Proceedings of the Special Committee on
Illegal Drugs

Issue 2 - Evidence for May 14 - Afternoon Session

The Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs met this day at 1:35 p.m. to reassess Canada's anti-drug legislation and policies.

Senator Pierre Claude Nolin (Chairman) in the Chair.

[Translation]

The Chairman: This afternoon, we are going to hear Dr. Andy Hathaway, Ph.D., who is a sociologist and researcher at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, and Dr. Patricia Erickson, Ph.D., who is a Doctor in criminology and social administration and also Senior Scientist at the Toronto Addiction Research Foundation.

Dr. Hathaway is a sociologist in the Department of Social, Prevention and Health Policy Research at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. His primary research interests include recreational drug use patterns and correlates, and analysis of the debates informing legal-political and health policy responses. Currently, he is investigating career drug use trajectories among experienced cannabis users in the city of Toronto.

Dr. Hathaway is also an instructor in the sociology of deviance and social control at the University of Toronto and McMaster University.

[English]

Thank you for being a witness in front of this committee. As I have said to other witnesses, if you want to provide the committee with more information, feel free to do so. We will also be asking you questions that arise from your testimony. I will forward them to you in writing.

Mr. Andy Hathaway, Researcher, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health: It is indeed an honour to be here to present new, unpublished research before this distinguished committee.

Cannabis is seldom discussed in the context of public health priorities even though it is usually the first drug to be proposed in reform policy discussions. Despite claims about its benign character, recent evidence concerning the respiratory hazards of long-term heavy use, as well as ongoing concerns about dependency, supports the need for targeted research to inform the most appropriate intervention efforts.

Cannabis users perceive the drug as being the least harmful of all drugs, including tobacco and alcohol. Therefore, effective intervention must take the users rational choice into account.

I surveyed 104 experienced users in the city of Toronto. Extensive standard lists of potential drug effects were employed to establish motivations for cannabis use and adverse consequences. I also employed standard measures of dependence to address that issue.

I will tell you some of the characteristics of the sample to give you an idea of who was involved. Sixty-four male and 40 female respondents took part. The age range was between 18 years and 55 years. The average age was 34 years. In terms of employment, 41 per cent were fully employed, 27 per cent were part-time employed, 11 per cent were unemployed and looking and 1 per cent were unemployed and not looking. Six per cent were disabled for work. There were a number of medical users treated for use in the study. As you see, 10 per cent did not fit into any of these categories which included self-employed, seasonal, and other types. That will give you an idea of the work characteristics of the sample.

In terms of income, 36 per cent earned less than $1,000 per month, 46 per cent of the sample earned between $1,000 and $2,000 per month, and 19 per cent earned $2,000 or more per month. As you can see, this group reported fairly modest incomes. Seventy-two per cent did not receive any government benefits, 10 per cent were on disability, 5 per cent claimed some form of public assistance, and 4 per cent were on scholarship. This last figure reflects the student proportion of the sample. Only 2 per cent, however, collected unemployment insurance.

I should point out that the recruitment for this study was not a random representative sample. The people were recruited through an ad in the local alternative newspaper. A $25-incentive was provided to take part in the study. This incentive may be reflected by the modest income and perhaps not fully employed status of a portion of the sample.

I would like to point out that this group was what we would call a fairly heavy using group of long-term frequent users. In terms of frequency of use the group showed that over the last 12 months, 88 per cent used the drug at least monthly; 80 per cent at least weekly; and over half of the group were daily users. As you can see for the figures for the past three months and 30 days, those figures remain fairly consistent. We can speak with some confidence about long-term frequent use of the drug.

In terms of weights of cannabis used, these figures may mean little to you but I can point out that in terms cumulative percentages, approximately 80 per cent used an eighth of an ounce or more per month; about two-thirds used at least a quarter of an ounce per month; approximately half used at least half an ounce per month; and about a quarter of the group used at least one ounce or more per month. This last figure is fairly high. From previous data, I know that about 1 per cent of cannabis users has been estimated to use the drug daily.

The Chairman: To help the committee, could you explain it to us in terms of a cigarette or joint. How many joints are we talking about per one ounce?

Dr. Hathaway: How many ounces in a joint? A nice-sized joint could be considered about a gram. Let us say 30 joints in an ounce. A user of an ounce per month, might use one joint each and every day up to the amount of an ounce.

The Chairman: The majority are using one-eighth of an ounce per day, right?

Dr. Hathaway: I did not mean to confuse you.

The Chairman: I want to figure it out now. There are many numbers that have to be understood properly by my colleagues.

Dr. Hathaway: An eighth of an ounce is three grams, therefore, that is three cigarettes.

The Chairman: Therefore, 67 per cent of users are using one-eighth of an ounce or three grams daily. Is that what your chart is saying?

Dr. Hathaway: That is in the first year of use. We then go to the heaviest use. I was concentrating on the last 12 months to focus on the more frequent use and the more recent time.

The Chairman: Are you referring to the last column on the right?

Dr. Hathaway: The last column on the right is the last 30 days, so that is the most recent use.

The Chairman: To go back to the one-eighth of an ounce, or three grams. Are you saying that 70 per cent of the group had been using that in the last 30 days? They were smoking on a daily basis.

Dr. Hathaway: Yes, sir.

Senator Kenny: We are discussing cannabis as though it is fungible. My understanding is that it is not. The quality of the product might vary considerably.

The Chairman: That is a question that we will need to ask the witness. Was the potency of the substance also examined?

Dr. Hathaway: No, that is something we certainly cannot address without some kind of clinical means of examining the product. This was reported by the respondents themselves in terms of their usage.

Senator Kenny: You do not know if they were using one joint a day of cannabis light? Is it possible that they were using it more frequently because they were not getting the response that they needed from the drug?

Dr. Hathaway: I cannot speak to the quality of the product that they were smoking. I can speak to the frequency and amount that they were smoking.

Senator Kenny: If you were analyzing your data, you would tell us that a potential flaw is that the product might have been uneven, and therefore, have caused different levels of usage?

Dr. Hathaway: Yes, certainly. That is something that could be brought into a study design. We could perhaps have the respondent bring in a sample and test the product that they are using. That is something that was not part of this study, unfortunately.

The Chairman: Just to be clear on that, what is the range between high potency and low potency in that specific group? Is it triple the effectiveness between the lowest and the highest? Do you understand my question?

Dr. Hathaway: Again, I cannot speak to that. I am able to speak to the fact that most users report a fairly standard amount of use of the product that they receive on the street. They report a fairly consistent potency. They tend to deal with the same people.

The Chairman: Colleagues, on the June 11, 2001, we will have three witnesses who will address the question of potency of marijuana and make comparisons.

Senator Kenny: We will hear from experts next week, on each of the levels of strength.

The Chairman: We will address our concerns that at that time.

Dr. Hathaway: To reiterate, the key point here is that this is a sample of long-term frequent and heavy users. The people in this study can be compared to the general population. Focusing on this type of user gave us the opportunity to look at the motivations for use and the most prevalent consequences of harmful effects. It also gave us the opportunity to address dependency concerns.

My first table addresses in the words of respondents, the reasons for cannabis use. This may be of some interest. Many times these types of things are assumed but this may give you some insight. I will summarize them for you.

Respondents were presented with a list of 20 possible reasons for using cannabis, and for each reason they were asked to indicate its importance to them personally. Relaxation is seen as the most important reason for cannabis use and the most prevalent reasons are predominantly recreational in nature. The top five reasons, in order of importance, are: to relax, to feel good, to enjoy music, movies or television, to cure boredom and to find inspiration.

The next four reasons were deemed the least important, by more than one-half the sample: to blow off steam, to feel less anxious, to see the world with fresh eyes, and to forget your worries. These reasons are noteworthy for they loosely connote the use of cannabis as a coping mechanism which falls behind the recreational use of cannabis.

Its use as a social lubricant comes further down the list, behind coping with depression and as a sleep aid. This suggests that marijuana's use as a social drug may be only secondary to its more personal use applications.

Senator Kenny: Mr. Chairman, we are hearing about the uses. I see fairly low down on the list that the users talked about one other reason for using marijuana. That reason is to rebel against authority. There were other things such as peer pressure, and other such reasons. Would they come up in a question like this?

Mr. Hathaway: That may be included in a study directed at youth, perhaps. This was an adult sample, and certainly, these may be key factors. This is a standardized questionnaire and survey. It has been used in other countries, so it is the best way that we have of addressing things by using standardized lists that have been tested time and time again. That is the best that we have to go on.

We will turn to table two. In addition to the reasons that people give for using cannabis, insight on specific use is needed to obtain a balanced view of costs and benefits. To gain a better understanding of both positive and negative use aspects, extensive standard lists of potential drug effects were presented. Respondents were asked if they experienced each of 28 effects "never, seldom, sometimes, often, or always, after using cannabis." Fourteen mostly positive effects were experienced more than sometimes by the respondents. Seven of these are reported as "always" or "often" by more than half the sample. Thus, according to the majority, in order of importance using cannabis "makes me feel relaxed, comfortable, merry, optimistic, attentive to aesthetics, intuitive and talkative." By contrast, the least frequently experienced effects, for example, were "mentally weak, pessimistic and paranoid." They are decidedly negative attributes. These appear at the bottom of the list, as you can see.

I just heard someone ask about aggression and if any of the users reported that with use they became aggressive. Aggression is not something we commonly associate with cannabis use, because of its position on the list. To examine more direct effects of cannabis use respondents were asked about 53 possible drug effects. For each they were asked if they had ever experienced that effect when using cannabis, and if so, had it occurred one to five times or more than five times.

The arbitrary cut-off of more than five times is meant to diminish the probability of chance effects. Chance effects, for example, occur when the person using cannabis mixes it with other substances. The use of this cut-off is questionable when dealing with experienced users, most of whom have used cannabis many hundreds, even thousands, of times. However, it still serves to differentiate expected effects for more spurious-use outcomes.

When we focus on the most prevalent items, the results are more equivocal in terms of the predominance of positive effects. There were perceived benefits of using cannabis, such as sense of well-being or euphoria, forgetting worries, feeling energetic, higher self-confidence and clear thinking, that, once again, rank highly. Certain negative aspects, however, such as dry mouth, absent-mindedness, forgetfulness and loss of motivation also figure prominently in the study.

Other highly ranked effects such as talkativeness, bouts of laughter, mind wandering, sexual stimulation and thinking faster are neither clearly negative nor positive but rather, they seem to be more contingent upon the intent and circumstances of use. Middle range responses such as feeling separated from the body or environment, and lacking ambition, suggest that certain effects that are relevant to some users, do not occur at all for others.

By contrast, intensively negative drug effects such as convulsions, unconsciousness and violent behaviour are rarely experienced, if at all, by cannabis users. I can scroll through the list slowly to give you some idea of the negative effects.

The next table focuses on negative physical effects and their relation to cannabis use. Respondents were presented with a list of 23 physical symptoms. For each symptom they were asked if they had ever experienced that symptom, and if so, did they think it was related to their use of cannabis. Of this list of physical effects, extra appetite for food, was by far the most frequent effect attributed to using cannabis.

Other frequent symptoms were restlessness, anxiety, respiratory problems, feeling physically unfit, insomnia and throat problems. Unlike extra appetite, however, most of these symptoms were attributed to cannabis by only one half of those who had experienced them.

Contrarily, for some, in respect to anxiety and insomnia, the drug was credited instead with relieving the reported symptom. Indeed, of the most frequent symptoms, only throat problems are attributed to cannabis by a large majority of those who report them. Regarding throat and respiratory problems, the high prevalence of tobacco smoking in the sample is undoubtedly a compounding factor. Nearly three-quarters of the respondents reported the use of tobacco in the three months prior to interview. Over two-thirds reported using tobacco with cannabis at least sometimes.

The frequent attribution of these problems is due to, or least exacerbated by, smoking cannabis. Fifty-six per cent of this group had respiratory problems. This is noteworthy in terms of fixing public health priorities in a way that is meaningful for heavy users.

Despite the occurrence of cannabis related health problems perceived by some, the vast majority of respondents, that is 89 per cent, were certain they would use cannabis again in the future. Over one half of them, 55 per cent, indicated they would never stop using cannabis altogether. Another 21 per cent remained uncertain.

When asked about the drugs' importance to their overall style of life over three-quarters considered cannabis at least somewhat important, and nearly one-third considered it very important. Compared to other activities that may fulfill similar functions, the advantages attributed to using cannabis made it nonetheless unique in the eyes of the majority as 59 per cent considered it unique in the advantages it provided them.

This profound conviction regarding its benefits and commitment to continue using cannabis indefinitely by more than one-half of the sample is further illustrated by its perceived long-term effects.

This leads us to the next table. Respondents were asked to indicate their level of agreement on each of 18 items about the drug and its impact on their lives in general.

The top seven are decidedly positive attributes. The respon dents indicated, "As a result of using marijuana, I...have more fun in life; have come to know myself better; am more open to other people; have more appreciation for beautiful things; have become more balanced and am happier with myself." By contrast the least-agreed-with items are mostly negative. For example, "I am...less efficient; less productive; slower-thinking; and less ambitious."

Next I turn to the issue of dependency. Notwithstanding the predominance of positive over negative effects, a balanced assessment of benefits and costs of using cannabis must acknowledge certain costs, as do a sizeable minority of users in the present sample. Additional costs are entailed, and with them curtailment of benefits, to the extent that dependence may distort users' perceptions of the precarious balance between positive and negative drug effects. Although use of the concept `dependence,' particularly with cannabis, inherits many difficulties and ongoing disputes among experts, a number of indicators now in standard usage offer a provisional basis on which to examine the problem. For example, dependence may be indicated by the prevalence of a strong, subjective desire or craving for the substance. Having ever had such cravings was affirmed by three-quarters of the respondents. Most of the group had been using the drug for two years or longer before they found themselves craving it. However, only a third had ever felt obsessed with using cannabis. A large majority of this sample, 88 per cent, moreover, affirmed that their use is under control.

A more standard set of dependency criteria is derived from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-IV. DSM-IV defines substance dependence as:

...a maladaptive pattern of substance use leading to clinically significant impairment or distress as manifested by three or more of the following symptoms:

1. The substance is often taken in larger amounts or over a longer period than was intended.

2. There is a persistent desire or unsuccessful effort to cut down or control the substance use.

3. A great deal of time is spent in activities necessary to obtain the substance, use the substance or recover from its effects.

4. Important social, occupational or recreational activities are given up or reduced because of substance use.

5. The substance use is continued despite knowledge of having a persistent or recurrent physical or psychological problem that is likely to have been caused or exacerbated by the substance.

In order to assess the continuation or cessation of dependency problems over time, the respondents were asked six questions based on the above criteria. Half of the respondents, 51 per cent, found themselves using larger amounts of cannabis or had used it for longer periods than they had intended to for more than a week. The figure drops to under one-third for the 12 months prior to the interview. Thirty-eight per cent of respondents felt a persistent desire to cut down on cannabis use or tried unsuccessfully to cut down for more than a week. One quarter had experienced this problem in the 12 months prior to the interview. Nineteen per cent of the sample had given up or reduced social, recreational or work activities for more than a week due to the use of cannabis. Eleven per cent had done so in the 12 months prior to the interview. Twenty per cent of respondents had kept using for more than a week despite a recurring physical or psychological problem that was either caused or worsened by their use of cannabis. Eleven per cent had done so in the 12 months prior to the interview.

One-quarter of the sample had failed to meet obligations at work or school or home for more than a week due to their use of cannabis. Less than one-half of these respondents, 12 per cent, report having done so in the 12 months prior to the interview. Seventeen per cent of respondents had kept using for more than a week despite recurring social or interpersonal problems that were caused or worsened by using cannabis. Eight per cent had done so in the 12 months prior to the interview.

That is the breakdown of the DSM-IV criteria. This is how the figures look in their totality in terms of the number of criteria responded to: Thirty per cent of respondents report a lifetime prevalence of three or more of these criteria. These respondents meet the DSM-IV criteria for dependency. This figure reduces to 15 per cent for the 12-month period prior to the interview. Overall, and for the latter four items specifically, dependency criteria declined markedly, that is to say by half, between `ever experienced' and `past year' prevalence.

Perceived problems with the use of cannabis, that is the frequency or amounts used as opposed to its impact on users, are shown to diminish by approximately one-third. However, no significant correlation was found between the frequency of cannabis use during the heaviest use period and the last 12-month period, and the number of reported DSM-IV items. Similarly, there is no correlation between average monthly consumption in grams for these periods and the above dependency criteria.

Five per cent of the sample reports sought formal help for dependency problems in connection with their use of cannabis. An additional 14 per cent affirm having considered treatment or counselling for cannabis. Nearly three-quarters of this latter group, 71 per cent, report using an ounce or more per month on average and, all were daily users during their heaviest period of use. In the 30 days prior to interview, however, half of those who had thought about treatment for cannabis had stopped daily use and, only one in five continued to use at the ounce or more per month level. Fourteen per cent of this group had not used cannabis at all in the past month.

I will draw some conclusions and possible recommendations stemming from this data. It is not surprising that the most prevalent reasons to use cannabis are for recreational enjoyment, relaxation and the enhancement of leisure time activities. Its related use as a coping mechanism in times of stress and anxiety also figures prominently. When presented with extensive standard lists of common drug effects, cannabis users tend to rank positive effects over more ambiguous and negative use outcomes. Interestingly, many effects that are relevant to some do not occur at all for other users and often are contingent on the intent and circumstances of use. Negative physical and behavioural effects that are associated with more dangerous and addictive drugs are rarely, if ever, experienced.

Analysis of negative health effects shows over a quarter of the respondents attribute some respiratory and throat problems to their use of cannabis. We hear the term `harm reduction' bandied around a lot. In terms of harm reduction for long-term and heavy users, the harm reduction approach recommends educational efforts to diminish deep inhalation and the holding of one's breath. Neither of these customary practices increases the efficiency of Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) delivery. Similarly, the concurrent use of tobacco and cannabis by combustion should be discouraged. Because THC is a bronchodilator it may augment the deleterious impact of tobacco smoking by abetting the deposition of particles deeper into respiratory airways.

Further development of smokeless delivery through cannabis beverages, lozenges or the use of vaporizers, for example, should be encouraged to diminish pulmonary hazards.

Perceiving that both the short and longer-term benefits of using cannabis outweigh any negative consequences, the clear majority of respondents indicated a commitment to continue using into the foreseeable future. Less than half report craving cannabis. A large majority, by contrast, claim to have their use under control. Analysis of standard dependency criteria found that the most frequently experienced problems with cannabis have more to do with self-perceptions of excessive use levels than with the drug's perceived impact on health, social obligations and relationships or other activities. Of the small minority of users who had considered formal treatment, all prior daily users, only half were still using daily when interviewed.

These data point to the highly subjective nature of the process whereby cannabis users evaluate costs and benefits in light of use levels and adjust their intake accordingly. The apparent reflexivity of this self-control process is important given the predominance of long-term, heavy, frequent users in the study. The traditional view of drug abuse and addiction that sees compulsive users progress and persist with their addiction despite the consequent harm to themselves and others, is not supported by this research. Future research employing larger representative samples is needed to more fully comprehend the complex interplay between cannabis use and its consequences at various use levels.

There is some interesting research being conducted in other countries at this time. Canada has been invited to partake in this research but has yet to be funded in order to do so. This research would allow us to gather a representative sample to address these harm issues at various use levels. It would be very useful and certainly make up for some of the lag that Canada has experienced in terms of lack of data to address these concerns.

As a researcher, this may sound self-interested, but I believe it is also relevant to policy when we consider the gravity of the deliberations before this committee.

Senator Banks: I have several questions about methodology. In terms of your catchment of people, and the demographic picture that you have painted for us of users, is it fair to say that the 104 people in your sample are entirely representative? The means by which you obtained them would not likely come to the attention of or be of particular interest to a $300,000-a-year Bay Street lawyer. That lawyer would not likely read the newspaper in which your ad appeared and would not likely be much interested in the $25.

I am asking a frivolous question, but am I right that it is not necessarily a representative sample of all cannabis users?

Dr. Hathaway: You are entirely right. That is important to highlight here. This is a sample of long-term, heavy, frequent users. A representative sample costs money and that is something we sought to circumvent. Because we had limited funds we were able to capitalize on the fact that we accessed a sample of the worst-case scenarios. That is to say we sampled those who were using very heavily. That group included self-identified cannabis users and we really focused in on that group to address the consequent harms due to use.

Senator Banks: To want to ensure that I understand. A bank president, a neurosurgeon, a broker or a Bay Street lawyer who might be a frequent long-term user, would not likely be included in this survey.

Dr. Hathaway: We had a minority in the upper salary range, but the predominant number of those in this sample were of fairly modest income.

Senator Banks: Have similar surveys been done with respect to users of other drugs?

Dr. Hathaway: Yes, they have, cocaine in particular.

Senator Banks: Would you be able to make those available?

Dr. Hathaway: Certainly, yes.

Senator Banks: We would be grateful.

You have referred to rationalizations. I am a smoker so I have many rationalizations. People rationalize the dumb things that they do. Is it corrrect to say that their rationalization is not an objective finding, but an entirely subjective finding?

Dr. Hathaway: Absolutely.

Senator Banks: Would it not colour their answers to the questions?

Dr. Hathaway: That is correct, yes.

Senator Banks: I shall now turn to the concept of the usage of cannabis. The users state that it contributes, in their view, to relaxation, improved recreational activities and aids in coping with stress and anxiety. I am sure it does. If I wrote a science-fiction novel placed in some futuristic country in which the state sanctioned the use of a narcotic or hallucinogenic substance because it kept the population happy and relieved their stress and anxiety, the government in that novel would be the bad guy.

Dr. Hathaway: That novel is not as far-fetched as you think.

Senator Banks: What is your personal reaction to those governments, who are considering doing this? They are saying that if this drug use keeps people happy and if it keeps them from becoming anxious and stressed, then let us turn a blind eye. Do you think that is a rational approach for a government?

Dr. Hathaway: Government has a role in both education and public health as well. Much of the deterrence data that my colleagues will be sharing and have shared with you suggests that deterrence and coercive means are not necessarily having the beneficial aspects in terms of producing harm.

If we take a public health approach, which certainly has been suggested from a number of respected fronts, we must respect the point of view of the user and work with the user in order to come up with the best possible outcome. That includes educating the users to the effects of these drugs as well as allowing for non-coercive, voluntary treatment for those who feel they need it.

That is a different social control model than what is currently in place. We are seeing bridging. However, carried to its logical consistency and given the lack of deterrence data, perhaps that is more of a cost-benefit effective solution. That is my understand ing of the issue.

Senator Banks: If we carry that along the same highway, would we not arrive at a point where we would be looking at junkies who tell us that this makes me feel good, so it is okay? Should that be sanctioned in terms of the law?

Dr. Hathaway: As the law stands, we have junkies out there and they are living in pretty poor conditions. As my colleagues mentioned earlier, there have been experiments in other jurisdictions that have shown that they can provide for a better quality of life for the junkie and help the junkie to progress in terms of dealing with these dependency issues. Most of the dependency issues go beyond the drug itself. There is a quality of life issue that speaks to the need to rely on these substances.

We would be better off allowing for a state-controlled model that provides for public health and education to improve these lives as opposed to throwing them in jail.

Senator Banks: Has your research led you to a conclusion concerning the correctness of putting drug users, particularly illicit drug users, into a particular socio-economic category?

Dr. Hathaway: I am not sure I understand the implications of what you are saying.

Senator Banks: I do not know the implications either. The people that you have sampled in this survey are, generally speaking, in lower income groups. They might be said to be disadvantaged in one way or another. Since you are looking at addictions of all kinds, have you found that addiction is considered more of a problem in one particular socio-economic part of our society more than in another?

Dr. Hathaway: My understanding is that addiction cuts across all social strata. That we are focusing on a modest income group in this case does not imply that this is a situation that they have got themselves into because of the use of a drug. As you alluded to earlier, well-employed, upper-class bankers and lawyers have recourse to recreational drug use as well. The outcomes and visibility of harmful consequences are certainly more prevalent in the case of the socially disadvantaged.

In terms of those outcomes, I think we can talk to sociological casting into various social groups. The consequent harms, due to the use of drugs, become far more prevalent and noticeable in the case of the disadvantaged.

Senator Kenny: The witness said that addiction cuts across social strata. I understand that. However, my understanding is that it is far more heavily weighted in the groups about which Senator Banks was speaking. That is in fact, the people who have a lower education and lower income are the ones more likely to have the worst luck with drugs. You can be rich and still get nailed, but is it not true that by a very significant factor it is the bottom end of the income scale that seems to get caught?

Dr. Hathaway: You are alluding to the fact that more well-to-do users have the luxury of using in the privacy of their own home as opposed to a person on the street who falls under the purvey of our social enforcement agencies.

Senator Kenny: No. In fact, I was extrapolating from tobacco addiction where users probably do not have the luxury of using it in their homes and are forced to use it outside. If I am wrong, please correct me. My impression is that there are far fewer well-off people addicted to drugs than are poor people.

Dr. Hathaway: I cannot speak to that exact distinction. As I say, I think the problems are more visible as to addiction per se. Our attention is certainly drawn more to those of lower means. The people of lower means have less for dealing with the problem and have less places to turn to than to those who have the means to do so.

Senator Kenny: Would you at least concede that addicted young smokers tend not to be doing well in school, to be from low-income or broken families, from First Nations and other groups that do not seem to get an even chance in life?

Dr. Hathaway: I will concede that if that is the what the data shows. I am not familiar with the tobacco data.

Senator Maheu: Dr. Hathaway, one-quarter of yourrespondents indicated that they would sell cannabis to support their habit. Is that not a strong indictment against the so-called innocuity of this drug, especially if one thinks about the fact that very young people could be easy targets?

Dr. Hathaway: Yes, we brought up the supply issue before. Clearly, if you allow some room for simple possession and use, you must allow some means of obtaining the drug. From my own research I know that the data shows that this so-called dealing tends to go on within friendship groups. I have no data to support that these people are standing out on the street or in schoolyards pushing the product. What tends to happen is, due to economies of scale, groups of friends will buy a larger amount together and split it up amongst themselves. That is the kind of transactions that tend to go on among these user groups.

I did not go to the extent of asking to whom they sell the product. I suspect that is the case and certainly do not have any data to support selling to minors or anything like that.

Senator Maheu: Do you have an opinion on the policy that the government is currently considering of decriminalizing marijuana for people who claim it eases their pain? Have your studies indicated that this is indeed a fact? One part of our population is saying that is a copout. They do not believe that it eases pain as much as a pill would.

Dr. Hathaway: As a general opinion, I believe that if someone thinks something works for them, whether or not we have clinical proof to assess it, we must bear that in mind. Many of those to whom I spoke, which is a fairly small group in the sample on which I have direct data, found the effects of pharmaceutical drugs, prescribed by medical professionals, far less helpful in enabling them to function than was the use of cannabis.

If it is an either or situation, I think we must respect the right of the users to choose what works for them. I have heard stories of horribly debilitating effects from the use of pharmaceutical drugs that these users do not experience with the use of cannabis. I do not believe that I am in a position to say that pharmaceuticals are better.

Indeed, we are accumulating evidence on the efficacy of cannabis in this context. Time will tell, but I believe that to a certain extent we should allow the user to self-medicate in the way they choose.

Senator Maheu: Have you dealt with many ill people who claim that the use of cannabis is effective for them?

Dr. Hathaway: A fairly small segment of my sample, in the order of a dozen or so, did indicate this. They may have started out as recreational users and found that it helped for various maladies, or vice versa. For example, it may have been suggested or recommended to cancer and AIDS patients that this may help and then they found that it helped in a more recreational way. In fact, drawing the distinction between medical and recreational use sometimes gets fuzzy when talking about stress relief and sleep aids. Where do you draw the line? That is obviously something that our political system will have to come to grips with as it debates this issue and deliberates on the costs and benefits of allowing cannabis for medicinal use.

The Chairman: Dr. Hathaway, of the overall population that smokes marijuana in Canada what proportion are frequent users?

Dr. Hathaway: The figure I know is just that of daily users compared to the entire population, and that figure is 1 per cent. However, I must add the caveat that we do not have a lot of data that is representative of the entire population. That is a pricey endeavour because it needs to be regularly updated. However, this is a figure that sticks in my mind from having read much about the issue over time.

The Chairman: The last general evaluation of drug use in Canada was done in 1994. Are you still using that data to draw conclusions?

Dr. Hathaway: In order to compare our samples with representative samples there is very little choice but to use that seven-year-old data.

The Chairman: Is the 1 per cent you just mentioned supported by the 1994 data, or do you think it has changed in the last seven years?

Dr. Hathaway: I believe so. Perhaps Professor Single or someone who has had access to these larger-scale surveys would know that for a fact. I cannot say that I have made a point of checking that figure. It is a figure that stands in my mind.

The Chairman: We will try to convince everyone to invest in getting such a survey done again. However, we are not there yet. If we had the proper resources, we would do it ourselves, but that is not the case.

Let us assume that 1 per cent is a valid answer. It could vary from 1 per cent to 1.5 per cent, but 1 per cent is also easy to calculate. All those numbers are for 1 per cent of the total population that uses marijuana in Canada. Am I right?

Dr. Hathaway: Sorry, what are you asking me?

The Chairman: The numbers we have seen are an in-depth analysis of the attitude of users, and those users compriseonly 1 per cent of the total population that use marijuana in Canada?

Dr. Hathaway: You are correct if we are accepting that figure. That is the proportion of my sample that are daily users.

The Chairman: Do you not think we need similar research on the other 99 per cent of the group?

Dr. Hathaway: Representative population, absolutely. That is my plea.

The Chairman: My question is, do we have that somewhere? Has someone done such research, even 10 years ago?

Dr. Hathaway: I have a very well developed proposal I would be glad to share with you. It failed to be funded. As I say, I take the risk of sounding extremely self-interested, but this is a proposal that has gone before a number of funding agencies and it has failed to attract attention. I find this odd considering the gravity of deliberations before committees such as these.

Senator Banks: I am a little confused. Does the sample represent 1 per cent of users or 1 per cent of the general population?

Dr. Hathaway: I think Senator Nolin was referring to the fact that I noted that 1 per cent of all the users we know of are daily users, yes. I had a much higher proportion in my study, which led me to look more closely at the harms. We do not see many of these harms in the much wider, occasional weekend users. We have little reason to be concerned about these people. This 1 per cent who may be using very frequently, is a concern from the public health perspective, and that is what I am addressing in this research.

The Chairman: I read on page 15 of your brief that no significant correlations were found between amounts and fre quency.

Dr. Hathaway: Is that not interesting?

The Chairman: That is, for me, the real finding of the study. What is the real conclusion of your work? Let us say you were allowed to ask for whatever money you needed to go further. What would you ask for?

Dr. Hathaway: Treatment providers should be very concerned about knowing that these so-called objective criteria do not necessarily do a very good job.

The Chairman: I have other questions on that.

Dr. Hathaway: It points to the subjectivity of perceived problems among users. The six different criteria show that they do not see these as problems in their lives, or they do not see all of the harms that you might expect them to see. They perceive that perhaps they use too much or too often. We have seen that the small proportion who felt that way at some point in their use career came to deal with it and adjusted their use accordingly. They cut down on use or frequency and cut down on the amount of consumption, or cut out use altogether. There were a few of those as well. These are the key findings. It comes down to really espousing a non-interventionist point of view and not necessarily assuming that we know better who is dependent and who is not.

DSM-IV does not even allow for a listing of cannabis as a physiological dependency. It is considered a non-physiological dependency, if that. This is an interesting conclusion as well.

The Chairman: Dependency is a real question, independent of the frequency and the amount. Do we have the proper tools to evaluate dependency? Do you think we have the right tools?

Dr. Hathaway: If we are going to allow for the users' perspective in making these decisions about treatment and possible intervention, then I think we will very quickly accumulate these tools. If we assume from a strictly clinical treatment perspective that we know better in terms of intervening, I think that is a little backward. We have to allow for a more subjective interpretation of what dependence is all about and, indeed, what place we have to intervene, if at all.

The Chairman: Out of curiosity, is the DSM-IV used for other legal substances and dependency?

Dr. Hathaway: Yes.

The Chairman: Chocolate, sugar?

Dr. Hathaway: All manner of compulsives. It would work for any substance. I do not know if it gets used in that sense very often. It is not the substance itself; it is the behaviour surrounding it. Indeed, if you chose to so do, you could certainly apply the criteria.

The Chairman: What was your reaction when you found that the proportion of those who were meeting three or four of criteria reduced 50 per cent in the last 12 months prior to your survey?

Dr. Hathaway: Was I surprised?

The Chairman: I think you were surprised, but what were the reasons?

Dr. Hathaway: I cannot say I was greatly surprised. Past research has lead me to believe that there is a certain amount of functionality in drug use behaviour. The fact that some problems may have existed at some time certainly does not leave one to believe that these problems will escalate and lead to harder drug use. That is the `gateway theory' that we alluded to earlier in the proceedings.

Giving some benefit of the doubt to the motivations for use and why people use and what functions they perceive, it does not surprise me that much. We tend to see figures around 10 per cent for all drugs and for people who develop real problems with them. The fact that we have found a similar figure in a sample of very long-term heavy cannabis users certainly supports past research that has been done by researchers in the area.

The Chairman: Laymen like me would hear an expert like you saying, "What is the explanation for dependency?" You convince me that there is a set of criteria, and whoever meets three out of those six is dependent. To me, being dependent means I do not control my use but am forced or attracted by a force to do what I am dependent upon. Let us say that 12 months ago, 30 per cent of my group were dependent, and now it is only 15 per cent. It was not that tough. They were not dependent. Do you not think so? That would have been my surprise.

Dr. Hathaway: They met an objective criteria. I also included a subjective measurement, the notion of craving, and more seriously, the obsession with the drug. I believe it comes down to a majority that at some time experienced a craving. Still, the vast majority considers their use under control. That is what you are alluding to; the subjective notion of control outside of any objective criteria we can come up with from the psychiatric community or any clinical setting. You are alluding to the subjective notion being all-important, and, I believe, that is what this research supports.

Senator Banks: I want to make sure I understood you when you said that dependency is not necessarily addiction. If I have a bad headache for a couple of days, I am dependent for that length of time on aspirins. If the headache goes away, I am no longer dependent on aspirins, unless I have turned that into an addiction. Were you getting to the fact that the social circumstances might have changed?

Dr. Hathaway: It depends on the distinction you are making between the use of the terms "dependency" and "addiction."

Senator Banks: That is what I am trying to get at.

Dr. Hathaway: Do you mean that dependency is somewhat lesser a concern? Is that what you are suggesting?

Senator Banks: Yes, that is my question. Is dependency a lesser concern?

Mr. Hathaway: There are many concerns. There is an ongoing debate among experts as to what these concepts really mean. I cannot speak to addiction being something more serious than dependency. We are talking about similar concepts. I believe it is a kind of semantic issue. Certainly the notion of addiction may be suggestive of a physiological addiction. As I said, for cannabis, this distinction does not exist in DSM-IV. It is widely recognized as a non-physiological dependency. My research just went on to elaborate this distinction further. Yet I would like to point out that perhaps these objective distinctions are of lesser use than it is widely understood.

Senator Banks: Perhaps non-physiological dependency is an oxymoron.

You say that you need to know much more. However, given the nature of your job and your study, it appears to me that you know more about this subject than most people do. Putting aside the medium term question of funding, and taking a great leap and a global view, if you were the king what would you do tomorrow? I ask you to respond to this question based on what you know and the opinions you have now formed on the basis of that knowledge,

Mr. Hathaway: Am I to be faced with political realities as they exist now or am I to have carte blanche?

Senator Banks: What is the right thing to do?

Mr. Hathaway: The key issue to look at is humanizing our drug policy. That is something that has re-emerged throughout my research. We talk about conceptual difficulties with "depenalization" and decriminalization. These are confusing concepts and public debate on these issues reflects that confusion.

We must begin to approach our drug policy with the idea of humanization and address this issue in an evolutionary, non-punitive manner. Our research has led us to believe that these sanctions are not having the intended effect. In fact, they have had the opposite effect in many cases. They are, in fact, exacerbating harm.

Let us step back and take a public health educational approach. This approach provides accurate information for drug users and treatment for those who feel they need it. We must forget about this coercive means of trying to purge our society of these evil, immoral beings. That is where policies come from, and I believe it is time for a change.

The Chairman: I just want to make clear that we understood each other when I talked about the 1 per cent and your sampling.

If 1 per cent of users, according to a 1994 national survey, are frequent users it may be said then, that all the data on the 104 respondents in your study would apply to this 1 per cent. Is that correct?

Mr. Hathaway: For those who were daily users. I pointed out that not all, but many were daily users. I believe 50 per cent were daily users.

The Chairman: I believe it was more than that. It was 60 per cent in your table.

Mr. Hathaway: It was 51 per cent over the last 12 months and, in fact, that figure stays quite consistent. Up to the last 30 days it is 47 per cent. In the sample over the past year, there are approximately 50 per cent daily users.

The Chairman: I wish to continue for the next 15 minutes on the other paper that you submitted. I understand that you are not a constitutional lawyer.

Dr. Hathaway: I am not.

The Chairman: I want to give you the floor to express your decision on the Clay decision. I would like you to explain why you were interested in the facts of that case. Then I would like you to advise the committee of your reasons for submitting that paper?

Dr. Hathaway: This all began when I started my doctoral research. I wanted to understand the drug debate and what this debate hinges on in this country. I approached the issue as a person interested in science and as a harm-reductionist. My findings included factual information that could not be ignored. There are practical solutions entailed in these findings. These solutions have been reinforced over many decades of research. However, there are underlying moral issues, and underlying values that separate public opinion on this issue. Indeed these underlying issues make this a political issue. This is where I was coming from in terms of taking a rhetorical approach. What kind of rhetoric is used in the drug reform movement? Obviously, from the scientific point of view, we have harm reduction.

A number of activists talk about the rights of the user. In our judicial system and before the courts, we have a number of challenges that have taken place over recent years that have put these issues to the test. Under section 7 of the Charter we recognize a right of personal liberty to choose. This is obviously a key distinction in drug debates. What side of this argument are you on? Are you for social order and coercive powers of the state? Or do you prefer an individual choice perspective? Obviously these values have certainly impacted me in my research. I believe there needs to be some respect for rational choice and the individual right to choose. This paper gave me an opportunity to explore some of those issues.

When I saw the direction my research was taking I spoke to a couple of constitutional lawyers to get some expert opinion. This was when we got to the Clay case. In a nutshell, the chief justice decided that yes, the facts lead us to believe that cannabis is indeed a relatively benign substance. On the other hand, the chief just felt that the right to choose is too trivial a right. That is an interesting distinction to make . If it is too trivial, why the need for the criminal justice machinery of the state to coerce people from doing what they choose to do?

This is the key distinction here. This is where we stand. We are at a stalemate in that issue now because it has been generally agreed in a court of law that the problems are relatively benign, and yet it is still considered too trivial of an activity to be given Charter protections. That is what we call a stalemate. It is on a moral plane, I believe, and not something that the data can necessarily address. This is something we must address in terms of people's values. This is where this gets us to. The fact that we have arrived there through the machinery that our nation allows is a positive step. It allows us to address these issues and look at them in a factual way. As I say, the distinction is a moral one. This is what the paper addresses.

The Chairman: Just to help my colleagues, section 7 of the Charter was used in the abortion decision by the Supreme Court. Mr. Clay was not a frequent user. He was a seller of seeds.

Are you informed that the Supreme Court has accepted to hear Mr. Clay?

Dr. Hathaway: Yes, I am. That is very interesting.

The Chairman: You may wish to follow that.

Dr. Hathaway: Yes.

The Chairman: Are there any other questions? If there are any more questions that our researcher wants you to answer, I will write to you later this week. I hope that I will receive the answers. Thank you very much for appearing and accepting to testify in front of this committee.

Dr. Hathaway: I would like to apologize for the technical difficulties. It did not lend to my presentation. Nonetheless, I hope that you got the answers you needed..

The Chairman: You will provide us with all the tables. Thank you.

Our last witness today is Dr. Patricia Erickson, who has been at the Addiction Research Foundation, ARF, since 1973, and in the capacity of senior scientist since 1988. Currently, Dr. Erickson is a senior research scientist with the amalgamated Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Dr. Erickson is an adjunct full professor and member of the Graduate Faculty of the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto. She completed a three-year term as Director of the Collaborative Graduate Program in Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Psychoactive Substances at the University of Toronto, where she continues to teach.

Dr. Erickson received her doctorate in Criminology and Social Administration from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, in 1983. Her authored and co-authored books include: The Steel Drug: Cocaine and Crack in Perspective (1987 and 1994); and Cannabis Criminals: The Social Effects of Punishment on Drug Users (1980). She was also the co-editor of Illicit Drugs in Canada: A Risky Business (1988); and Windows on Science (1992).

Her most recent book is an edited collection Harm Reduction: A New Direction for Drug Policies and Programs (1997), published by the University of Toronto Press. Dr. Erickson is the author or co-author of over 60 articles and chapters for scientific books and journals, and has been invited to speak at many professional and community meetings.

In 1996, Dr. Erickson received the Alfred R. Lindesmith Award for achievement in scholarship and writing from the Drug Policy Foundation of Washington DC.

Currently Dr. Erickson is a co-principal investigator of a National Institute on Drug Abuse grant in the amount of U.S. $1.2 million to study youth, drugs and violence in Toronto and Philadelphia.

Thank you for appearing before our committee today.

Dr. Patricia Erickson, Researcher, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health: Thank you for inviting me to speak today on a topic that has been of interest to me for almost 30 years.

As you heard, I first went to ARF in 1973, and that was on the heels of the LeDain commission and in particular as a result of their recommendations for decriminalization and penalty reduction for cannabis possession.

Senior scientific staff at ARF, as it was then known, felt that there was not an adequate database to justify the commissioner's unanimous agreement on the costs of criminalization to young lives. The scientists felt that it was important to add to our knowledge of what we knew about the actual effects of using the criminal sanction against the crime of cannabis possession.

I went to ARF fully expecting that the issue would be dealt with in the next two or three years, at which point I would move on, as a criminologist, to other kinds of research. However, the law has not changed since that time. I have continued to do studies of criminalization, somewhat sporadically, over the time that I have been there. My time has also been taken up with other types of research projects.

My role here today is to try to put a more human face on these arrest statistics, which are kind of numbing, and the cost figures that we hear about. Dr. Rehm, who spoke to you earlier, put a $400-million price tag on enforcement. We know that there are upwards of 500,000 Canadians with criminal records for cannabis possession. These records have been accumulating since the late 1960s. That figure can become a bit overwhelming.

I am about to present some highlights from the research that I have done over the past three decades. I have three studies of cannabis criminals. I have interviewed, in depth, the individuals who actually went to court charged with cannabis possession. I looked at this group in three different time periods. I will concentrate more on the costs to the individuals, both their subjective and objective costs, or direct and indirect costs as they are also presented. I will also look at what we would expect in terms of the benefits of this policy in respect to deterrents.

The three periods when this research was conducted are 1974, 1981, and 1998. To briefly remind you, 1974 a year that was not long after the "absolute discharge provision" was enacted in the Criminal Code. The year 1981, was the peak year for cannabis convictions in Canada up to that point. The last sample, taken in 1998 was interviewed in the Toronto courts just after the diversion initiative was implemented.

The first study provided us with the richest detail. It resulted in this book Cannabis Criminals, which I have made available to the director of research and which I hope is available for anyone who wants additional bedtime reading. That was the first study where I actually did most of the interviewing. Since then, I have had to delegate that function to other people.

We have been trying to measure the same things over time. This measurement resulted in a series of studies. They are not strictly comparable for social research. However, they are, unusually comparable, in that we have a group of offenders in the Toronto courts examined at three different points in times.

As I said, the law essentially has not changed in the nearly 30 years since I have been studying this issue. The maximum penalties on the books are still the same; six months in prison and a $1,000 fine.

Many other things have not changed since the 1974 study and yet, a few things have changed. Let me highlight that and look first at who is going to court. Who are the people that make up this kind of amorphous group of cannabis criminals? Who are the people who make up this huge block of official statistics of criminal justice initiative?

Very simply, they are overwhelmingly young men. That has not changed. About 90 per cent are male, and in the first two periods, about two-thirds were aged 21 years or less. Of course, with the passage of the Young Offenders Act, the 16 and 17 year-olds who were interviewed in the first two studies as adult criminals, were moved to the purvey of the youth court. In the third, most recent study, the sample group was somewhat older, so that only about one-half were 21 years of age or less. We still see predominantly an under-25-year-old group.

Eighty per cent of the sample group are employed or in school. That figure is constant thoughout all three periods. Reflecting the relatively young age of the offenders, about one-half also live with parents. Those individuals have not achieved one of those markers of adult independence that we associate with people who are employed and move out of the family home. Many of them are still very much a part of the family situation.

In the last presentation we discussed what it means to have users at different parts of the continuum. Certainly, the surveys would suggest that only about 10 per cent of cannabis users use it weekly, and I think the figure of 1 per cent or 2 per cent for those who use cannabis daily is also accurate, from what I recall of the surveys.

When we interviewed people, we asked about their frequency of use. All across these time periods, it was about three-quarters of them who fell into the "at least once or twice per week or more" group. We are drawing on the more frequent end of the spectrum, though not necessarily daily users.

In looking at their offender profiles and their case characteristics, again we see remarkable continuity. Mostoffenders are charged with only one count of simple possession. Some have additional charges. Over 80 per cent of charges involve only one form of cannabis and almost all of those are marijuana. The amounts involved are small. In 75 per cent of cases, charges were based on possession of less than 14 grams of cannabis. This figure comes from the 1970s and the 1980s samples. In the most recent year, 1998, 86 per cent had 14 grams or less. The amounts on which charges were based were actually smaller than the amounts in the 1970s and 1980s. Of the whole sample interviewed in 1998, 50 per cent had 1 gram or less of cannabis as the basis for their cannabis possession charges.

The significant change in profile over this period of time is found in the response of the criminal justice system. Remember, we are looking at the same location of Toronto. Between 1974 and 1981, administrative practices shifted away from fingerprint ing all those accused. About 70 percent of people were taken to the station and booked. However, they would be asked to report back later for fingerprinting. The time lapse between arrest and disposal of a case was halved from about 2.6 months to 1.3 months between 1974 and 1981. Even though we were processing the same sort of offenders in terms of personal and case characteristics, the system responded and speeded things up.

I have spent a lot of time observing the courts. A very short period was needed to process most offenders, particularly in the second period. The outcome was usually a plea of guilty. An absolute or conditional discharge was given in a large proportion of the cases.

In the most recent period, 1998, the sample is different because of the federal diversion policy initiative. That broad policy gave offenders an option to be diverted to community service or other alternative measures. The Toronto court picked up on it quickly before there was anything to divert people to. When I contacted the group of 74 in the fall of 1998, they said they were asked to engage in self-diversion. Self-diversion was quite a novel concept because there was nothing to divert them to. The offenders were asked to find something and come back with a plan. That quickly changed and an agency took over diversion. The self-diversion experiment was short-lived.

In 1998, of the people we interviewed, 43 per cent had been given diversion. The rest were awaiting disposition. They had actually been in the system longer than the people in the previous time periods. The reason why is not clear to me. They were apparently going to court more often and the lawyers were more involved. There were clearly some administrative changes and the cannabis cases seemed to be clogging up the courts. I am not sure whether that was a cause of the diversion initiative or an effect because organizing the diversion took up more court time. We hope to follow-up with more research.

Those are the profiles over time. In all the periods, we asked about deterrents and about the experiences of being arrested and going to court. I should perhaps talk a little more about deterrence here because that is, in a sense, the core of this issue. There are measurable costs both tangible and intangible. We can argue about how the seriousness of those costs. If there are no distinct benefits, then it does not matter. A cost-free criminal justice policy is impossible, but a benefit-free criminal justice policy should concern us.

A study of offenders, who are found guilty in court, is a study of a specific deterrence. As the LeDain commission said, deterrence is the primary tool of policy in the illegal drug area. The criminal law sets out a risk of punishment, a threat, that is supposed to be related to certainty, severity and swiftness of punishment.

When we apply a criminal sanction to an individual offender and take him or her to court, we are really using the charge as a mechanism to make general deterrence relevant to the larger pool of would-be lawbreakers. The specific deterrent effects across all three-time periods were small. In first year, 92 per cent were still using one year later. Similar figures came up in the next two years. About 80 per cent intended to use or were still using. Both those measures are found to be quite good, independently assessed measures.

In the first year, 8 per cent of offenders did not use in the year after going to court. I argue in my research papers that those 8 per cent are not actually evidence of deterrence. The severity of the outcome was irrelevant to those few who did stop. It did not matter whether they got an absolute discharge - which most thought of as getting off - or conditional discharge or probation or fine. When I asked them whether they thought they were likely to get arrested again, those who were most strongly committed to using thought they were most likely to get arrested again.

Moreover, most offenders expected a harsher sentence. Most did not know about the discharge. In the specific deterrence sense, we are seeing a more general illustration of what we know in the criminalogic literature. That is, severity of sentence is not relevant to decisions to commit crimes. That finding goes against a lot of popular notions and get-tough philosophies. Research shows that the likelihood of getting caught, as estimated by the individual offender, is most crucial in the deterrent effect.

In my samples, the factor that best predicted stopping use after being criminalized was simply how much the offender had used in the past. The small handful of people that were experimental, very infrequent users who got caught decided that it was enough. They did not want to take the risk. They were only trying it and were caught by police and did not care to continue using. If we knew how to scare first-time users, they could be deterred from continuing. However, the people that are getting arrested are not the first-time users. Offenders are usually young people with a fairly sustained history of cannabis use.

They are fairly committed. They know they have used hundreds or thousands of times without getting caught, so they refine their strategies and they share information.

This is the explanation of the lack of specific deterrence. It is partly who is being selected, as well as their commitment to cannabis use and their sense that it was a really unlucky event.

What does this mean for general deterrence? There was an 18th century English judge who, in sentencing someone to the gallows for theft, said, "Young man, you shall be hanged, not because you have stolen a sheep, but so that others may not steal sheep."

Are we getting the benefit from specific deterrence of over half a million Canadians so that others shall not use cannabis? I do not think there is evidence to assert that we are. However, deterrence is inherently difficult to study. If it is successful, it is behaviour that does not happen. It is difficult to study deterrence. How do you study it? How can you possibly even know whether you have deterrence operating or not? It would be an interesting challenge for those enforcement dollars to prove that you have actually deterred "X" number of people from using cannabis.

However, we can go beyond that. We can look at the substantial body of deterrence literature that evolved through the 1970s to the 1980s. If one is studying general deterrence, one needs to look at the people who commit the crime and the people who do not, and try to see if there are differences in perceived certainty, severity and swiftness of punishment between them. It is not enough to say, "Well, why didn't they do it?" There is a law, but there are other reasons people do not do things. The law may be only one of them.

This is common sense, is it not? Most of us would not dare light up a cigarette in here, not because Senator Nolin might have me dragged away by the RCMP.

Senator Kenny: He would.

Dr. Erickson: I did not know that before. I do not smoke. I know there are social norms. If I were a smoker, I would probably wait until I had a legitimate place to smoke. There is also the possibility that I am covered in nicotine patches. There are many options.

There are many reasons why people do not break a law other than that the law is there. Most people simply are socialized into law-abiding behaviour. General deterrence is aimed not at those people who would not touch drugs, but rather aimed at the people who might actually contemplate doing so. The deterrence studies were a godsend to criminology studies. There were so many marijuana users that it was possible to look at the ones who did and did not use marijuana. It was much better than most crimes that are committed at lower levels. These studies were done in many States and in other countries. They consistently found, in the most studied crime in the deterrence literature, that perceived certainty and severity of legal consequences were not related to use or non-use. We rarely get that kind of finding. However, we still had many people, the majority in most studies of students, who did not use cannabis. What was related much more strongly to non-use was either concern about adverse health risks or social disapproval. Those were the two big reasons. It was not fear of the law.

These findings make sense. People usually get an opportunity to use drugs; they get exposed; they make decisions concerning drugs even before becoming an adult. Many of these things are sorted out early on and people make decisions about their status as user or non-user, much as was mentioned about tobacco. They are decisions that are impacted for the most part at an early stage.

Although there always has to be a question about general deterrence because it can never be studied perfectly, the literature is very strong in this area and it has been consistent. For the most part, it is the risk of detection that is important for most crimes. Even with cannabis, the risk of detection is not a deterrent. This suggests another important aspect of overall deterrence. When the legitimacy of the law itself is in question, deterrence tends to be eroded even further.

Now, shall I take a few more minutes to highlight costs?

The Chairman: Yes, go ahead.

Dr. Erickson: Those are my conclusions about the benefit side of the criminalization equation.

I have summarized the costs in terms of the period up to the time the criminal label is bestowed. I call this the official criminalization. Perhaps Dr. Rehm would call some of them direct costs. This is what the person experiences' when he has to take time off work, find a lawyer and worry about paying for one. When he (or) she goes to court, the result may be a fine or probation. Their liberty has been compromised by virtue of going to the police station, being fingerprinted and so on. It does not really matter what happens to them at court at that point, in the sense that they have already experienced certain costs in the process. Even if the charge is withdrawn, they have experienced costs.

In our studies, they have gone to court and a sanction has been imposed. In Toronto, at the low end of the leniency continuum, there was a high proportion of absolute and conditional discharges given out. If the realistic political debate in Canadian drug policy for cannabis is focused on penalty, the conclusion of my study is that none of the costs, with one exception, are related to sentence. Whether one received an absolute discharge, conditionaldischarge, probation or fine it did not affect the post-conviction cost. Almost none of these people felt like criminals or thought their friends would see them as such.

The ones who lived at home were concerned about the social response of their parents. One extreme response is: "Well, they might think I use marijuana but they would be really upset to know I got caught." I remember in the 1970s a father with his son at court who said, "Why should he get a criminal record? I did this 20, 30 years ago when they were called reefers."

One could, unexpectedly, get parental support, but for the most part people did not like their parents to know they had been caught. They were quite concerned about employers. The economic cost is a major issue in terms of a lifelong criminal record and its impact. A short-term study of six months or a year is obviously not long enough to measure that. My study could only take a very preliminary look at that. However, cannabis criminals are not getting sick; they are not dying; they are not injection-drug users. The major cost area that is identified by the majority of users is the risk of arrest and the subsequent stigma of criminalization.

A much better way to get at economic stigma is through a field experiment we did. This involved taking a profile of our sample, for example, young single men who, if they were working, were working mostly in semi-skilled jobs.

I had two assistants who over several weeks, phoned and responded to all ads in the daily papers. It was a blind test. At that point in time the respondents did not have a criminal record. They went through the spiel so they were not sounding guilty before they got to the record condition. At the end of the interview, they added, "Would it be a problem if I had an absolute discharge for marijuana, or if I get a fine?" It was actually a field experiment that gave us the advantage of getting much more scientific results. I did not know what to expect. My hypothesis might have been that marijuana had been socially "de-stigmatized." I was not sure. However, what we found was that the more serious the criminal record reflected fewer positive replies from future employers. The people who received the most offers were those who said they did not have a criminal record. The people who got the fewest offers to apply were the ones with the conviction and fine. The absolute discharge group fell somewhere in the middle. These results suggested that having a criminal record, even for marijuana possession, does affect employment opportunities. The actual offender group lost respect for the criminal justice system, particularly in the first two groups, if they did not get an absolute discharge and in the third group if they did not get diversion.

There was a real sense of unfairness when people felt they got a tougher sentence if they were convicted and fined. There was a growing knowledge that people were getting absolute discharges, and that they were available. Knowledge was growing also that others were being diverted. This was the major cost. This is what I call a cost. It was the disrespect for the administration of justice.

They were a very conventional group in terms of general respect for the law. They espoused high agreement with the importance of the law in society. Not surprisingly, they were not in agreement with the marijuana laws. However, after going to court, they had a lower opinion of the fairness of the system if their sentence was more severe.

The three penalties were given out randomly. I know that this does not go with a judicial focussing of penalties that fit the crime. However, if I rolled a die and assigned these penalties, it would have come out the same according to individual case characteristics. There was no correlation between sentence received and the type of person they were, or the case characteristics, charge and amount of drug.

It seems to me that those who received the punishment were actually correct in their perception. The sentences were unfair. Why were they not all given an absolute discharge? Or, why were they not all given diversion and the option of getting a criminal record? The reason there was not the judge, but it was the policy that precluded certain first offenders from being allowed to have diversion.

In conclusion, I will discuss the costs of criminalization. Although keeping the offence and to get around it by minimizing the penalty may be well-intended, it does not have a great deal of impact in terms of reducing the cost to the individual.

The fact of becoming a cannabis criminal with a record seems to be the defining feature. This is true in terms of the intangibles that include the anxiety and the worry that people express about the life-long ramifications of having a criminal record.More concretely, we see the cost of the experience of going to court as a young individual.

Senator Kenny: I liked your story about the judge and the sheep being stolen. Ascribing reasons why people obey the law is a difficult area. You have taken us down a certain path and you have arrived at certain conclusions. We do not stop at stop signs because there is a cop beside every stop sign. We stop at stop signs usually because we think it is a good idea to stop there. I think the same is true for virtually every law.

We have all just filed our income tax, not that we like to, but because we have a voluntary system that says we should do it. An impact on that is that there is a law passed. The law helps to create an attitude in society that says, collectively, as expressed by Parliament, we think this is how you should behave. How do you take that into account?

Dr. Erickson: That is the crux of the matter. There are people who will stop at the stop sign out in the middle of nowhere at 3 a.m. with no cop car. There will always be some people who obey a law. Then there are people who will run the stop signs. It does not seem to matter whether there is a cop car there or not.

In between, we are trying to say the law should set out guidelines for how people should behave. If I am going to in some way rob or inconvenience seriously, or affect someone else's property or person, then yes, the criminal law is there to say to me and to everybody, that is not what you should do and if you do that you deserve to get punished.

The issue is this. Do we really want the law to tell us about our own health behaviours? What line do we draw? We do not draw the line for alcohol and tobacco. However we do draw the line for cannabis. The law is there in a moral sense. There is a suggestion that the behaviour is wrong. Once you have people starting to dispute that law, and that has been happening since the late 1960s, there is reason to be concerned. The law has become subject to different evaluations depending on who is making the law and when it is being made.

We have changed a number of laws in our relatively recent history. Laws concerning health-oriented or sexual preference behaviours have been changed. It is not in the same category to talk about standards for serious predatory crime against others and cannabis use. They seem to me to be different aspects of behaviour.

Senator Kenny: I chose stop signs with a reason. They seem benign, but if you go through a stop sign at the wrong time, you may cause horrendous damage to society. This can be a serious issue. Most of the time, if you go through a stop sign, it is a non-event.

Dr. Erickson: We do not criminalize cars.

Senator Kenny: We do not, but if you go through a stop sign and hit another car, you do not get an absolute discharge. The question is this: What proportion of people are prepared to accept the law?

Obviously, a line exists, and past that line the government must determine that there can be no law. We saw that with the Volstead Act in the United States. They thought they knew where the line should be, they drew it, and most of society did not agree.

Should you not be measuring this more on the basis of how many people think this is a good thing or a bad thing? Is that not what we must do here? Is that not your advice to us as legislators?

Dr. Erickson: It is important to look at public attitudes. Over the years, there have been surveys done on public attitudes about marijuana. We are probably due for another one, if I may put in another plug for more research funds.

The public has shown than it is more tolerant than the current law. In the last survey, well over three-quarters of respondents did not agree that marijuana possession should be punishable by imprisonment. The public would probably favour less punitive sanctions than currently exist, but they probably still want some kind of potential penalty. However, I believe that you would find a lot of disparity depending upon whether the respondents had used. Our estimates are that from 4 million to 6 million Canadians have experienced cannabis use. That is a large segment of the population to engage in a behaviour that is criminal enough to send you to jail.

With regard to the most recent effects of criminalization, we often have better data from Australia than we do from Canada. Australia has surveyed public attitude on the expiation notice and how it is understood. It is as poorly understood, as were our Canadian law reforms. We also have quite a divergence of public attitudes according to whether people have a history of use. However, there is a change towards acceptance of the modified penalty in Australia.

There is always the question of whether the law shapes attitudes or whether public attitudes should shape the laws. If we had moved the law into the Food and Drugs Act and modified the penalties in 1980 when use peaked and was declining, would use still have declined? We do not know, but the weight of evidence, as presented by Dr. Single and others, is that penalty reduction probably would not have mattered. As a result, government of the time would have been seen as brilliant because it would have reduced the penalty as use declined. That would have been phenomenal.

The penalty is much less relevant than is believed to be. If you do not have it, then what do you have? The public would like to believe that penalties, which are the most obvious expression of the criminal law, are effective in providing them with protection. It is difficult to convey that the penalties are not effective and might be making things worse. If you are concerned about non-use or delayed use by youth, you might do better to try another approach. That is a difficult decision to make and takes time.

Senator Kenny: I got the impression that you thought that the experiment with self-diversion was bad. I did not understand that. It seems to me that to have someone figure out for themselves what they find interesting to do is better than having a third party decide what is interesting for them to do.

Dr. Erickson: Let me correct that. I just thought it was a very Canadian backing-into-reform kind of solution to say that we want to divert you but, having nothing to offer you, you have to find someone who will write a certificate for you. If that is important enough to have as an alternative for cannabis possession, it is important enough to have funding and a program to go with it.

The idea that people would not get a criminal record was an important step. What I see as problematic about this is that it is so shotgun across the country. We do not even know, although perhaps you will be able to determine, how many places have implemented diversion, whether the criteria are the same everywhere and to whom they apply. It just adds one more outcome to the range of outcomes that are not related to the individual or the characteristics of their case. The outcome is based more on the place where they got caught. That seems to me to run somewhat counter to principles of justice and fair play.

Senator Kenny: The last area that I was uncertain about in your testimony was when you were talking about the impact of deterrence. It seemed to me that, in the context of sentencing at least, recidivism was the key. If after getting an absolute discharge or a conditional discharge people were being charged a second, third or fourth time, the sentencing is not working. However, if they are not coming back after receiving a conditional discharge, it is working. It was not clear to me whether they were coming back.

Dr. Erickson: Recidivism is conventionally measured in terms of re-arrest. However, because I was in contact with the respondents I measured it in terms of whether they self-reported continuing use. In the first study, 92 per cent were still using a year later. However, only 9 per cent had been re-arrested.

Senator Kenny: I understood that. I am saying "It is one thing to do it but, it is another to get caught." I am asking whether these people simply altered their behaviour so that they did not get caught again? Perhaps you could start by telling us whether there was an increased rate of recidivism with different sorts of sentencing.

Dr. Erickson: No, there was no relation to sentence.

Senator Kenny: Someone getting an absolute discharge was not likely to come back again or was likely to come back again?

Dr. Erickson: It did not matter what they got. I had one subject who was on his fourth conditional discharge. The record keeping seemed a little shaky. According to the discharge provision, that is not supposed to happen. He was unusual. Most people did not get caught again, but they continued to use cannabis.

Senator Kenny: They did not get caught again because they got smart, or they did not get caught again just because the system does not scare that much?

Dr. Erickson: I think the system detects very few use incidents overall. The more frequently you use, the higher your risk may be. Most of the respondents get caught in situations in which they feel reasonably secure since that they have used it there enough times. It may be in a park or a car. If they are young and living at home and do not have privacy, they are more likely to be at risk of detection. They are less likely to be arrested in a home, unless someone reports them or makes a complaint.

For the most part, people were not caught because they committed some other offence and then got caught. It was usually that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. There may have been undercover police in the area as a result of citizen complaints.

The message that should be conveyed, which I am not sure we convey properly in drug education programs, is the harm reduction message that states that if you are going to continue use you should be aware that there are risks.

The risks are not as insignificant as users often think. The risks very often depend on the status of the person. The ones who get caught are not representative of the broad spectrum of users, significant numbers of whom are older, and employed. The tendency is to take the younger, more vulnerable segment of the users to court.

Senator Kenny: I almost get the feeling that, in terms of the legal system, possession is a non-event.

Dr. Erickson: I do not think you can say that when there have been 4,700 charges in two or three years.

Senator Kenny: Are there 4,700 absolute discharges?

Dr. Erickson: No, in national terms a fine is the predominant outcome. Toronto is probably one of the best places to get caught. I think my studies represent the kind of minimal level of criminalization. Before the Bureau of Dangerous Drugs stopped keeping its conviction and sentencing statistics in 1985, it was clear that there was tremendous variation across the country. When we did our study of five different communities in Ontario, the proportion of people getting discharges varied from 9 per cent to 75 per cent.

The Chairman: Fifty-five.

Dr. Erickson: Fifty-five per cent? Thank you. You read this carefully. It was a long time ago.

There was tremendous variation among Ontario judges in awarding absolute discharge versus fine. Nationally, two-thirds of those arrested were being convicted and fined. If you could find current data on sentencing, that would be tremendous, but I do not honestly know how to access that anymore. It would be different from the pre-1985data where there was a certain approach in place.

The Chairman: That was one of my questions. You are not aware of any good research that is available on the subject of sentencing? I have read about the discrepancies in Toronto, and I am sure it is the same in Montreal versus Jolliette and the rest of the province. Perhaps Quebec City is a little bit like Montreal and Vancouver. Do you not have access to good research that would give us the appropriate data?

Dr. Erickson: If the Centre for Justice Statistics is keeping the data, I think it may be possible to get special runs, but they do not routinely separate cannabis from other drugs. This is a legacy of the Narcotic Control Act. All narcotics are lumped together. Even the Criminal Justice data tends to go by statute. Whether they will now start separating out cannabis remains to be seen. At least it is in a separate schedule. Maybe we can start separating it out.

Senator Banks: You said that use peaked and subsequently declined in about 1980. Did I understand that correctly?

Dr. Erickson: It went up again in the 1990s.

Senator Banks: Do we know for sure why it reduced between the 1980s and the 1990s? Would someone be able to argue effectively that it was reduced because of an aggressive campaign by law enforcement to reduce it? Would that be a believable argument?

Dr. Erickson: One thing we know is that it did not go up and then down because of the penalties. The penalties remained the same throughout the period. This is another argument against general deterrence. In Canada, our penalty structure stayed the same and use fluctuated.

Knowing whether enforcement became more aggressive is important. It is difficult to measure this because it will vary in different parts of the country. What we can say is that use has also fluctuated in other countries. It went down in the States in that era. It appeared that perceived health risks also declined when use went up. There seems to be a relationship there that is stronger in terms of what people see as the health risks of cannabis use.

I think what happened in the 1980s is that we became more concerned with cocaine than with cannabis. Subsequently, the police changed their priorities and arrested more cocaine users. In the late 1980s, when more resources went into the drug strategy, we saw cannabis arrests going up again. Quite a well-established observation in criminology is that, if you give the police more resources, they will make more arrests. That can happen even when use is going down, which is what happened in the 1980s.

The perceived risk, as judged by individuals, is probably declining because of the ease of getting cannabis. That has not changed. It is very unlikely that drug enforcement could be aggressive enough to affect the small street-level user. In fact, in the 1990s, when use went up, I don't know of any evidence that shows that use had somehow tapered off again.

Senator Banks: Or it increased because of a relaxation of aggressiveness on the part of the enforcers.

This does not relate specifically to the topic, except in the sense of the law. You said that there was a concern that users who went into the system sometimes came out with a reduced respect for the law. Might it not also be the case that non-users were looking at a law that was not enforced to the extent of the law per se? Might they also have their respect for the law reduced?

Dr. Erickson: That would be a different question. We would have to survey the non-users. Certainly what we see is that even non-users would like to see the law changed. It is possible to not be a user and still have questions about the marijuana law. That is understandable when it is almost impossible to be a non-user and not know someone who is a user. Most non-users have a member of the family or a friend who is a user. The non-user has the opportunity to observe the user and see if there are any problems associated with marijuana use.

My study was aimed at those young first offenders to see whether there was a negative impact on them because of going to court. I make reference to the 16, 17, 18, 19 year olds. If this was their only encounter with the judicial system, what impression did they get from that encounter?

It was pretty negative in terms of, making them see that marijuana use was something they should not do and that they should behave differently. The message was for them to become non-users. However, when they went to court they invariably met 40 or 50 other people who were lined up and charged with the same offence. This created a bond among the people. That is one of those indirect consequences. They came to the realization that they were not alone and that all the people there were going through the same thing. Then they get to sit in court. There was a great diversity in the court. There were judges who are very dignified and very appropriate in how they spoke to the accused. Sometimes there was a bit of cursory treatment. There were often unfortunate personal comments that were observed.

Anyone who sits in court and watches the proceedings comes away with an impression. If you go more than once, you will see that on one day everyone is given a discharge and yet on another day a different judge is convicting everyone. It is a learning experience to get arrested and go to court. What do you learn? What do we want them to learn? That should be a fundamental question for policy makers. If you have the offence, what will the offender learn from going to court?

Senator Banks: What might they learn from going to jail? Some of them sometimes do go to jail. I have a three-pronged question. Have you done any studies, or has anyone to your knowledge done studies, of people who have been charged with trafficking and gone to jail? Where the same set of questions applied to those people charged with single, simple possession?

My second question applies to people who have been prosecuted and are in jail for any crime. I listened to the CBC program Ideas, where a criminologist argued that our model of imprisonment as punishment, except in the most extraordinary cases, is ineffective. I cannot remember his name but, he has been making this argument for years. He maintains that the punishment satiates the public desire for vengeance, but as a treatment for criminals, and I do not mean treatment in the sense of rehabilitation but as a means of solving the problem, it does not work. Does the same situation apply to traffickers?

Dr. Erickson: I have not done any studies of cannabis traffickers, and none of the people I talked to were jailed. I can only speak to the more general criminological literature that suggests that jail is often a place where people learn about other crimes. The penalties that have been given out for cannabis traffickers have been relatively short.

There was a proposal some years ago to deny parole to traffickers, even though a federal justice study showed they were at very low risk for recidivism. There is a tendency to feel that there should be a punitive approach to traffickers. However, if you just stick with cannabis, these are people who are providing a desired product to other consumers. They are often users and provide small amounts to others. Often, they happen to be the ones who got caught with the larger amounts that warrant a trafficking charge.

I do not think we have good studies in Canada of the cannabis trafficking area. They are obviously much more difficult to do than to study users. For the most part, the users themselves do not share a harsh, negative view of the people who provide them with cannabis. They see them much more as part of a network that provides them with drugs that they feel are important, useful and desirable.

There were many interesting questions raised today. There was speculation on the possibility of prohibiting alcohol and tobacco, which are harmful drugs. What if we had done that in the first part of the last century, and we had kept heroin, cocaine and cannabis legal? I do not know that our health would be any worse now if we had legalized those drugs instead. What I do know is that the Hell's Angels and organized criminals would be the ones making alcohol and tobacco available. The evidence is that the first drug law is the law of supply and demand, and you simply cannot, within national boundaries and with a global kind of market operating, punish trafficking out of existence. You can send a moral message of disapproval but you cannot lock up enough people.

There is one very good study done on traffickers. The traffickers were low-level traffickers and the ones who got caught. They were quickly replaced. The ones who get caught are mules or couriers. They serve their time and they come out. The overall organization of trafficking is rarely impacted. The talk about penalties for trafficking seems to miss that fundamental point. The money that goes into the illegitimate economy is one of the huge costs.

The Chairman: Is there any benefit to criminalizing simple possession of marijuana? Does it stop people from using a stronger drug?

Dr. Erickson: We know that the people who get most involved with other illegal drugs tend to get involved in the illegal market. That was also found in my data. The thrust of the coffee shop initiative in the Netherlands was to separate the markets. The basis for their policy was to get people who wanted cannabis to go to a controlled place rather than go to the black market.

The people who were interviewed in our cannabis criminal studies were asked about other drug use. Because they were frequent cannabis users, we expected them to be more likely to have used other illegal drugs. However, the study showed a relatively small proportion of users who had taken opiates, cocaine, ecstasy or psychedelics. None of them were regular users of these other drugs.

They were asked about the relative health risks of cannabis versus alcohol and other drugs. They all saw alcohol, tobacco and other drugs as more dangerous than cannabis. That appears to be a general view. It was only with cannabis where they estimated he risk of arrest as being more serious than the health risks.

The point is that they actually can become quite sophisticated consumers of various substances, and they have their own hierarchy of risks that they apply to these substances. They will often stick with cannabis because they either have tried the other drugs, or they have seen friends try them, and they are knowledgeable about the real risks of those other drugs.

There is no evidence that the people who went to court were less likely to use other drugs. The benefit is largely a moral, symbolic one for people who do not use drugs anyway. Non-users feel their values are enshrined in this particular law. That is the test.

It is evident in U.S. drug policy that, the people for whom drug use is a moral issue, the cost is unimportant. The costs are irrelevant to them. What is relevant is making sure that the use of drugs is seen as wrong. In Canada, however, we have always been more balanced and more evidence-based. That is a good distinction from the U.S. Canadians are at least able to measure and discuss the costs of policy and consider alternatives. We are not willing to pay any price.

The Chairman: Are we applying that recipe while developing drug policy strategy?

Dr. Erickson: I believe we have been. We did not go as far in the late 1980s, as many people thought, when the first Canadian drug strategy was initiated. It seemed as though we were going to follow Australia more in terms of harm reduction. We lost some of that momentum in the 1990s. We have not initiated workplace drug testing, which is a way of increasing surveillance. Workplace drug testing recognizes the failure of enforcement to reach enough drug users and so the drug users are sought out in a different way.

We have the Parker decision where we are looking at marijuana being used for medical purposes. We have a lot of grass roots harm reduction initiatives. We have this diversion experiment, which is about the only thing that can be done under the current law, to try to remove people from the criminal record trap.

There are some encouraging signs. When your mandate also includes some of the illicit injection and street drug users, that is a good thing. There are many things happening with regards to methadone treatments and with the possibilities of decreasing overdose deaths. These items are not on the agenda in the United States. They are all done kind of unofficially. They are done by people who see the problems, but they are not given any official sanction.

The Chairman: What influence should morality have on the base of a national drug strategy.

Dr. Erickson: That is a personal question but, I do feel that we must recognize that people, generally, have good sense and good judgment if they are given adequate information and if they are old enough and unthreatened enough to assess that information. We put people in double jeopardy with the criminal law because we know that the people who get into trouble with drugs will be in trouble with the law. We do not understand why most people can control use, while there is a group who gets into trouble. We know that it is associated generally with deprivation, with early childhood physical and sexual abuse and with serious mental conditions. Rather than offering a harm reduction and public heal treatment approach to the people who have the most trouble with drugs, we offer them the threat of criminal sanction. It seems to be a contradiction to Canada's admirable history in health care and health promotion to not take the initiatives to look after people with actual serious conditions concerning addiction and their social setting. We continue to criminalize people for whom it is not a problem as well.

The moral basis of criminal justice is that primarily we are all to agree that behaviour is wrong and harmful to others. We need to refocus on that, and not be so concerned about behaviours that do not harm others. In the case of alcohol, our concern is not with the alcohol but with the alcohol and driving or the alcohol and the bar fight.

We need to focus less on the drug and more on the individual, their situation, and find ways of being less judgmental. As long as we are judgmental, we are not going to get beyond seeing an act as criminal. Therefore, the person is bad and should be excluded.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. Other questions? Dr. Erickson I will consult with our researchers and determine if there are any other questions that we have missed, and I will forward those questions to you.

Dr. Erickson: I will be glad to answer them.

The Chairman: Thank you for accepting to come before this committee to witness.

Honourable senators, we have our next session on the May 28, 2001. The clerk will canvass all of us to be sure of attendance or replacement.

[Translation]

Before closing this meeting, I want to remind all of you that, if you are interested in our proceedings, you will find information on drugs on the committee's Internet site at: www.parl.gc.ca.

You will find the presentations made by our witnesses, their biographies, all argumentative documents they have tabled with us, as well as more than 150 useful links. You can also use that address to send us your e-mails.

On behalf of the committee, I thank you for your interest in our work.

The committee adjourned.