Dan Gardner
The Ottawa
Citizen
A welcome flame out: The Liberals' bill to
decriminalize marijuana was bad
policy and deserves to die on the order
paper.
Barring unforeseen plot twists, a federal election
will soon be called and a
bill decriminalizing marijuana will go up in
flames. As a supporter of
marijuana reform, I say, goodbye and good riddance.
Decriminalization was
not only bad public policy, the bill's production and
presentation were
deceptive, even fraudulent -- as demonstrated by documents
obtained under
the Access to Information Act.
From the beginning,
Martin Cauchon, the justice minister who promoted
decriminalization, promised
an open discussion, a theme repeated by the
throne speech of Sept. 30, 2002,
which said the government would "act on the
results of parliamentary
consultations with Canadians on options for change
in our drug laws,
including the possibility of the decriminalization of
marijuana
possession."
These "consultations" were special committees established by
both the Senate
and the House of Commons to examine marijuana and other
drugs.
The first of the committees to report was the Senate's. For two
years,
senators had worked diligently, commissioning 23 reports on scientific
and
academic research, holding 50 days of public hearings, and meeting with
more
than 100 witnesses from around the world. The final report, all 650
pages of
it, deployed extensive evidence and careful analysis to argue that
marijuana
possession, production and distribution should be legalized and
strictly
regulated.
The Commons committee was much less rigorous. Its
two reports, released in
November and December, 2002, ignored the toughest
questions and produced
scant evidence. Its recommendations stuck to
conventional wisdom, which by
that time was for decriminalization of
possession in small amounts. One
small wrinkle was a call to further
decriminalize the cultivation of a very
modest amount of marijuana for
personal use.
After receiving the Commons report, the government
announced it would only
decriminalize the possession of small amounts of
marijuana -- meaning
violators would not face criminal charges but would
instead be hit with
substantial fines. Nothing on the supply side would
change except maximum
sentences for growing marijuana would be raised, a
change that eight decades
of experience and stacks of research showed would
have no effect on the
trade or organized crime.
Decriminalization did,
however, raise the possibility of what criminologists
call "net-widening" --
when punishments are reduced, but not eliminated,
lesser offenders who would
have got only warnings from the police are no
longer let off. In effect,
lighter punishment causes more enforcement, which
is precisely what happened
in South Australia when marijuana was
decriminalized in 1987.
Of
course, it is the government's right to look at the pros and cons of
the
various models and make the wrong call. But what is not legitimate is for
a
government to make an important policy decision without any consideration
of
alternatives, particularly those arising from parliamentary
consultations.
It appears, however, that this is precisely what the
government did.
In January 2003, under the Access to Information Act, I
requested the
Department of Justice provide copies of all policy documents
relating to
marijuana reform from January 2002 forward. Thirteen months
later, I
received a large stack of documents that's most notable for the
near-total
absence of any consideration of either committee's
report.
The sole discussion of the Commons committee's idea of
decriminalizing
cultivation for personal use, for example, is a single sheet
with a glib
list of pros and cons. But even that looks like careful analysis
next to the
treatment of the Senate report, which only appears in talking
points that
advise the speaker to say such things as: "The Senate report will
be a very
helpful contribution to the development of Canada's drug strategy."
There is
no discussion of the report's ideas. No examination of its
voluminous
evidence. No weighing of the pros and cons of its many
recommendations.
Nothing.
The government wasn't under any legal
obligation to respond to the report, a
department spokeswoman told me.
"Legalization was not an option. Our
international obligations do not permit
us to legalize. The minister was
very clear that decriminalization was what
he wanted to do, not
legalization."
But the Senate report addressed
that issue, and if the government had wanted
a serious policy discussion, it
would have examined what the report said
about it and fleshed out the issue
before coming to a conclusion. It did
nothing of the kind.
Senator
Pierre-Claude Nolin, the chair of the committee, was shocked to hear
the
report was ignored. Mr. Nolin said he personally gave Mr. Cauchon a
full
briefing. "He told me he was to ask his department to review the report
and
give him an analysis."
The government's disingenuousness wasn't
limited to the process that
produced the bill. It also misled Canadians about
the basic character of the
scheme.
Polls show a clear majority of
Canadians favour either decriminalization or
legalization, and they do so
because they want less punishment or none at
all. They want liberal reform,
in other words. And that's certainly how the
government pitched
decriminalization, primarily by talking up the unfairness
of giving young
people criminal records. The media bit hard: Canada was
praised as a hip
young thing in The New Yorker and pictured on the cover of
The Economist as a
moose in sunglasses.
But behind closed doors, the justice department
described decriminalization
very differently. In a draft cabinet submission
labelled "secret,"
Australian experience with decriminalization is cited as
evidence that
decriminalization in Canada "will likely increase enforcement"
-- a
conclusion listed under the heading "Advantages."
This moose
wears sunglasses and carries a nightstick.
If this is the government's
idea of liberal reform, I'm happy to see it go
up in flames. The status quo
might be absurd, unjust and a waste of money,
but at least it's
honest.