Proceedings of the Special Committee on
Illegal Drugs

Issue 7 - Evidence - Afternoon Session

The Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs met this day at 2:34 p.m. to review Canada's anti-drug legislation and policy.

Senator Pierre Claude Nolin (Chairman) in the Chair.

[Translation]

The Chairman: We shall begin this public hearing of the Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs.

This afternoon, we will hear from Professor Michel Kokoreff. Professor Kokoreff was born in Paris in 1959. He is a sociologist and senior lecturer at the Université de Lille, as well as at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris. He is a member of the CLERSE, the Centre Lillois d'Études et de recherches sociologiques et économiques, associate researcher with CESAMES, the Centre de recherches psychotropes en santé mentale and with two laboratories of the CNRS, the Centre national de la Recherche Scientifique. Professor Kokoreff is an expert on drugs and urban sociology; he has authored many articles in various scientific magazines, such as Déviance et Société, Sociologie et Société and Société contemporaine. He has written two books, Les mondes de la drogue: Usages et trafics dans les quartiers, Paris, Édition Odile Jacob, 2000, which was co-written with Dominique Duprez, and Société avec drogue: Enjeux et limites, Édition Érès, which was co-written with Claude Faugeron.

Welcome, Professor Kokoreff. Thank you for accepting our invitation and for the interest you have shown for our work.

Mr. Michel Kokoreff, Professor at the Université de Lille: Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank you for this positive initiative, which provides us with the opportunity to tell you about illegal drug use in France and to learn more about the experience in other countries, such as Canada.

My presentation will be based on the brief which was sent to you and I will refer to it when I quote figures.

France's attitude towards drugs has changed. Since the mid-1990s, France's drug policy has softened significantly, as we have realized that it is impossible to eliminate drug addiction and public health problems linked to illegal and legal drug use, which include tobacco and alcohol.

Obviously, AIDS has added a new dimension to the problem, even if it did take time to realize this. I would also add, in view of what has already been said this morning, that the attitude of several groups of players has changed. It would have been inconceivable a few years ago to think that some police officers, including high-ranking officers, would today acknowledge that decriminalizing pot would not be such a bad idea. Further, judges are not throwing simple users into jail as readily anymore. For instance, in the early 1990s, nearly 1,300 people in France were detained for simply doing illegal drugs, whereas in 1999, that number fell to 471, which represents less than a third.

Another factor is the change in attitude of many players or drug-addiction experts, who for a long time were hostile to the idea of alternatives. If you look at the numbers provided by previous witnesses, you realize that there has been a sea change in people's attitudes.

Perhaps this is due to the arrival of new players. France's drug policy not only involves simply the police and the judiciary anymore, but also politicians. Even though politicians do not have any jurisdiction over drug issues, they are becoming increasingly involved because their constituents complain about drug trafficking, problems linked to drug use and trafficking, and to AIDS. Other new actors include family physicians, since they are the people on the front lines dealing with the repercussions of the flood of newly available and highly concentrated drugs. These changes brought about a new approach in social science research. It used to be that the debate in France on such issues was based on a medical and clinical approach. But then, for reasons I will not get into, sociologists, anthropologists and historians have always been interested in the drug issue, which is not the case in the United States.

Since the 1990s, several studies have focused on the problem of drug use, drug trafficking and government policy.

On the other hand, there has been a failure to act. In that regard, I will neither gloat over nor denounce the situation, but try to remain at a critical distance of the facts.

The failure to act on the part of the main player, the government, speaks for itself, as does the absence of any political direction in the face of repeated demands for changes to the law to decriminalize the use of soft drugs.

For over 15 years, or even longer, the debate in France has revolved around safety, and that is the case more than ever today. The debate over safety still informs the relationship between drugs and delinquency, because drugs supposedly lead to delinquency, which, as studies have shown, is not the case at all. However, this construct causes attention to be focused on the suburbs, on sensitive neighbourhoods and on the actions of teenagers, especially those from immigrant families.

Sure, the official line has become less black and white, or at least the tone has become less moralizing; public institutions have taken a more pragmatic approach. However, at the same time, there are weighty implications in terms of health and the law - not in the area of harm reduction, but rather in health administration - which carry more weight than as yet undefined approaches to harm reduction and prevention.

In a way, France, to put it bluntly, is somewhere between Switzerland and the United States. Indeed, France is wavering between sticking closely to a policy of prohibition - which it has distanced itself from - and a policy of harm reduction as it exists in Switzerland, for instance.

But because it does not know which approach to take, France is stuck in between those two approaches. Your committee asked me to speak of France's policy on crime and the gap between the legislation and its enforcement. In that regard, there were two problems in addressing the issue.

On the one hand, there are a certain number of categories which are not always easy to use. For instance, is there a policy on crime? Studies carried out in France have shown that there is at least one policy on crime. But just because the law is applied differently at the local level does not mean that there are, strictly speaking, different policies on crime at the local level.

There is another problem with the collected data. I do not want to go into it because it was discussed this morning. But I will insist on another point, because I will use that data, that is police data. In France, the heart of the debate on drugs lies with police data. But these data do not reflect reality. They do not measure drug use, but are more of a reflection of police activities.

That is something you should not forget. The police data which are used the most, and which in a way are the most practical, do not accurately reflect illegal drug use, but rather the police's activities. So when I mention police statistics in my presentation, it will indicate police activities and the policies and approaches underlying police action.

I plan - well at least I intend - to address three issues. I do not know if I will have the time to do so. The first is the issue of legal ambiguity. I will use the example of a court order to send someone into rehab, which, in my view, is a fairly good illustration of how the law is ambiguous.

The second issue is to compare the legislation and grand principles with the way the law is enforced. In practice, there is often an inconsistency between the two. In that regard, I will also address the inconsistency in the way the law is applied to show that it greatly varies in interpretation and practice from one jurisdiction and region to another.

The third point I would like to make is that we are slowly heading towards the idea that it is impossible to get rid of drugs and that the drugless society is a myth - a normative ideal, as we say in sociology - as attested by several factors which show that drug use is not such a big deal anymore.

Not every social group experiences drugs in the same way. I would like to focus on the fact that public authorities deal differently with drug users, depending on their social status, and that the poor are targeted more than the middle class or the rich.

Regarding the ambiguities contained in the law, let us not forget that the law of 1970 came about as the result of a panic over morality. This panic arose out of the American hippy movement and the student riots of 1968 in Europe and especially in France. People were afraid that a huge generation gap would develop. This fear was embodied by drugs, but at the time, and this is an important point, drug use was really marginal. Nothing that happened justified the law which was passed in 1970 and which in fact criminalized private drug use.

The law took two approaches: repression and health, but repression was given more weight than health. To illustrate this point, which I am not making gratuitously, you may refer to an inquiry into the cost of France's drug policy. It revealed that in 1996, 30 billion euros - that is, 4.5 billion francs, were spent on repression, whereas much less was spent on care and prevention. So the gap between the repressive and socio-health approaches is borne out by the numbers.

Court orders sending a person into rehab represented a major compromise on the part of the various players - the police, the judiciary, addiction counsellors, psychiatrists - and acknowledged the problem of the funding gap I just mentioned.

In theory, only the public prosecutor can demand that a person be sent into rehab. This order forces a user to seek treatment. That is fine if the user wants to seek help and therapy, and to see a psychiatrist. But if a user refuses, it leads to further arrests if the person is caught using again.

This means that a court-ordered stint in rehab, which on the face of it looks like it is part of a health-based approach, has strictly legal implications. The rehab approach was the subject of debate at a certain point. Many people, including addiction counsellors, quickly denounced this plan by saying that you could not force a person to seek treatment. The measure went completely against the entire therapeutical doctrine based on psychoanalysis which was trendy in the 1970s.

In fact, the measure only became effective in the mid-1980s. It only worked for a minority of those arrested. Take, for example, 1998. Seventy thousand people were arrested for drug use and close to 8,000 of them were ordered to go into rehab. By the way, just because you are ordering someone to do something does not mean it is going to work: of the 8,000 court-ordered rehabilitations, only 4,000 were successful. Studies have shown that the court orders were not applied consistently from one jurisdiction to another and that it was almost impossible to assess the results. It is a good illustration of the ambiguity of the 1970 law and therefore, in a way, of government policy.

Another significant aspect of the ambiguity is the repression of drug use. What is striking in France is the gap between the debate on decriminalization - if indeed there is such a debate - and police action. As Senator Nolin remarked this morning, the number of arrests for pot smoking is surprising. In my brief, I included several police statistics which show that from 1990 on - rather, from 1995 on - the number of arrests for pot use has increased. In short, you could say that the police has become the pot police.

The data point to certain trends which give rise to a certain number of questions. Why is it that the number of arrests for pot use rose from 25,000 in 1993 to 74,000? And why is it that during the same period, the number of arrests for heroin has fallen dramatically? Has heroin use plummeted? I would not be so sure. What has changed is police activity.

If you have two curves, one representing the number of arrests for pot use, going up, and the other, representing the number of arrests for heroin use, going down, my guess would be that the government and the police have taken a new approach to fighting drug use. It is as if the police had anticipated that they would be arresting fewer heroin users because of new alternative drugs which appeared on the market in 1995-96. It is as if the need to produce results had shifted police attention to pot smokers who, incidentally, are not prosecuted by the courts. I feel that this shift is not because people have changed their drug habits, but because the police have adopted a new strategy.

If you look at trafficking statistics, the results are similarly surprising. If you look at the curves, the drug use curve goes up, but the trafficking curve stays the same. In the last 20 years, the number of arrests for drug trafficking has never exceeded 10,000, whereas the government has generally given the police more tools to fight drug trafficking over the last 20 years and officers are much more aware of the issue today.

Does this mean that traffickers and pushers have become more professional? This is an issue I explored in my book Les mondes de la drogue. I might add that this is where statistics are only of limited use. In England, Germany and Italy, the police have developed observation tools allowing them to better monitor the evolution of the trafficking business, especially at the local level. It is clear that if these tools were used in France, we would get a clearer picture of what politicians and citizens witness in some neighbourhoods where there is heavy drug trafficking.

Another area of ambiguity in France's drug policy is the coexistence of both repressive and tolerant approaches. At the regional level, in particular, both are used. For instance, a drug addict can return a syringe at a publicly funded needle exchange place, but be arrested for carrying drugs as he emerges from the place with his sterile needles.

At the community level, a certain number of local players and professionals have denounced the actions of police, which defeat efforts made at promoting risk prevention. How can you help the most marginalized addicts, those who do not have access to health care services, if the police is hovering close to trafficking sites, bus lines or the so-called front line teams? In that regard, the Association française de réduction des risques has denounced the fact that there are needle exchange programs, but that a person can be arrested for using. Demands have been made for safe heroin injection sites like the ones which exist in Switzerland and Germany.

Our society is based on the republican model. In this republican model, the law plays a major role. The law is supposed to be applied evenly from Lille to Brest, from Marseille to Clermont-Ferrand. But in reality that is not the case. Since the 1980s, the law is applied differently depending on the prosecution.

This holds true for issues of drugs and addiction, but also for other matters. It does not just affect the drug issue. You could summarize the courts' approach to drug use and trafficking this way: one theory, many practices.

Please allow me to use three points taken from an inquiry to support this principle. The first of these points deals with a comparative study of three particularly sensitive départements in terms of drug usage and trafficking. One of the départements in question is located in northern France and the two others are near Paris. The text that I provided gives a couple of quite general features by way of background.

I would like to develop my assessment around the following three points: the difference in public initiatives from one police service to another, the role played by the organization of the courts and the enforcement of procedures which have been implemented.

The thing that is quite remarkable about départements in the Paris region is that most cases of police questioning are public security-related. However, if you look at northern France, customs officials play such a significant role not only in terms of questioning but also in the legal process, that some judges have pointed to and spoken out against the rationale of having customs officers involved in the legal process. We are aware that customs officers focus on seizing merchandise rather than dismantling networks and arresting people. The police tend to focus more on dismantling networks rather than seizing merchandise.

In France, there is not just one police force, but many. Within one single département, drugs are covered by several police services, often working in competition with each other. It is really an issue of the police service which makes the largest haul at the expense of the initiative of another service. As a result, there is disorder, competition and conflict. The various forces look at the issue from different viewpoints. Some are more focused on figures. They want to increase the number of seizures and the number of people questioned, or in police station jargon to increase the head count. Then you have forces which function on a much more quality-oriented rationale based on initiatives. These forces go beyond mere users or street vendors to tackle the network itself. This may be hampered by the multiplicity of initiatives by other forces.

Does that mean then that the way in which a case is tackled depends on the particular police force that is given the responsibility of dealing with it? In light of studies undertaken in France, this theory would not seem to be too unreasonable.

As far as the issue of court organization is concerned, courts are specifically organized to tackle the drugs issue. For example, a cell was set up in Bobigny, north of Paris, to extend the drugs issue to cover criminal operations and the fight against organized crime. This gives a fairly precise picture of the laundering activity of traffickers. There are other jurisdictions which operate a bit differently. They have attempted to specialize by combining the treatment of minors and drugs. Seen from the outside, this may seem somewhat surprising, but in the jurisdictions which were studied, the drug branch was called the Minors and Drugs Branch. It is more or less taken for granted that the number of minors using drugs is continuing to rise. However, when you look at other figures, this does not seem to be the case.

A third jurisdiction are the departmental courts, which do not specialize in any one area. Ordinary judges deal with drug-related cases. Often - and this is the case at the Lille court - these courts are overworked. To a certain extent, this explains why, given the heavy workload, simple cannabis and also heroin use is being decriminalized. In other words, if every case involving drug use were brought before the court, there would be such a backlog that the court would grind to a complete halt. Studies carried out on the various branches of the legal system demonstrate that procedures have been adapted to meet local requirements. Lille, for example, has implemented some specific schemes which are not used anywhere else. Without getting into detail, these procedures might involve people being summoned to appear before officers of the criminal police or customs officers. The latter demonstrates the importance of customs legislation in border areas. This specificity is a problem because courts do not have full control of customs operations.

I would like to come back to the issue of court-ordered rehabilitation. The table showing the use of this scheme by the Lille, Bobigny, Nanterre and Paris courts shows the diversity of legal practices. The Bobigny Court has used therapeutic injunctions in approximately 1,400 cases out of a total of almost 9,000, whereas the Lille Court used this mechanism only 176 times. Some courts make great use of this mechanism while others use it very sparingly.

There are also specificities in terms of the substance involved. Heroin is the main substance subject to therapeutic injunctions in many jurisdictions. However, in the case of Bobigny, an increasing number of therapeutic injunctions involve cannabis. The goal is different to that of therapeutic injunctions for heroin users.

This diversity in practices gives rise to a twofold problem. What is the point of legislation if it is not enforced? The very different interpretation of legislation from one region to another, might explain - and this seems to me to be another specifically French issue - the very large quantity of enabling legislation which has been tabled since 1980.

The second problem is an ethical one. In his report submitted to the Prime Minister in 1995, Professor Horion alluded to this problem. Not all citizens are equal in the eyes of the law.

If I may, I should like to end on this point. We have seen a certain trivialization of cannabis use in France. We are gradually beginning to differentiate between use, abuse and addiction no matter what the substance, be it a lawful or illicit one. There is consideration of danger. We are no longer simply looking at prohibition but at the whole issue of risk. This does indeed demonstrate a change in our approach.

Having said that I have to qualify what I have just said. We have gone beyond mere principles and are now looking at local practices. A lot of this legal activity is focused on so-called sensitive districts, in other words in poor areas. These areas are mainly found on the outskirts of our cities, unlike in North America where they are located in downtown areas. As a result, these operations focus mainly on suburban areas. It cannot really be said that the increasing numbers of seizures of Ecstasy and cocaine by customs officers has changed this state of affairs. Despite major, spectacular and often very high-profile hauls of Ecstasy or cocaine, police force initiatives in middle-class areas are almost non-existent, so that in France at least, middle-class users consume cocaine and Ecstasy with preferential impunity.

As I said earlier, I am not advocating a harsher crackdown in middle-class areas. I just wanted to point out that people from different social backgrounds and districts are treated very unequally by the various jurisdictions. In France, we are witnessing a process whereby people living on the outskirts of our cities are perceived as de facto criminals and are racking up more and more social handicaps. Public policies have contributed to widening these social disparities by sanctioning some substances and tolerating others. Even though tolerated substances such as alcohol or tobacco are more dangerous than prohibited substances, they are controlled by the State.

Drugs have been a channel for the creation of further inequality within French society, since those living in poor areas are seen as criminals whereas illegal drug users in other social strata go relatively unnoticed. This process is reminiscent of the much written about rise of the criminal state in the United States.

In conclusion then, I would like to say that I think that France is somewhere in between. How can we combine both public order and public health concerns in a consistent and pragmatic public policy? How can we bring together both legislation and risk?

Ms Maestracci is absolutely right to relativize the impact that an amendment to the act could have as if amending the legislation was some kind of magic solution. The problem also lies in the meaning we give not only to the legislation but also to public action.

Alas, we see that in the poorest areas in particular, there is a huge deficit of meaning, a crisis in meaning of public action. This crisis in meaning is most visible among the stakeholders, especially police officers, who are responsible for implementing this public policy.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Kokoreff. In underprivileged areas - and we see the same thing in Canada - crime seems to be generated by the use of illegal substances, if I may say so. I am referring solely to crime induced by drug use. You are telling us that police forces are more effective and that they put more effort into repressing the drug trade in these areas than elsewhere. Is this a direct consequence of the state of poverty of these areas rather than a desire by police forces to target these neighbourhoods? In other words, some criminals can afford their habit and others cannot. There is crime that is induced by this lack of means. What are your thoughts on this?

Mr. Kokoreff: This is a delicate issue, and I do not want to be misunderstood. However, one can say that there is political will to concentrate all police activity regarding local drug traffic in neighbourhoods and suburbs with social housing. That is because indeed, rightly or wrongly, there is a strong link between drug use and drug trafficking on the one hand and a feeling of insecurity on the other.

The Chairman: You are adding a more psychological issue. In other words, there is more drug abuse because people feel more insecure?

Mr. Kokoreff: No, I am not talking about consumption. In France, there is a political will to focus repression on these neighbourhoods for a number of reasons that are linked, among other things, to this feeling of insecurity. They are also linked to greater pressure exerted on elected officials.

Second, it is easier for the police to work in the street rather than in nightclubs. It is easier to investigate in the street, and to stop people who are disrupting public order. It is easier to conduct surveillance and in short, to gather evidence. This is not to say that it is always very easy but it is somewhat easier than investigating bars, clubs, parties and raves, which, as we have said, is a different milieu than our city streets. So it is easier to investigate in the street than in nightclubs where Ecstasy or cocaine may be consumed.

There may be one aspect to your question that I misunderstood. Do you mean that this encourages consumption?

The Chairman: No, does this contribute to an increase crime? When a user cannot afford his habit, he is going to want to find a way to get the drugs and this could therefore generate crime.

In the criminal activity of a poorer neighbourhood, the incidence of crime is amplified by this poverty. This would not be a factor in a more affluent neighbourhood.

Mr. Kokoreff: There are many points to your question. Quite clearly, in poor neighbourhoods, that is in neighbourhoods that more or less resemble the inner city, even though there is quite a significant difference in terms of poverty, such neighbourhoods were deeply affected by the economic crisis. Therefore, it is quite clear that petty drug trafficking can become bigger, but so can trafficking in clothing or cell phones and this has created a self-help economy, a way to face the crisis and adapt. That is quite obvious. Research conducted in France has demonstrated this clearly.

The second point concerns the link between delinquency and drug addiction, drug use and drug trafficking. This third point concerns the effects of police activity on this link and subsequently on poverty. It is not that simple. If we look at the work of my colleagues at the CESDIP, the Centre de recherche sociologique sur le droit pénal et les institutions, the linkage between delinquency and drug addiction is not only abusive of in principle but inaccurate in its interpretation. These studies show that individuals who are doubly involved, that is both delinquent and drug users, constitute a minority, which is contrary to what is commonly believed. There are a lot of fanciful statistics circulating out there, in France as elsewhere, according to which half the inmates in France are drug addicts. By extension, this would tend to demonstrate that half of all offenders are drug addicts. However, without going into detail about this argument, that is not what is shown by work based on a quantitative approach. With regard to the other aspect of the impact of police, there is a counterproductive effect at work here. Indeed, there can be greater repression, but it does not necessarily translate to an increase in the numbers. However, the counterproductive effect is that it promotes the professionalization of drug traffickers. The greater the police action, the more careful drug traffickers are, and the more professional they become.

The Chairman: That is what is written in the texts that you have provided.

Mr. Kokoreff: It is the story of the wall and the cannon: the stronger the cannon the thicker the wall becomes. Police action inexorably leads to more professional drug trafficking, and this increased professionalism can be seen in the stability of the data on drug charges.

[English]

Senator Banks: I have a question about cocaine and its derivatives. With respect to their importation into France, to your knowledge are they imported in their end form or are they refined in France?

[Translation]

Mr. Kokoreff: I might note in passing that there has been an increase in the number of charges relating to the use and sale of cocaine. We have other indications that show a development of the cocaine market. We simply need to compare this trend with the increase in the supply and the spectacular growth in alternative products. This creates a perverse effect which, while not desirable at the outset, tends to reduce the effect of heroin as the number of alternative products increases, with cocaine, however, maintaining its strength. This product continues to produce effects. We have not yet really seen, in France, the true effects of this change in the supply. There are users who are just beginning to discover the world of drugs by injecting Subutex. This is an important consideration.

As to cocaine for social use, it is reprocessed, and I have no direct experience in that area, but from what I understand, they are not exactly using crack. This no longer has anything to do with white, powdered cocaine like the type that was used in the United States 10 years ago. By all accounts, after using it two or three times, withdrawal sets in, and a dependency is developed.

The Chairman: Do you have any data relating to France to support your statement that drug use begins with the substitute products?

Mr. Kokoreff: Two years ago, OCRTIS, the Office for Illegal Drug Trafficking, which centralizes the national information on arraignments, began a pre-investigation of this phenomenon.

In my case, I am using the qualitative data taken from interviews with users.

The Chairman: Both methadone and Subutex?

Mr. Kokoreff: Yes. We know that there are people who take more Subutex or methadone than heroin, including those who are in jail.

[English]

Senator Kenny: Do you think that drug arrest statistics bear any relationship to drug use?

[Translation]

Mr. Kokoreff: As a citizen, I do have an idea on that, but I am not sure that is what you are looking for. As a researcher I would answer that that is what the police say, and I do not want to criticize them but rather use what is said for the purposes of my analysis. Why would there be an increase in arrests for the use of cannabis during the 1990s? Because there was an increase in consumption and because more and more young people were using it. That is the natural explanation that is given. I would take the following approach: if the number of arrests increases, it is because the police have targeted that particular activity. There is a tenuous link between the number of arrests and the phenomenon itself. It is an intangible figure that relates delinquency to consumption. It is a figure that we will never have a handle on.

[English]

Senator Kenny: It could be a question of how police gather their statistics; it could be a question of budgets and police wishing to augment their budgets.

We had witnesses before us in Toronto on September 11 who expressed a great deal of skepticism concerning the ability to measure drug use of any sort. The skepticism was there because it is not something people talk about. People are not prepared to volunteer objectively. Certain people are not prepared to volunteer that kind of information. If you go into a nice middle class neighbourhood, perhaps no one uses drugs - at least no one says they use drugs. Can you share any observations with the committee about how one can measure drug use?

[Translation]

Mr. Kokoreff: Do you mean the frequency and all of the variables?

[English]

Senator Kenny: Frequency, number of users, type of product they are using. That is, all the things you might need if you wanted to put a policy in place to deal with the issue.

[Translation]

Mr. Kokoreff: That is why Senator Banks's question on cocaine is interesting. Traditionally in France, cocaine is a product used by the elite, people in show business and artists. There have been few sociological studies conducted on that segment of society. We do know - this is been confirmed by studies conducted by Peter Cohen in Holland - that cocaine also affects the middle class, not just people in show business and the stars. Enforcement and treatment facilities know little about that segment of the population and few French researchers have studied it. I will just give you an example of a couple I spoke to. They have been using heroin and cocaine for more than 10 years. They both had jobs; he was a computer scientist and she worked for a temporary help agency. They never had any dealings with the police and they had never been charged. They did not obtain their products in cities and neighbourhoods where there were police or which were the centre of attention.

This is very interesting from a sociological point of view. This is the type of profile we are referring to when we talk about hidden populations. All of that to say this: Part of the population is more less marginalized but treatment workers and enforcement officials are becoming more familiar with them because of their drug use habits; and there is part of the population that is much more invisible and that will eventually deal with their substance abuse problems within the cosy confines of a psychiatrist's office, which does not exactly have the same social ramifications as an ongoing treatment in a detox centre. It is a real public health problem.

[English]

Senator Kenny: We know with some certainty about the drug use of Olympic athletes. Do you know of other groups in the population that are measured or tested like that? In France, do they check in prisons, for example? Do they do analysis there, or is it done in the armed forces? Are there any other places, aside from the Olympics, where people are tested?

[Translation]

Mr. Kokoreff: That is a trend that is developing in some corporations. To the best of my knowledge, systematic testing is still forbidden in France despite increasingly strong pressure being brought to bear by corporations on occupational medicine. Only those employees responsible for security can be tested. Other testing is banned. So no, I do not really see other environments or areas where we would have these types of tests. However, I want to take this opportunity to make the following point; regarding the link between drugs and high level sporting activities, some surveys clearly show that in France, there is a strong link between practising a sport at a high level and using drugs. So contrary to what one might think, sport is not a barrier to drug use.

Senator Maheu: You said earlier that some people believe that young immigrants are often involved in delinquency. Could you expand on that? The topic interests me. What do you mean by that?

Mr. Kokoreff: These are the views of the average person on the street. There is in fact a stereotypical view that all young people are potential deviants. It is an old idea dating back to the 19th century. There is a deviant waiting to be awaken in each young person and more specifically young people from working class neighbourhoods, from the slum suburbs, would be especially exposed to delinquency. The stereotypical equation goes like this: delinquent acts are committed by young people and young people are immigrants.

This theme is exploited politically by the extreme right, but it does not stop there. In that regard, what are our observations in the field? What are the obstacles? We see a high concentration of young immigrants in certain neighbourhoods. This segment of the population is hard hit by unemployment and insecurity. So it is not really surprising that some of these people are involved in unlawful activities. There is a widespread taboo in France, and ghettoization. Nevertheless, if we look at the different levels of trafficking, in other words street trafficking, people who supply those who are not in the street but who live in the neighbourhood, right up to the people who are involved in international networks, we can see rather mixed networks in terms of nationality and ethnic origin. In France, this poses an ideological and methodological problem. It is impossible to take into account and quantify ethnic origin. In a nutshell, in France there are only French nationals and foreigners. This is not only a very sensitive matter politically speaking, because even my comments could lead to undesirable interpretations, but it is also a methodological barrier. For example, suppose I want to look at the inmate population in a detention centre that theoretically houses people with sentences under two years. If we only look at nationality, about 15 or 20 per cent of the people would be foreigners, and 85 per cent French nationals.

Whereas if we were to look at ethnic origin, we would see that it is not 15 per cent who are foreigners, but 60 or 70 per cent who were born abroad or are from immigrant families. Which means that public policies lead to the selection of a clientele based on ethnic criteria.

The Chairman: I accept your finding. I understand you are having difficulty supporting that with specific figures. However, you have some doubts about what you are saying and let's say that I share that doubt. What motivates public authorities to act that way in France?

Mr. Kokoreff: To act how? Do you mean this criminalization?

The Chairman: Yes.

Mr. Kokoreff: That is a difficult question to address, and we would have to review the history of immigration in France to get a better understanding of this institutional discrimination.

The Chairman: We will have to come up with an answer to that, because unfortunately the same is true in North America.

Mr. Kokoreff: I must admit I do not have an answer to that question, at least not today.

The Chairman: Because the law has no symbolic effect. Do we agree?

Mr. Kokoreff: The law has no symbolic effect because it is violated on a daily basis. It is not a matter of being a spokesperson for these young people who live in these neighbourhoods, but what are they experiencing? How do they see the police and the justice system? They see people who conduct three or four identification checks per day, who systematically address them informally, who may if they happen to feel like it make comments that are borderline racist, and the later it is and the more the limits have been overstepped, who step in using strong-arm tactics when clearly these delinquents are not very dangerous and armed; sometimes they are even stopped, asked for their papers, picked up and taken to spend the night in jail, without even knowing exactly why.

Then there is what people say about this experience: "It was not me, but my cousin or my neighbour who was stopped that way, who received such shabby treatment". That more or less summarizes their experience of public action, for the most part. Then we read in the newspaper about a political figure with his hand in the till who is suspected of corruption, or a senior official involved in some dubious activities, but who are protected by their status, in a way. Police officers have stated that the increase in incidents in the suburbs is often directly linked to the increase in these cases in the press. I find that interesting.

The Chairman: You are adding something we had not thought about: when there are stories of corruption in the press, in the short term, is there an increase in offences?

Mr. Kokoreff: In the very short term. I do not want to justify that experience.

The Chairman: No, I just want you to back it up with a little bit more information.

Mr. Kokoreff: It is a bit of a stereotypical experience, pieced together in contacts with justice officials, the police and a number of young people in these neighbourhoods. There are a host of ideas that we can use and that do not make sense. So that is why I also think that there is a lot of work that remains to be done to restore meaning to the norm, although that is already underway. On a daily basis the norm or the law is violated.

This is also a good illustration of what sociologists specializing in deviance call "neutralization techniques." This relationship with the police, this sense of injustice - which is, we must not forget, linked to a feeling of social exclusion - can lead to justifying delinquency. The nature of delinquency is also being able to neutralize one's actions by saying: "In the end, what I am doing in comparison with the political figure is nothing at all," or "They are leaving him alone, so I am going to go ahead." We must not be taken in by this attitude. At the same time, it does reflect a certain social reality.

Senator Maheu: Without necessarily talking about young immigrants, what happens when a person is caught committing an offence and feels that his rights have been violated? For example, if one of his friends is caught with a larger quantity of drugs than the young immigrant, the consequences and jurisprudence are quite different. Are there specific means of redress for a young person if he feels his rights have been violated?

Mr. Kokoreff: That is a difficult question, because the law and procedures are not well understood. It is all quite abstract, and, at the same time, there is a certain amount of apprehension. I am talking about working-class neighbourhoods. There is some, let's be frank, domination, or if you will, the feeling of being somewhat crushed by the system.

Senator Maheu: But legal aid does exist in France to help young people from underprivileged neighbourhoods.

Mr. Kokoreff: Of course there is legal aid. Lawyers are not all automatically appointed to it, of course. We live in a constitutional state.

The Chairman: You wrote in one of your papers that violence is not only the product of a given social environment, but that it is also an institutional product resulting from public action, namely by the police and schools. Can you give us some examples of that?

Mr. Kokoreff: We talk, for example, about violence in schools. We should also talk about school violence. School violence involves imposing content and ways of thinking, ways of expressing ideas and acting. Let's take the example of parents from a working-class environment, French families or immigrant families, who are called in by the principal. There is institutional violence that is even stronger in that it is invisible, perpetrated on the people who are called in or who do not come, because they are overwhelmed by the institution, or who come but with their legs shaking because they are wondering what will happen to them. They are afraid of the institution. That may be an example: institutional violence that is co-produced.

It is also present in the justice system, of course. Let's look, for example, at someone who has reoffended many times. The person is a heroin user, he feeds his habit through theft, and is regularly questioned. Of course, in some ways he is responsible and he takes more or less responsibility for his actions. But at the same time, there is also institutional violence that is characterized by the fact that his criminal record will automatically be mentioned at the hearing. And this young man's criminal record is rather long - and there are many like him. The violence is present in this kind of exposure where, some say, there is more talk about the criminal record than the offence itself. The feeling they have is that they are more or less being judged for what they have done in the past and not for what they did that resulted in their being brought before the court.

There is in fact this idea that violence is co-generated. It is produced by several players. We could also talk about media violence, as we can talk about school violence, city violence and violence by other players. That means that delinquency is not intrinsic to individuals, and this point is crucial. No one is born a delinquent or a thief, you become one, and becoming one is linked to one's circumstances. I mentioned poverty earlier on, resources that can be provided by informal economies, but we must also talk about the role of institutions.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Kokoreff, it has been a great pleasure to hear your testimony. Do not hesitate to contact us if you want to send in additional information. We would pleased to read it.

Before adjourning this committee hearing, I would like to remind all interested parties that they can read about and get further information on illegal drugs through our Web site at the following address: www.parl.gc.ca. There you will find all of our witnesses' briefs, as well as their biographies and all the reference material they provided. You will also find more than 150 Internet links pertaining to illegal drugs. You may also use this address to send us your e-mails.

I would also like to say a few words concerning the committee's future business. The next meeting will be on October 23 in Vancouver. At that time, as was the case in Toronto, we will take the opportunity to meet with local stakeholders during the public hearings, as well as in their places of work. We will hold a hearing in Ottawa on October 29, and during this public hearing the committee will be briefed on police work in the area of illegal drugs.

On November 5, which will definitely be a very interesting day, we will study public policy on illegal drugs in the United States of America.

On behalf of the Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, I would like to thank you for the interest that you have shown in our important research.

The committee is adjourned.