Canada's farcical "War on Drugs"

Haper's new drug strategy tightens police state, ignores hard questions about drug sources

October 6, 2007

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper launched his government's new drug strategy this week amid much media fanfare. Much of the media coverage thus far has concerned itself primarily with Harper's avowed purpose to get hard on dealers and provide help for users. Global Winnipeg's coverage of the announcement can be seen here:

What such coverage fails to note is that the program amounts largely to a cash cow for law enforcement, with 1/3 of the $63.8 million program going directly into law enforcement coffers. The program also provides $10 million dollars for a new ad campaign, and we all know how effective Canadian federal ad campaigns have been in the past.

While platitudes about getting tough on dealers plays well with the media, Mr. Harper might be advised to consider the US' failed 'War on Drugs' before sending Canada down that road. Law enforcement officials from the front lines of America's drug war have been calling for an end to this failed policy for years, and now even presidential candidates are admitting that the drug war amounts to little more than institutionalized racism and a boon for the prison-industrial complex. Watch Republican Congressman Ron Paul's comments on the War on Drugs at last week's PBS Republican presidential debate here:

As ex-LAPD narcotics detective Michael Ruppert pointed out in an interview years ago, What is really at stake in the War on Drugs is the maintenance of a black market for drug dealing which represents a multi-billion dollar market into which corrupt individuals in business and government can dip for fluid liquid capital. This is perhaps most obviously demonstrated by the CIA's cocaine-running in the 1980's in support of the Nicaraguan Contras. For more information on that particular scandal please listen to the latest episode of The Corbett Report.

One can only hope that some intrepid reporter might actually ponder recent reports that poppy production has hit record highs in Afghanistan under Canada's watch before filing a report that accepts the Canadian government's sincerity on the War on Drugs at face value.