Drug Politics

Clearly the US government feels that Emery’s arrest is a political issue as much as a legal one. So why is the Canadian government colluding with a foreign government to arrest Canadian citizens for political reasons? While we are moving towards softening our marijuana laws, something that is long past due, why would our government cooperate with a foreign government who wishes to persecute Canadian citizens for political reasons having to do with those same laws?

Marc Emery isn’t the only Canadian who has run into trouble due to our government’s reluctance to disavow the war on drugs that our southern neighbours have unleashed on the world.

In the spring of 2004, David Laing was driving on a highway near Hope, BC. He had his two year old son with him. Laing was pulled over by a Texas State Trooper who wanted to search Laing’s car for marijuana.

Laing is a member of the Vancouver Police department and knew that the search the Texas State trooper was requesting to do is illegal under Canadian law. After refusing the search, Laing was pulled over by an RCMP officer and a Texas State Trooper. The RCMP did search his car, as well as Laing’s two year old son.

Although the RCMP settled out of court when Laing threatened to sue for wrongful detention, they insist that Laing was searched because his eyelashes were fluttering and his eyes were flashing. Fluttering eyelashes and flashing eyes are, according to Texas State Troopers and the RCMP, signs that a subject has been smoking marijuana.

By those criteria, Laing could have been trying to get a date. Fluttering eyelashes and flashing eyes aren’t exactly proof of anything. Such physical indications are highly subjective, especially if you aren’t familiar with the person you are judging. Flashing eyes means nothing whatsoever, at least outside the world of super hero comics, and fluttering eyelashes could be anything from an individual’s normal blink rate to a reaction to the sun reflecting off the cop’s badge.

Much more disturbing than the illegal detention and search that Laing suffered is the involvement of Texas State Troopers. Why are police from a US state with regressive drug laws, a history of questionable searches, and a reputation for brutality pulling people over for random checks in Canada? The RCMP say that the Texas cops are here to train RCMP officers in techniques to find drug traffickers. That the search techniques are illegal, the profiling criteria being used by the Texans and the RCMP questionable at best, and the idea of allowing US police to pull people over in Canada thoroughly reprehensible apparently has not occurred to the RCMP or the Canadian government.

Given concerns raised by human rights groups about the actions of US law enforcement agencies, I doubt they should be allowed to engage in any training exercises with Canadian police. Canadian police have shown themselves to be quite adept at infringing on Canadians’ rights without outside help, after all.

US involvement in Canadian Drug enforcement, and highly questionable actions by the DEA and RCMP are nothing new. In 1999, Paddy Roberts was arrested and charged with conspiracy to export cannabis by the RCMP. The USA’s Drug Enforcement Agency charged him with conspiracy to import drugs. Being charged with the same crime in two countries at the same time, especially when the law enforcement agencies of those countries are working together, is a matter of double jeopardy.

Roberts, who ran for the BC Marijuana Party in 2001, received legal permission to travel to Ireland, where he also holds citizenship. He was arrested by Dutch authorities on a stop-over in Holland. Apparently the Canadian prosecutor had tipped off authorities that he was travelling internationally. Roberts was suddenly facing extradition from a prison in Holland to the US, where sentences are far harsher than those he faced in Canada.

When Paddy Roberts’ brother was reported to be near death in Canada, a Dutch judge released Paddy on bail of 25,000 Euros. Once he arrived in Canada he was not allowed to leave and was forced to forfeit the bail he had paid in Holland.

case of Paddy Roberts was just one of many that occurred in the late 1990's. In one case, the actions of American drug agents in Canada caused a BC Supreme Court Justice to refuse the extradition of a suspect in a cocaine smuggling case. In her decision Madam Justice J.R. Dillon said, The illegal conduct of the United States DEA is so shocking here and so detrimental to international cooperative agreements to assist in criminal matters that I would be inclined to order a stay on that basis alone.

list of US transgressions of the rights of Canadians in the name of their war on drugs is extensive and the examples I’ve given here are far from comprehensive. The Canadian government and Canadian law enforcement agencies are all too happy to collaborate with US officials in spite of the transgressions of US law enforcement agencies.

question is why we cooperate with the United States on drug policy at all. Polls in the two countries indicate that Canadian attitudes towards drug use and drug policy are vastly different than attitudes in the United States. We are moving towards the decriminalization of marijuana, while the US government is pushing hard to make criminals out of even casual pot smokers. We have recognised the benefits of medicinal marijuana while the US government is arresting growers and users of medicinal marijuana even where state governments have approved its use.

Vancouver Mayor and newly appointed Senator, Larry Campbell, is an advocate of the four pillar approach to dealing with drug abuse. Saying, The war on drugs has failed. As a Coroner, I spoke for those who had died so that others may live. In my world, there are no throwaways; everyone is equal. Their stories have lessons for all of us, Campbell advocates prevention, enforcement, treatment and harm reduction to deal with Vancouver’s drug problems.

Campbell is no stranger to the drug wars. He was a drug squad cop before he was Coroner. He understands the situation and the problems better than most. That understanding is what led him away from a US-style war on drugs. He saw that it wasn’t working.

Campbell won’t be the first Senator to question Canada’s drug policies. In 2002 Senator Pierre Claude Nolin chaired a committee that looked into Canada’s drug laws. Nolin called the prohibition of marijuana a cop-out and said, Scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that cannabis is substantially less harmful than alcohol and should be treated not as a criminal issue but as a social and public health issue.

The 1970 interim report of the LeDain commission recommended that all charges for possession and use of psycho tropic drugs be transferred from the Narcotics Act to the Food and Drugs Act, which would have effectively decriminalised the possession and use of most drugs and reducing possession charges to a summary conviction similar to a traffic ticket, and treat addiction as a medical problem. The government rejected the recommendation for all but marijuana, but never took action on even that. The possession of marijuana remained illegal with little distinction made between it and heroin.

Canada’s federal government still hasn’t gotten the message. Instead of standing up for Canadian citizens and developing reasonable drug policies based on science and study, the ruling Liberals continue to aid and abet the regressive and harmful policies of a foreign government. Our government is allowing themselves to be bullied into acting against the best interests of Canadians.

The Emery case should be made into a rallying point by all Canadians. It is time to demand that our government abandon the war on drugs and quit colluding in the persecution of Canadian citizens by the government of the United States. It is time we told our government to base drug policy on scientific fact instead of on the false morality of a foreign power.