recently. You know Canada pails, I mean the United States has carpet bombed in terms of their drug war. We've been not surgical maybe we've used smaller weapons and lower calibers or something. We haven't gone quite as far as the United States has, thank heavens. There has been some trend towards legalization of medical marijuana and personal use in the United States. There are complexities there as you would be observing now if you're following what goes on in the states between federal prohibitions and state liberalization. In 2012 Colorado and Washington legalized possession of small amounts of cannabis and regulated growing and distribution. As Boston that I'll say drug law reform sweeps like falling dominoes across the US. That may be a bit of an exaggeration but at least you can see that in the United States some things are happening and there is some at least partial retreat in some states from the rigors of the drug war. Colorado is just one example then. Where the Department of Revenue is spearheaded legislative reform, where localities can set regulations and prohibit operations, where there's a licensing system for growers, manufacturers and transporters and sellers. But still there's a need to in Colorado and other states to concentrate on public health issues because that ought to be the constant lens. You have to think about the existence of a parallel competitive illicit market even if you do decriminalize or legalize and you still have to think about the lessons that were previously learned or not learned from tobacco and alcohol regulation. In Australia three states of decriminalized aspects of cannabis use and distribution. Decriminalization it is said has not resulted in an explosion of consumption. Most studies show little impact on use although the research I read said historically there are high rates of cannabis in use in Australia anyway. Maybe at the break you can tell me whether that's defamatory towards Australia, whether Australians are that much higher than people in Canada and elsewhere. I don't know. Decriminalization does obviously keep people over the criminal justice system and in Australia as in other nations it was observed that people who are criminalized and this is part of what has motivated their decriminalization experience negative employment, relationship and accommodation consequences and come into conflict with the justice system obviously. So I'll look at two states of the three here. In South Australia since 1987 they've had cannabis expiation notices that result in civil fines only and that kept many people out of the conventional criminal justice system. It's had little impact on use. Now use hasn't gone up. It has affected as you would well expect savings in law enforcement and with respect to non cannabis drugs simple possession may result in referral to services by a drug assessment panel. In Western Australia and here again we see the same thing that has occurred in Italy. In 2004 to 2008 they had a more liberal model where cannabis infringement notices were given to people for small quantities that either carried a low fine or the requirement to attend at some kind of education session where there is some evidence of decline in prevalence after the introduction of this law. No change or decline in the use of non cannabis drugs. A new more conservative government in 2011 lowered the threshold limits from 30 grams to 10 and that's where you get the hollow decriminalization problem. More people were then prosecuted for possession and even possessors with less than 10 grams were given a caution and required to attend the cannabis intervention session with higher penalties for other cannabis offenses. So I'm coming to the conclusion of my remarks before I start referring to your role here more aggressively. This slide, I didn't make these by the way, I just drew them from the many sources. I don't know whether you can read this. It says with military police a few billion dollars and a heart full of dreams we can probably keep some kid from smoking a doobie. And this threat to state security here with the funny hat on Parliament Hill is part of a demonstration of smoking or whatever that occurs regularly on Parliament Hill to oppose Canada's criminalization of at least marijuana possession and use but also ask us to think about the same kinds of issues with respect to other drugs. So before I turn to you and I've got anything I'll start handing them out I've got verdict sheets for you if you could hand those to people next to you and around. I've got verdict sheets for you to help you think about what you think would be the right response to the criminal justice and social and health dilemmas that I've presented you with. So I am going to get you thinking about it. Before you move around too much I'll just ask you to confront the kinds of dilemmas that I tried to in preparing for today which anybody needs to do in thinking about what to do about our drug policy issues. So the basic question is what would you do as Minister of Justice or health? What are the status quo options? Well they're fairly plain. You can continue the war on drugs or at the end and at the current rate of resource commitment and enforcement or you can recommit to the war with even greater zeal and harsher penalties. That's one option. You can think of liberalization options where there could be a partial retreat from the war or you'd scale back from the emphasis on the elimination of drugs and reinvest in prevention and treatment and harm reduction. You can retain the punishment structure but perhaps with possession offenses still being prosecuted. You could have decriminalization of some possession offenses such as cannabis or you could decriminalize all possession offenses not just the soft drugs. You can legalize drug possession, manufacture and distribution while emphasizing ancillary still harmful activities and when you think about reform options these kinds of questions are what you have to come to grips with. What are the variables that you might consider that governments consider? What is the personal use or small amount that's to be considered exempt if any? What's the place of law for simple possessors? Should there be no sanction whatsoever? Should there be administrative penalties for non-compliance? What should we do with repeat offenders? What do we do about treatment for substance use? Do we make it in any way mandatory? Should we have no provisions that require any submission to any measure whatsoever? Should we have optional counseling? Should we have mandatory counseling? Should we have optional or mandatory treatment? Should we make other public health investments? For persons beyond the threshold amount, what is our rationale for sentencing people? What are fit sentences and how do we avoid a de facto return to the war? How do we fight against hollow decriminalization? Those are the tough questions among others that need to be answered. So I don't know whether this will work with a group that are not compelled by class participation marks to participate, but maybe I should open the floor briefly to questions and then ask you to think about this. Do you have anything you want to ask me or any comments you want to make before you break off into smaller juries and think about what your verdicts would be? Yes? I can't pretend to be an expert on them, but basically for all nations that think about decriminalization or legalization that are signatories to the international drug control convictions, you don't want to be a non-compliance with an international treaty, right? So the question would be to what extent can we adjust our drug laws to permit, as the commissions do, possessions of small amounts but still remaining compliance with the rest of the convention? So that's one possible way of handling R being a signatory to the international drug control convention. Another possibility is simply to denounce the convention, change domestic law as you think fit, and then look for reaccession to the convention. Ask to rejoin, but on different terms with domestic law having changed. But we are part of the family of nations, we don't want to detach ourselves completely. Other nations that had to grapple, such as the Czech Republic, Australia and so on, they had to grapple with some of the same problems. Some of them can be avoided, some of them can be negotiated. At worst we would have to remove ourselves from the treaty and then establish a way of recomming. So that's a problem to be dealt with, but it's not an insurmountable obstacle. So it's a good question. Any other questions? Yes? You seem to stop short in terms of liberalization options at complete legalization. Is there no reason to include in the public policy debate a complete repeal of prohibition if that is scientifically what leads to the most harm reduction? Well I don't think I stopped short, but I ask you to pose that question. I don't know whether complete legalization in the sense of liberating the markets completely for willing, you know, non-vulnerable purchases is ever going to be realistic. But, you know, some nations have obviously, notably Portugal, moved towards legalization more aggressively, subject to penalties for more than personal use or personal consumption. I guess if you could show that protecting public health would be more adequate if we moved in the direction of complete legalization, then you'll let the evidence dictate that. So I'm not wholly opposed to it. I'm just trying to be realistic. It's hard to move from the mountaintop of criminalization, you know, to decriminalization, and then to complete legalization without thinking about the stops in between. But, you know, I'm not opposed to thinking about that at all. I'm just wondering if there's a difference in the language between legalization and repeal, whereas one involves just a strike down on the law and other actually requires new laws to be put into place. Well, I tried to clarify at the beginning how I was using the terms. I hope I use and consistently. When we think it would be criminalization, therefore, we're thinking about no longer having criminal penalties attached to at least simple possession. When we think about legalization, then we're thinking about making it lawful to at least purchase small quantities and to be in possession of small quantities. And, you know, so, you know, those are different stages in the de-escalation of the war. And, you know, as long as we use our terms precisely, as long as we have public health in, you know, our sites, on our gut sites, then I think it's perfectly reasonable to consider those options. Any other questions? Yes. I don't know exactly because that's up for grabs as to what the precise combination of measures would be, but in Colorado and Washington, I believe they intend that marijuana and its related products will be distributed through licensed outlets. And they're going to be taxed, you know, as sources of revenue. Whereas illicit transactions, as we now have them, are beyond, you know, Canada Revenue Agency, at least until they find a way of establishing a connection. But it's basically non-taxable wealth that's accumulated, you know, or longer, as I mentioned before. So, you know, the revenue would come through taxation. Any other questions? Yes. We need a couple more. Vertices. There should be. I mean, I'm in all 150, so somebody is hoarding them. Yes, yes. Thank you very much. Anybody else wants them in this center row? No? Other questions? Other questions? There we go. Other questions? I can't have answered them all. All right, well, why don't we do this? I don't know what we take you. Why don't we say let's take 10 minutes of deliberation and then come back and we'll hear from as many groups as we can before the curtain goes down. And see what you say about what you think is the right thing to do. I suggest that groups of five or six try to form them naturally and get together and collaborate. So, I'll call you back at the most. Okay, it's lovely to hear all the buzz in the room. And I hope it means that you have been grappling with these difficult issues. And why don't we spend a few minutes? Just, you know, maybe if you could, unlike me, be succinct. And, you know, let's hear from as many groups as we can, say for two minutes per group. Let's hear your verdict in what you think the appropriate public policy is. And, you know, then we'll hear from other groups. So, there's a big jury, almost 12 persons at the back today. Now, that may make it very hard to make a decision, but do you have a spokesperson, you, you know, large jury at the back? Who's the foreman? Oh, we already know what he thinks. So, he may be the foreman, but yeah, I'm sure he's incorporating everybody's views. So, let's hear it. So, this jury. First, I'm learning the only compassion called asymmetry, all the flying flags and if you have a medical diagnosis for cannabis, we're happy to help you. Yeah. I haven't been faced with machine guns in my face, in my family's face, watching my fiance get the shit kicked out of her two weeks ago. You know, I'm for an absolute repeal of prohibition in every sense of the word. I can't come close to finding acceptance in human rights for any place family could ever experience that. No, no, I'm sad to hear that you have experienced that sort of blunt force of the legal system. And obviously beyond anything else, I'm sure that has occasioned your outlook, which is completely understandable. There are other people within the group who presumably have had a slightly less nasty experience of the justice system and who are looking at the issue from that jury. Yes. And it really started with education. And this concern about, like, okay, like for kids, you know, kids, but it's education. It's the same thing. Like, I'm a parent, I've got two boys that's 13, 15 years old. I'm very concerned now about them you know, experimenting with alcohol. You know, experimenting with alcohol. So you shouldn't? Yeah, because it's for you. Yes. My only concern from experimenting with marijuana is just the distraction factor, you know, like you go off to university and you don't want to smoke joints. And you can just get distracted, you know, like into the socials then a bit. I think you're quite right that the public in general and vulnerable young people in particular, you know, need to be well educated about, you know, the dangers and harms that, you know, are associated with alcohol and drug use. I'm a parent of three girls myself and I'm well aware that, you know, prohibition doesn't work. And... I think that... It's more like that. Those are probably the best for everybody's health and safety. Another... Yeah, another comment as well. My sister mentioned education. We had an interesting discussion here. One person in our group thought that smoking marijuana would also increase to instance of lung cancer, much like smoking a cigarette. And in fact, it doesn't. And there's evidence based research for this. There are a lot of health benefits from consuming cannabis. And I don't think that that part of the real medicinal effect of it, whether it's to prevent something or to help cure something or just help someone to be able to get through the day, I don't think that message is really out there in a real effective way. It's not normalized in this case. It's not normalized in general population. And we really need to do something. I quite agree. I had a casual conversation with a friend today that's chronic, you know, terrible pain down his or her spine. And I said, well, when you talk with your doctor, you had to go into the possibility other drugs have not been have not helped her lead a conscious, professional, full life and still suppress the pain. And they talked about the possibility of that person said, no, I have but maybe I should. Let's hear from another group now. Who looked young people? Vulnerable young people. Did you reach any? I think that's a common stopping point that we've had in our summaries. Think about changing the status quo and how far you want to go and how do you get there? I mean, it's perfectly reasonable that you couldn't really nail it down. But at least you're talking about the issues and thinking about them. Anything else from this group? Well, as far as legalizing is concerned, I think that we we're looking at it either from a public health perspective or from a revenue perspective. Yes. Because if you just thought that you criminalizing all possession offenses, that does wonders to the human cost of the drug court, except for putting some music behind bars that's a large part of it. But I'm sure the general enforcement and the lack of taxes that you're eating is a way to make money. Well, the revenue piece has to be faced. I mean, now we're spending a fortune on enforcement. And the profits are filtering under the country to offshore banks at its highest level and it would be wonderful. As Colorado and Washington have decided to be able to tax some of that revenue and bring it into legitimate public policy uses. Thank you. Is this a natural group back here behind you? I have no idea. You're in a row here. You're just a random row? Okay, well if you have a rapporteur or somebody who's going to be discussed. I have a really general statement in the first slide. The questioner has actually asked to continue the war on drugs. I think the obvious answer is no. To me, yes. When I say it's obviously now it's because the questioner's word is should we continue the war on drugs? The word war should be unacceptable when you're talking to an agricultural political public. I believe continuing the reconsideration of drug policy that's very valid, but continuing the war is absolutely not right. We are having this kind of discussion here now in this classroom in a public lecture forum, but it's really the kind of discussion that our parliamentarians ought to have. And they ought to do as they have done on many occasions, consult widely with the public, consult with public health officials and try to kind of move us off this mountain of criminalization at least in my I'm certain to obviously have a moment to the war on drugs. Back there is another sort of naturally coalescing jury. You're just individuals. You don't have a collective decision? Whatever form of de-escalation you would take that public policy center around protecting and treating individuals the kind of most at-risk addicts and those mental health issues in a non-controversy way. No, I think that's an essential piece of thinking about how to change our approach. Everybody has to recognize that some people's lives are utterly ruined, not just by the justice system, but by their use and abuse and dependence on substances, whether it be alcohol and drugs or some mixture of them. So we have to offer people more than we have. And maybe some of the reviews that are released from enforcement properly go to public health initiatives like that. I was wondering if you could address the proposals that Mayor Wallace and Gaitley dropped on other drugs? I think the literature doesn't bear that any more than it says that Mother's Milk is a Gaitley drug. I'm being frivolous in a way and I can't say I'm an expert on that question. But to look at cause and effect that's implicitly I think probably can't be more. Because you also have to say, well what about alcohol? Is alcohol a Gaitley drug? And is something else the Gaitley? For most people there's a whole combination of factors that cause them to think about using alcohol, tobacco or illicit substances. And I don't see it as being a kind of linear thing, but I'm not sure about the evidence. I just find from a logical perspective that seems unlikely. We have a more mature jury here perhaps in the Senate. Two, sorry I don't know what you mean, did you think about what the policy options are? I think it was multiple jurisdictions that have thresholds for all over the map. There's no evidence. There's no agreement on what threshold should be. No international agreement, I agree. So that's something you have to come to grips with. I really agree that that's a serious issue. If you're thinking about moving along the direction of the toleration of some kind of personal use level, then you'd have to address that carefully. You'd have to look for evidence because when we looked at some of the countries tonight and saw even within countries that personal use threshold went up and down. So I quite agree that's something to confront, but that's something that you would try to confront presumably with evidence that would help you make a good decision and help respect you. Because you can't have, I don't think you can have a pal with marijuana as the personal possession limit if that's the approach you take. Anything else? I've got to say how much I use that you really do need a pal because that's what you say. Oh, I mean there are obviously outliers everywhere. That this group will reach any decision. I think we're coming. We're basically debating whether or not we need to retain any criminalization of possession and usage at all. There seem to be some advocates that shouldn't have that criminalization at all and then some advocates say that there shouldn't be some level of continued criminalization. Well, I don't know whether you're using the term in the same way that I was using criminalization before. Because you see the proposal that the Minister of Justice is now considering from the Association of Police Chiefs could provide for some type of ticketing type of fence which is not a criminal offense. As I said, the minister may have to straighten out his terminology because he says he's opposed to the criminalization but on the other hand the Conferventions Act which is our federal ticketing defense is not a criminal statute. It may be a halfway point for some people. I'm not saying it's the best one but that might be a way for there to be at least some kind of de-escalation. I don't think that's firmly guided by public health. I think that's at least by the governments. I think that's still driven by supposition and ideology because again, public health of what would be more open. So you've had that struggle within your group. That's probably a struggle that might be replicated in the rest of the country to some extent or another. And whenever we liberate this course that might be one of the first things you'd have to come to grips with. We've had various commissions over the years that have talked about non-medical drug use from the Lydane Commission in the late 1960s forward to various Senate committees and so on. Sometimes we haven't done that already in Canada so with this course that we've had that has been repeated, it has gotten close to decriminalizing the simple possession of marijuana but then back the way for political I think this group down in front placed a political issue squarely. I think in Canada we've elected fairly consistently over the last seven federal elections. A government that is still very in favor of the NAMI state where as you pointed out there are increasing penalties for possession. So clearly the issue from our government down for us is that they want to maintain the status quo not talking change. Not talking change very loudly. So maybe we should be looking at a change in the government's lives in order to purge the data. Well, I haven't wanted to politicize anything. I mean I can say that writing is clear about this and not of any other legal scholars and jurists in this country that the present government's criminal justice policy is just sadly devoid of evidence-based thinking on virtually everything increasingly punitive and in some cases mercilessly punitive. So at the highest level our government has not yet decided to rethink anything other than more crimes stiffer punishment for more people and put more people in jail. That's not exactly opening this course on criminal justice policy in general, let alone on drug policy. There's a duo back here, not exactly a full jury but you know, do you have any thoughts? As far as criminalizing versus criminalizing I suppose the one aspect that the producers and who's being hurt by the whole trade I suppose, last year there was a lot of vodka with the politicizing classes at one point. South America was one of the producers and suppliers and thus a lot of the bystanders who were being hurt by South America, but the demand is still coming from South America. And Europe and Australia is in the center. And then South America is turning around and leaving a lot of the issues that they're dealing with on the South American providers so I'm assuming as far as the international discourse needed for Canada, legalize what they need to basically start supplying their own drugs and completely seesaw interaction with other producers that are still legal Those are questions that are quite rightly posed by anybody thinking about the North-South divide and the allocation of market responsibilities between the South that produces so much of our harder drugs particularly and the North which consumes enthusiastically Blaming the suppliers is just how could we possibly do that I mean it's so illogical where we are the demanders and they are really suppliers but I agree that that's something to be thought of and production issues were the markets to change but with a lot of change Colorado and Washington and British Columbia are examples of American states that can readily produce all the pot that people want but for them I'm not sure but I agree that that's an element of any analysis Most of the policy think tanks on drug issues are thinking most about public health issues within our nations as opposed to international dimensions but that and especially the other issues we've heard before about the international conventions, those are different elements which should also be addressed but as I said they're also at a different level and maybe come after we make some more basic policy choices At the very back there you too have any thoughts to contribute to the burden Yes? Yes, that is another tough policy choice what do you do with the divide and we saw in some of the nations that I've briefly explored with you today that countries have made different choices they have obliterated the soft hard distinction and looked only at public health effects or some maintained it quite rigorously so that's a tough policy choice to make. Government from a public health perspective I don't know that we could continue to say that there should be differential treatment between soft and hard drugs I'm not sure but that is one of the many parts of the decision making tree that people have to confront because the easy question now for most states and that's what we've seen in Colorado, Washington and Australia and so on is to say well we're going to go in the direction of decriminalization or legalization for marijuana leaving the other drugs still firmly in the criminal domain so you've identified a big issue that has to be confronted Are there other groups that we haven't heard from? I'm told by Elizabeth that we're only allowed to be in 30 I did thank Elizabeth generously at the start so I know on the other hand she's been working all day so let's have a one more group because we have a campus that we want and then we'll Yes? Generally we were focusing on legalization as opposed to simple decriminalization as opposed to simple decriminalization we're very interested in the energy that you can set out to deal with that I think it's pretty easy to legalize marijuana because it's going to be an existing problem Yes With other harder drugs like things like cocaine or synthetic and things like that how would you regulate distribute those types of drugs? Or should you at all? That's just raised by the previous jury Personally you can get away with it because this adulteration is such a huge problem as the main problem And the harm reduction code says that's one of the things we have to deal with have drug quality assessments Absolutely We started getting some disagreement about exactly how that type of regime would work whether you should have limits if you go to the government supplier and monthly limits or something like that Some nations do that So yeah there's nothing we have to discuss about it And there could remain criminal sanctions for resale from those clinics or other sorts of endocrine treatment outside of it And I think we have a general consensus as well on the importance of education and just generally increasing public knowledge on what the actual effects of these drugs are as they were rolled out And presumably demonization as well That would be part of a real educational exposure But in terms of regulation of markets some nations have already dealt with that like Colorado, Washington And we have other dangerous products like alcohol and tobacco that are very heavily regulated Mind you some perhaps not as effective as they might be in terms of protecting vulnerable people and youth especially But we have heavily regulated markets for other dangerous products So we can handle that aspect better once we make some basic choices as a country I think you can have the last word here Some policies It's really based on on quality evidence or even falsified data You can say that Like back in the 30's there was a lot of stuff which was falsified and then So when you look at the DEA they thought marijuana classifies a category 1 drug which is highly addictive and no medicinal value That's not true No, I accept that But these policies are made on that So can you step back to it and go right back to what's formulated with these policies to begin with and realize that it's totally I think if you're starting to crash that's exactly what we have Well I guess we have come to the end of an extended discussion I want to thank you all for joining us at the Schulman School of Law I welcome you tonight I would love to have you as well So think about coming back for Professor Black's lecture in late October and Thank you so much for coming this evening Thank you