Only recently have Canadian politicians opposed to the Conservatives begun to revise their positions on illegal drugs. The New Democratic Party (NDP) now recommends decriminalization of marijuana possession, while the Greens support marijuana’s outright legalization. The Liberal Party of Canada has recently adopted a policy to legalize marijuana, and has designed proposed regulations to this end. None has suggested changes concerning the treatment of other illegal drugs.
Among nations around the world, Canada is now one of the toughest when it comes to waging the War on Drugs. This can only partly be explained by our historic close relationship with the United States. It is true that we are the main trading partner of the United States and share a four-thousand-mile border. Or, as famed author and wit Margaret Atwood put it, we share the longest undefended one-way mirror in the world.[2] If illegal drugs were to be decriminalized or legalized in Canada, it has always been thought that this would negatively affect our relationship with the United States in ways that could only be imagined.
But now the ground is shifting south of the border, sowing confusion among Canadian hardliners who have always been able to rely upon American drug czars and their colossal budgets to support an all-out war. American voters have been retreating from the drug war, electing to legalize pot — in Washington and Colorado in 2013 — and expand the number of states allowing for the use of medical marijuana. Currently, twenty states and Washington, DC, allow the prescribing of medical marijuana,[3] while seven more states are considering this policy change.[4] Recent developments also show that President Obama is becoming less inclined to vigorously prosecute marijuana laws.
There have been many high-profile Americans calling for a new approach to this issue. One of the most influential was broadcaster Walter Cronkite. He said America needed to admit it was wrong about the War on Drugs in the same way that Robert McNamara had later admitted not only that the Vietnam War was “wrong, terribly wrong,” but that he had thought so at the very time he was helping wage it.[5] Cronkite urged then-president Bill Clinton to appoint a bipartisan commission to review the evidence and produce a comprehensive drug policy for the future:
It’s surely time for this nation to stop flying blind, stop accepting the assurances of politicians and other officials that if only we keep doing what we’re doing, add a little more cash, break down a few more doors, lock up a few more [people], then we would see the light at the end of the tunnel. Victory would be ours…. We cannot go into tomorrow with the same formulas that are failing today. We must not blindly add to the body count and the terrible cost of the war on drugs only to learn from another Robert McNamara thirty years from now that what we’ve been doing is wrong, terribly wrong.
Cronkite made these remarks in 1995. Almost twenty years later, his plea continues to be ignored.
One American who changed his mind in a hurry was California state assemblyman Pat Nolan. Mr. Nolan had been all in favour of longer sentences for drug offences until he himself served two years in prison on corruption charges. In a reference to the United States’s moralistic approach to drugs, and to its indiscriminate use of prison sentences, he said, “We should reserve our prison space for people we are afraid of, instead of people we are mad at.”[6]
Among those around the world who now advocate for a repeal of drug prohibition are high-ranking scientists who have over time changed their minds about illegal drugs. Dr. David Nutt first assumed his responsibilities as Chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) in Britain thinking that the country was on the right track in its determined prosecution of illegal drugs.[7] However, he soon decided that the criminal justice approach was doing more harm than good, producing perverse consequences. He also came to deplore a world view shared by drug warriors that “taking certain drugs in certain kinds of ways is not just harmful but immoral.”
Dr. Nutt’s Waterloo moment arrived when Britain’s Home Secretary rejected the ACMD’s advice as to the proper categorization of marijuana. The ACMD had recommended that it should continue to be listed in the less-harmful category, but the government instead reclassified it to a category indicating a higher level of harmfulness. Dr. Nutt argued that this ran against the scientific evidence and maintained that, while marijuana was not harmless, it was much less harmful than, say, alcohol. He was determined to provide a consistent public-health message, and maintained that this was an impossible task if the government refused to talk about the harmfulness of certain legal drugs. As he put it, “The more hysterical and exaggerated any Home Secretary was about the harms of cannabis, the less credibility they would have in the eyes of the teenagers binge-drinking themselves into comas every day.”
As a result of the inevitable confrontation, Dr. Nutt was fired and a number of ACMD’s scientific experts resigned. They have since gone on to form the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD), which urges people and governments to consider drug policy in the light of objective evidence. Dr. Nutt says, “Being willing to change our minds in the light of new evidence is essential to rational policy-making.” British police officers, medical professionals, politicians, and many others have also changed their minds and are lobbying hard for change.
In Latin America, heads of state and former heads of state are seeking a different approach to illegal drugs. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Fernando Henrique Cardoso (former president of Brazil), César Gaviria (former president of Colombia), and Ernesto Zedillo (former president of Mexico) were unequivocal: “The War on Drugs has failed…. Prohibitionist policies based on eradication, interdiction, and criminalization of consumption simply haven’t worked. Violence and the organized crime associated with the narcotics trade remain critical problems in our countries.”[8] They claimed that “U.S.–inspired drug policies” had led to the corruption of their judicial and political systems. They tentatively suggested the decriminalization of marijuana, and recommended focusing on a health and education approach to drug use, rather than repression.
Another former president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, has been vocal about the drug war. “The War on Drugs convoked by President Nixon 40 years ago has been a total failure,” he says.[9] He recommends legalizing all drugs, stating that “freedom of choice exercised in an educated, responsible manner” should be the objective.[10] He speaks eloquently of the thousands of young Mexicans who have died because of the drug war: “These people were not born criminals; they did not possess criminality in their genes. And yet because of a flawed public policy, because of lack of education and disinformation, because of lack of better economic incentives and opportunities, they became victims of an insane war against an enemy we can never defeat with the current prohibitions in place.” He says the prerequisite to legalization will be the repeal of prohibition by the United States.
Felipe Calderón (whose repressive regime is widely credited with the deaths of tens of thousands of Mexicans), speaking before he stepped down as Mexico’s president, mused that it was “impossible” to stop the drug trade, and called for “market alternatives.” Most observers have interpreted “market alternatives” to mean a legalized, controlled market in drugs.
Other current Latin American leaders calling for change include Guatemalan president Otto Pérez Molina, a former military strongman. At the 2012 Summit of the Americas, he called the War on Drugs “a global deceit,” saying drugs cannot be eradicated.[11] He urged leaders to stop being ideologues and start thinking about drug use as a public health issue. He would prefer to see all drugs legalized, with limits and conditions.
Juan Manuel Santos, current president of Colombia, has emerged as a leading voice on the international political stage calling for major changes.[12] He is concerned that the consuming countries appear not to be interested in change. He would be inclined to legalize marijuana and perhaps cocaine, but only “if there is a world consensus.” He says that “a new approach should try [to] take away the violent profit that comes with drug trafficking…. If that means legalising, and the world thinks that’s the solution, I will welcome it.” He, too, deplores the corruption that comes with the drug trade.
Two Latin American leaders have already moved away from the prohibition model. President Evo Morales of Bolivia has managed to make the growing of coca leaves in his country legal, and their use permitted by the United Nations.[13] And President José Mujica of Uruguay has just