By Rev. Cheryl Jack, A sermon preached to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Durham, Brooklin, Ontario, Canada, February 18, 2001.

In 1922 Edmonton magistrate Emily Murphy wrote the following, one year before cannabis was added to the schedule of the Opium and Narcotic Control Act:

Persons using this narcotic smoke the dried leaves of the plant, which has the effect of driving them completely insane. The addict loses all sense of moral responsibility. Addicts to this drug, while under its influence, are immune to pain, and could be severely injured without having any realization of their condition. While in this condition they become raving maniacs and are liable to kill or indulge in any form of violence to other persons, using the most savage methods of cruelty without, as said before, any sense of moral responsibility.

It was “The War on Drugs” proposed by Ronald and Nancy Reagan that first tweaked my consciousness to the fact that something was going terribly wrong with our ability to deal with the proliferation of illicit drugs - as billions of dollars was about to be poured into armed prohibition and law enforcement. Visions of people shooting up in stairwells…crackhouses…prostitutes…murdered victims…streamed through my head.

Last summer on a rainy day, alone at the cottage, I turned on the TV and heard the Attorney General being interviewed by Arlene Bynan. They were discussing the serious drug problem in Ontario. I recall that although I was very impressed with the articulate manner in which the situation was being described (and the earnestness of it all)… I could certainly understand what a burden the drug trade brings to bear on our police forces. I didn’t hear any viable solutions.

What kind of a solution are we looking for? Surely we’re not looking for a way to stop people from using drugs. Looking at the history of drug use in our society, it seems very unlikely that the day will ever come when we find ourselves living in a drug-free society.

So instead of exploring that possibility, I invite you to consider what it might be like to live in a society in which Mafia and biker gangs are not made rich and powerful by the prohibition on drugs…a society in which the worst effects of drug addiction are minimized and those who are addicted receive the help that they need and are entitled to.

Surely what we are looking for is a way to stop the drug dealers from plying their wares on our streets and in our schoolyards. Surely what we are looking for is respect for the worth and dignity of every person. Surely what we are looking for is justice, equity and compassion in human relations.

The reality is that the war on drugs is not being won. The reality is that people keep bringing drugs into Canada through clandestine means, people continue to buy these drugs at exorbitant prices hoping that they won’t get caught in the process. And so the cycle continues…and the dealers get rich, the people caught with drugs are criminalized and could be thrown in jail for six months to life depending on the amount they are caught with and whether the drug was distributed or only possessed.

Perhaps the question we need to ask ourselves this morning is simply this: “What are the best means to regulate the distribution and consumption of the great variety of psychoactive substances available today and in the foreseeable future?

As I alluded to earlier, my response has been brewing since the days of Ronnie and Nancy. It’s a difficult topic. I’m sure that many images from the media, from your own experiences, from the entertainment industry come to mind. I wouldn’t suggest for a minute that I have the ultimate answer. In fact every time I think that I might be close, more questions come to mind.

Suppose for a moment, just suppose…that an act was passed in parliament to-morrow, which would be known as the Alcohol Control Act, 2001 which would make the distribution, the sale, the consumption of alcohol a criminal offence.

The government decided to pass the Alcohol Control Act because somehow or other it had escaped everyone’s attention that alcohol is a drug and that the possession of alcohol needs to be seen as a criminal offence along with the possession of marijuana, heroine and cocaine. Somehow or other when the Narcotic Control Act came into being, the fact that we also needed an Alcohol Control Act was overlooked.

This of course won’t happen to-morrow. No political party in Canada would ever suggest that alcohol be criminalized. And yet, in 1992 in Canada alcohol was implicated in 6,701 deaths - while marijuana-induced death was virtually non-existent.

What about a Nicotine Control Act?

In 1992 tobacco was implicated in 33,498 deaths - while marijuana-induced death was virtually non-existent.

Physician Andrew Weil writes: “In the form of cigarettes, tobacco is the most addictive drug known. It is harder to break the habit of smoking cigarettes than it is to stop using heroin or alcohol. Moreover, many people learn to use alcohol and heroin in non-addictive ways, whereas very few cigarette smokers can avoid becoming addicts. Occasionally you will meet a person who smokes 2 or 3 cigarettes a day or even 2 or 3 a week, but such people are rare.”

I want you to consider this morning whether any person should be considered a criminal because they have made a personal decision to consume marijuana, cocaine, heroin - or alcohol or nicotine.

In his 1859 work “On Liberty”, John Stuart Mill made the classic liberal statement: “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.” Modern democratic countries such as Canada are largely constructed on Mill’s conceptual framework…a framework which recognized that its citizens could decide for themselves what was in their own best interest - or not. It had nothing to do with the governing body.

Clear evidence of Mill’s influence still remains in our criminal code. Suicide is not illegal, nor is smoking, nor is body piercing, nor over-eating, nor starvation by choice, nor hundreds - even thousands of activities that harm only the person who indulges in them.

As you may have guessed by now, my response to the Drug Wars thus far, leads me to consider the possibility of legalizing drugs - in a similar manner to the legalization of nicotine and alcohol.

It seems to me that many, if not most people in Canada think that if you make drugs legal, you’re making a statement to the effect that we’re going soft on criminals. Personally, I don’t believe this to be the case and I’ll tell you why. I think that, in reality, a society which insists on criminalizing drugs is a society that guarantees that absolute power and wealth remain in the hands of the gangs and pushers.

If drugs were legalized, producers would be licensed, and taxed and sales permitted only through licensed establishments and government control boards. Of course, as in the case of alcohol and tobacco, people under eighteen would not be served. Products would be labeled so consumers would know precisely what they were buying. Government. inspectors would test to ensure that people were not buying contaminated goods. Canadians would have an orderly sales and regulatory system mirroring that for alcohol. It would be safe, efficient and most importantly free of criminal violence.

This wouldn’t be easy. It couldn’t be accomplished overnight. There are many questions to consider.

For example, I would definitely be opposed to the promotion of the sale of psychoactive drugs. And, I would want to ensure that consumers were fully informed about the extent and the harm produced by the use of such drugs. Of course, there would be a need for some kind of control of the settings and social circumstances of the use of such drug use…

My hope would be that we could make a beginning with marijuana and then quickly move on from there. As you likely know, in Amsterdam, pot and hashish are available in some coffee houses. Almost no crime or violence is associated with drug use there.

I like this passage from Neil Boyd’s “High Society’:

The Bull Dog is one of about 300 “coffee shops” in Amsterdam, offering a menu of fresh squeezed orange juice, coffee and marijuana. At the “Easy Times” coffee shop a few blocks and a canal away, beer is added to the list of choices, but the other rules remain - no hard drugs, no aggression, no one under eighteen, and no stolen property. Bob Marley overlooks the bar; his face emblazoned on the Jamaican flag that hangs above the beer dispenser.

The system would be free of drug-related criminal violence…territorial disputes, debt collection. If drugs were legalized, the incidence of violent crimes against people would decrease. Drug users who have no other way of paying the inflated costs of their drugs would no longer resort to theft. There would be far fewer people in our prison system, which currently houses thousands of people solely because they bought, sold or were in possession of illicit drugs.

The cost of drug enforcement alone is in the millions of dollars.

If drugs were legalized the spread of HIV/AIDS would be reduced. I understand that even with needle exchange programs, addicts who inject drugs are afraid to carry evidence of their habit with them. It’s no wonder.

In prisons where there is a high percentage of drug use, bleach is now made available to inmates, however neither needles nor drugs are. Prior to the bleach, prisoners became infected through the exchange of dirty needles and then eventually infected their families and others. Inmates are known to contrive their own injection devices, friends bring them drugs, they use the bleach, prison officials turn a blind eye and that’s that. Methadone treatment is not available to support them as a means of managing their addiction. After all these are not people, they are inmates. What does it matter anyway if they contrive HIV/AIDS. Wasn’t it only recently that condoms were made available?

With the legalization of drugs there is a far greater treatment potential for those who are addicted.

There is no doubt that the use of many drugs - legal and illegal alike - can escalate into full addiction and the suffering that entails. A society that legalizes drugs will escape the many miseries that criminalization imposes, and it must find effective ways to deal with the damage drugs can do.

The best way to fight addiction is not by prohibition but by helping those people within our population who suffer from addiction - through harm reduction treatment programs. If, as a society, we are concerned about people who suffer from addictions, then we need to turn our attention to rehabilitation. We need to take matters out of the criminal courts and deal with addictions as the health and social issues that they are. By legalizing drugs we would greatly assist this work by removing the threat of criminal sanction that currently hangs over the heads of addicts.

The money we could save in drug enforcement alone could be used to establish badly needed treatment programs in Canada. For instance, while there are many drug dependent people here in Ontario, we have a real lack of methadone maintenance programs and other drug maintenance programs to send them to in Canada. Compared with other parts of the world we are really lagging behind.

We also need to spend whatever resources it takes, in a society where drugs of all kinds will always be present - alcohol, nicotine AND marijuana, cocaine, heroin - to teach our children far more than just saying “No”. We need to ensure that drug education is part of every child’s formal education.

The drug problem in Ontario…in Canada…is very real and very serious. The so-called ‘war on drugs’ can be considered an abysmal failure. It came through loud and clear during Bynan’s interview with Jim Flaherty.

Several respected Canadian criminologists, lawyers, psychologists and drug policy researchers have either called for an end to prohibition, or at least an honest evaluation of its harms. Some of the most progressive literature in the Western world on alternatives to prohibition originates in Canada.

And I am asking now: What can I do?

I want to leave you with a story that I find very painful to tell as the story leads one to conclude that we, in North American society are allowing an inhumane and counterproductive process called the “war on drugs” to encourage an irrational and unreasoned response in the name of a just society.

The story is about a colleague of mine, Barbara Edgecombe, minister of the congregation in East Lansing:

In December of 1996 Barbara’s townhouse was stormed by six police officers before breakfast. She had just recently moved into the townhouse. She was being treated for breast cancer with chemotherapy. She told the police she had never heard of the man they were looking for. Assuming she was protecting him, an officer ordered her to get down and he pushed on her back to make her lie on the floor. “Please close the door, I’m in chemo and I’m terribly cold.” He pushed her face into the carpet and did not close the door. After concluding the man they sought was not there, they continued to question her and she explained that she had no idea who he was.

After they left she was treated at the hospital for a sprained back that had many bruises on it. The Head of the Narcotics Unit returned later that morning to assess property damages and to apologize for the unfortunate mistake. He said the element of surprise is critical to drug busts, and that though they try to take every precaution, from time to time something like this happens.

This happened to Barbara in the States but what if it happened here in Canada?
And I am asking now: What can I do?
Will you join with me in asking the questions and looking for the answers?

Blessed Be