Past Session:

Proceedings of the Special Committee on
Illegal Drugs

Issue 9 - Evidence

OTTAWA, Monday November 5, 2001

The Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs met this day at 9:22 a.m. to re-assess Canada's anti-drug legislation and policies.

Senator Pierre Claude Nolin (Chairman) presiding.

[Translation]

The Chairman: I would like to call to order the public deliberations of the Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs.

[English]

Today we will explore the drug policy of the United States of America.

[Translation]

At this time, I would like to welcome the witnesses who have traveled here to Ottawa to attend this meeting, as well as our radio listeners, television viewers or anyone tuning in to our committee via the Internet.

Indeed, since June of this year, the public can log on to the Internet and follow our proceedings. Retransmission is made possible thanks to digital cameras. This is a first for a parliamentary committee.

[English]

The clerk of the committee is Mr. Blair Armitage and the head of our research team is Dr. Daniel Sansfaçon.

The mandate of the Standing Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs is to study and to report on the actual Canadian policies concerning cannabis in its context; and study the efficiency of those policies, their approach, the means as well as the control used to implement them. In addition to its initial mandate, the committee must examine the official policies adopted by other the countries.

The Canadian international responsibilities with regard to the conventions on illegal drugs to which Canada is a signatory will also be examined. The committee will also study the social and health effects of the Canadian drug policies on cannabis and the potential effects of alternative policies.

[Translation]

Lastly, the committee must table its final report by the end of August 2002. In order to properly carry out its mandate, the committee has adopted an action plan comprised of three major components.

The first component is knowledge. In order to acquire knowledge of the issue, we will hear from a range of experts, both foreign and domestic, including academics and police officers, as well as legal, medical, social and government officials. For the most part, the hearings will take place in Ottawa. On occasion, if necessary, the committee will schedule hearings outside the Nation's Capital.

The second component is sharing this knowledge. This is the noblest of objectives. The committee wants Canadians everywhere to get informed and to share the information we have gathered. Our challenge will be to plan and organize a system that guarantees the accessibility and dissemination of this knowledge.

We are also interested in hearing the public's views. To this end, we will be holding public hearings in various locations across Canada in the spring of 2002. The third component of our mandate is to examine very closely the guiding principles on which a national public drug policy must be based.

[English]

Before I introduce the distinguished experts at today's hearing, I wish to inform you that the committee maintains an up-to-date Web site. The site is accessible through the parliamentary Web site that can be reached at www.parl.gc.ca. All the committee's proceedings are posted there. It includes the briefs and the appropriate support documentation of our expert witnesses. We also keep up to date more than 150 links to other related sites.

Our committee room, known as the Aboriginal Peoples Committee Room, was built in 1996 to commemorate the peoples who first occupied the North American territory and still play a vibrant role in the development of Canada. Four of our colleagues in the Canadian Senate proudly represent Aboriginal peoples.

We will hear this morning from Dr. Ethan Nadelmann of the Lindesmith Center. Following that, we will hear from Governor Gary Johnson from the State of New Mexico.

We had invited a representative of the administration in Washington to appear today. However, Dr. Alan Leshner, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, cancelled his appearance only last Friday. We also invited Acting Director Edward Jurith of the Office of National Control Policy of the Executive Office of the President. Our invitation was declined, but we received a letter from the Executive Office of the President that included the following comments:

Thank you very much for your invitation to testify before the Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs on November 5. Unfortunately, I will be unable to travel to Ottawa at that time.

The President's nominee to be Director of the National Drug Control Policy has yet to be confirmed by the Senate. After his confirmation I expect that he will welcome an opportunity to visit Ottawa to meet with you and your colleagues.

The letter is signed Edward H. Jurith, Acting Director, Office of the National Drug Control Policy.

When we received that in early October, we got in touch with former General Barry McCaffrey. We were glad to receive an e-mail from the retired general. The e-mail reads as follows:

General McCaffrey thanks you for the invitation to testify before the Canadian Senate - Special Committee on Illegal Drugs on November 5, 2001. General McCaffrey will be not be able to accept the invitation due to a scheduling conflict. Please feel free to keep General McCaffrey in mind for any other future events.

Nevertheless, we have two important actors on the drug policy scene in the U.S. We are glad to receive this morning Dr. Nadelmann from New York.

Dr. Nadelmann is described by the magazine Rolling Stone as the point man for drug-policy-reform efforts. Dr. Nadelmann is one of the world's most respected and high-profile commentators on U.S. and international drug control policies. He was born in New York in 1957 and was educated at McGill University, Harvard University and the London School of Economics. He received his B.A., J.D. and Ph.D. in political science from Harvard, as well as a master's degree in international relations for the London School of Economics.

From 1987 to 1994, he served as assistant professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. At Princeton, Dr. Nadelmann created and chaired the Princeton working group on drug use and alternatives to drug prohibition.

Dr. Nadelmann founded the Lindesmith Center, a leading drug policy and research institute, in 1994. He now serves as the executive director of the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation, which merged in July 2000.

Dr. Nadelmann, we usually have an hour and half for each witness. This morning, I have decided to extend that time to two hours. We will first hear your presentation followed by questions and answers.

Dr. Ethan A. Nadelmann, Executive Director, Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation: It is an honour to appear before this committee, and I am delighted that the Canadian Senate is in a position to examine issues of alternatives to the current war on drugs.

It is a shame that in the United States, at least in Washington, DC, it is virtually politically impossible to have this type of open hearing on this issue.

The Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation was named after Alfred Lindesmith who was a distinguished American professor at Indiana University for many decades. He was the first prominent scholar to challenge conventional thinking about drug policy beginning in the 1940s.

We are the leading organization in the United States advocating for an end to the war on drugs. We perceive current drug policies as being grounded primarily in a combination of fear, ignorance, prejudice and profit. Those are the factors that most drive the U.S. drug policy.

In our view, the drug policy should be based upon a combination of common sense, science, public health and human rights. Those are our core values in dealing with the subject.

Lindesmith Center is often times perceived in the United States as being the radical organization, the one that wants to end the war on drugs and legalize this and that. I should clarify what we are.

In the United States the single most distinguished scientific body is the National Academy of Sciences. It is the most independent, unlike National Institute of Drug Abuse and other national institutes, which have a strong element of government control even their funding.

The National Academy of Sciences is the most independent body in the United States. It is commissioned by the government and others to evaluate various areas of scientific research.

The National Academy of Sciences has produced half a dozen reports since 1980 on the subject of marijuana, medical marijuana, HIV and drugs, drug treatments, drug testing, and related subjects. If you look at their analysis, conclusions and recommendations, and if you then question which organization in the United States is most committed to advancing the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences, it would not be the Office of National Drug Control Policy. It would not be any other drug policy institute. It is the Lindesmith Center.

I wish to make that clear. If we sound like we have a radical perspective in the American context, it is important to understand that what we are advocating is consistent, to a good extent, with the recommendations of National Academy of Sciences.

I would strongly encourage this committee to base, as much as possible, its recommendations on some of those reports. Here in Canada, the LeDain commission evaluated these issues some 30 years ago. Its conclusions are not far from those of the National Academy of Sciences. There is a good record of research there. There is a long history.

The Chairman: We have the time for you to take a few minutes to explain to my colleagues and the Canadian audience, the history of drug prohibition in the U.S. Your history and our history are quite related, so it would be valuable to hear that.

Dr. Nadelmann: Some people may be aware that in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, in your country and mine, the situation of which drugs were legal and which were illegal was very different. We had a powerful temperance movement with alcohol in the United States. You had that in Canada but not to the same extent as the U.S. We had alcohol prohibition in many states in the United States in late 19th and early 20th century. That resulted in the 18th amendment for alcohol prohibition.

Canada had a strong temperance tradition. A few provinces had prohibition. There were massive smuggling opportunities to supply the American market. Cigarettes, in my country, were illegal in about a dozen states at the turn of the last century. Women were prohibited from smoking cigarettes in even more states. When World War I began those prohibitions on cigarettes were swept aside.

Opium, heroin, morphine and cocaine and marijuana were largely legal in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is important to realize that probably a larger percentage of Americans used those drugs during those years than is the case today. That legality of these substances was associated with a higher level of use.

As far as we know, the amount of problems associated with the use of these substances was dramatically less than it is today. Coca Cola had cocaine in it until 1900. Throughout much the United States, there was massive consumption of laudanum, a liquid opiate.

The principle consumers of these substances were essentially women, often times in the south, dealing with menopause and problems that resulted from poor sanitation. There was no aspirin or penicillin. The opiates were quite effective in reducing pain and as an anti-diarrhea agent.

In both your country and mine, while the principle consumers were white middle-aged women, no one gave thought to criminalizing these substances. It would have been seen as inappropriate. This was part of the relationship between a woman and her doctor. The doctor may have been real or otherwise, but it was a private relationship.

There were a few factors that led to the criminalization. People became aware of the danger of opiates. People became addicted to these substances in varying degrees, but they still became dependent. Oftentimes, they did not know they were dependent, any more than people today know they are dependent on coffee. If people have easy and ready access to the substance everyday, and were not deprived of it, they would never experience any withdrawal symptoms. It is only when the substances become unavailable - imagine what would happen in our countries if coffee were unavailable - that people try to find substitutes.

There was awareness and there was a movement in the late 1800s and early 1900s to regulate these things. It was tied in with the movement for greater control over food and drugs. We had our Food and Drug Act in 1906 to promote greater safety. Some of that was to provide for proper labelling so that people knew what they were buying and to ensure the liability of manufacturers in holding them accountable.

It was also tied in with the progressive era movement, and the women's suffrage movement for the right to vote, which was connected to the temperance and the prohibition movements. The first criminal laws involving the opiate drugs in my country happened in California and Nevada in the 1870s and 1880s. Those laws were directed at Chinese minorities who worked hard but would smoke opium to relax, a tradition they brought from China. It was feared that they would seduce white women into their opium dens and addict them to the drug.

The Chairman: To ensure that my colleagues understand the system in the U.S, criminal jurisdiction is held by the state.

Dr. Nadelmann: There is jurisdiction at both levels. We have federal and state laws in the United States that provide jurisdiction in the area of drugs. By and large, the federal government does not get involved in the simple issues of drug possession; they leave that to the states. Approximately 90 per cent of all drug enforcement is performed at the state and local level. Eighty or 90 per cent of the people incarcerated on drug charges in the United States are incarcerated in local jails.

The federal government focuses on pursuing larger organizations, although in some cases they can end up involved in petty drug offences when they have joint task forces with state authorities. Some of you may know about the remarkable raid of a medical marijuana buyers club in Los Angeles, notwithstanding the opposition of local authorities.

The Chairman: Is that why California initiated that?

Dr. Nadelmann: Most drug laws and policy reforms originate at the state level, as you will hear from Governor Gary Johnson. Alcohol prohibition began first at the local level, and then moved up to the state level and, ultimately, to the national level. The movement to repeal alcohol prohibition began with states opting out of the national prohibition. The future of reform in the U.S. will happen at the state level. In Canada, there is federal jurisdiction over drug offences.

The first anti-opium laws were directed at Chinese minorities. That was also true in Canada, in Britain and in Australia. There was undoubtedly a strong element of racism, fear and prejudice that characterized these first laws. When the opiate users were white women it was not be considered appropriate to use criminal laws. When the users were Chinese minorities, it was a different set of circumstances. The first anti-cocaine laws in the U.S. were in the first decade of the 20th century. They were directed at blacks. It was feared that when they used the drug, they would forget their proper place in a segregated society and that they would rape white women. Those fears are always part of the initial drug laws.

The first anti-marijuana laws were in the Southwest U.S. and were directed at Mexican-Americans and Mexican migrants, who were taking jobs from the white people and who would go in the evening and smoke their funny weed. That was regarded as something to fear.

That was a major impetus, combined with issues involving those fears and the legitimate fears of the addictiveness of the drugs. There was also the issue of who would control access to pharmaceutical medicines - the medical profession or the pharmaceutical profession.

The American history is important, not only because there are similar elements in your country, but also because the United States emerged as the leading champion throughout the 20th century for promoting and advocating our approach to dealing with drug problems. In the United Kingdom, between 1910 and 1930, they took a different path. They opted to give more control to the medical profession.

There was a brief, short-lived period in the United States when we had morphine maintenance clinics. There were, in a few places, small heroin maintenance systems as well. Those were subsequently wiped out. Our federal narcotics agents of the day targeted those clinics, and interpretations of Supreme Court decisions led to their demise. In the United Kingdom, they moved to a different system that allowed doctors wide authority and jurisdiction over the prescription drugs. They began to tighten that up in the 1960s and 1970s, in part because of pressure from the U.S. Still, they retained a significant element of the independence of physicians to control this. I believe that this is the direction we should take.

The U.S. has been internationally advocating and promoting its our own approach. Now, that approach can best be described by the rhetorical expression "the war on drugs." What does that consistent of?

It consists essentially of two elements. The first is the assumption that the criminal justice system has to be front and centre in our nation's efforts to deal with the availability of drugs, the problems of drug abuse and drug use. It means that, if a task force is assembled in the United States to study the drug problem, it will be rife with people from the criminal justice system. It means that they are regarded as the spokespeople for dealing with drugs. It means, for example, that when we send people to our schools to educate students about drugs, we do not send those who are knowledgeable about drugs, from the medical or nursing professions, but we send law enforcement officers. These people have no training in what drugs are about, they have never used these drugs, or, if they have used them, they cannot talk about them. We send police officers to schools, not to talk about safety issues, but to talk about drugs. The first dimension of the war on drugs is that intensive role played by the criminal justice system, its agents and its laws. However, more and more law enforcement officers are expressing reservations about that.

The second element is the presumption that the only acceptable way to relate to drugs, and the only acceptable relationship between the citizenry and certain drugs is abstinence. There is the presumption that people need to be drug free and that the role of the criminal justice system is to ensure, as much as possible, that people will be drug free; that people will abstain from using these drugs; that the justice system will deter people from using drugs; that hopefully, drugs will become less available; and that the courts will punish people who use, make, and sell drugs. It is that combination that is particularly powerful in the United States.

In the United States, we have a tradition of the criminal justice system being front and centre in a broader swath of social policies than most other states. For example, our prison population in the United States is about 2 million people. That is a dramatic increase from the 500,000 people that were behind bars in 1980. The United States of America has 5 per cent of the world's population, and we have 25 per cent of the world's prison population. That is extraordinary. If there were something slightly different about the American tradition, we, who have been leading champions of human rights throughout the world, would view as a major violation the easy reliance on incarceration to deal with social problems.

We have the strong predilection for relying intensively on the criminal justice system to deal with the whole range of activities. We often find prison an acceptable and appropriate punishment for a many activities, including those that do not involve violence or significant predatory activity.

On the other side, this notion of attachment to drug freeness is more powerful in the U.S. than in most other countries in the western world. I believe that has to do with our temperance movement. We have a temperance movement or ideology that goes back almost to the origins of our country, to the early 19th century. There is a quasi-religious dimension to this temperance ideology. Historically in the United States, you can see that when we repealed the prohibition against alcohol and acknowledged that it had been largely a failure, the temperance or prohibitionist sentiment did not just dissolve. To a good extent it transferred itself on to the other remaining drugs - the cannabis, the opiates and the cocaine - that were not consumed by a wide portion of the population. Even the leading anti-prohibition speaker in the United States, a former Congressman, became an anti-narcotic speaker once prohibition was repealed. The head of the federal international section of the alcohol prohibition agency, Harry Anslinger, became the first head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. There was a targeting of other drugs once prohibition had been repealed.

The Chairman: Does that explain the moral aspect of the public reaction toward drugs? The reaction, to whatever we put on the table as rigorous evidence when we discuss that issue, is that people maintain that it is morally wrong and are against it.

Dr. Nadelmann: My sense is that that is a major force driving the war on drugs. I have studied something about Canadian drug policy. When it comes to locking people up and relying on arrest and incarceration, Canada is not quite where the United States is on this, but is closer to the U.S. than to Europe in that regard.

The same thing is true on the subject of drug freeness. In Canada, there is not the sort of fanatical, quasi-religious attachment to drug freeness that we have in the United States, but Canada is closer to us, in this respect, than to much of Europe.

The Swedes are more American in this regard than the Canadians. If you look historically at which countries played around with alcohol prohibition, it was largely ones in the northern environs. It was Scandinavia, Russia, Canada and the United States that regarded themselves as having a serious problem with alcohol.

What needs to be challenged is this assumption that we can be a drug-free society or that we should even strive to be a drug-free society. It has been the easy rhetoric that has led us astray from a more sensible and pragmatic drug policy.

In 1988, the United States Congress passed a resolution declaring that America would be drug free by 1995. Consider how ludicrous that is. Why would such a resolution even be passed? In 1988, the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Drugs in New York was attended by President Clinton - I am not sure whether your prime minister attended - and about 40 prime ministers and presidents around the world. It was a new UN gathering with new materials and a moto: "a drug free world: we can do it."

If you think about it, there has never been a drug-free society in the history of civilization, so far as we know. It is remarkable that, when anthropologists find rare tribes in the South Pacific or in the back hills of the Amazon, who have had no contact with other civilizations for hundreds or thousands or years, somehow these tribes have figured out how to make alcohol. Somehow they figured out that if they chew certain plants, those plants would create altered states of consciousness.

It is not just that one country is promoting or propagandizing the use of drugs. There is something inherently human about the discovery and consumption of plants and chemicals that alter people's states of consciousness.

If you ask why people do that, I would refer you to a wonderful book that Andrew Weil wrote 30 years ago, The Natural Mind. He speculated that the desire of human beings to alter their states of consciousness was virtually part of what the essence of humanness means, and relates to some other elements of who were are. He analogized it to young children, who spin around in circles in order to make themselves dizzy. He said that we continue this pattern as we grow older.

There has never been a drug-free society. At the current time, in the year 2001, we have taken a certain set of substances - marijuana, some of the opiates, cocaine and other drugs - and have said that these drugs will be criminalized. With regard to others, we have said that these will be legal. It was all different 100 years ago.

There is every reason to believe that 25 or 50 years from now, some drugs that are now illegal will be legal and some of those that are now legal will be illegal. These things change with scientific discoveries, changes in morals, and shifts in consumption patterns. There is no religious tradition that necessarily says that the opiates are criminal or forbidden, where as alcohol is permitted. There is no religious tradition I am aware of that says tobacco is permitted but these others are not. Typically, at various points in history, religious leaders make certain accommodations to the reality that a large part of their religious following has begun to use some drugs.

One can give the Mormons as an exception. They have a principle that one should not ingest any psychoactive substances that alter state of consciousness. They are fairly consistent in that regard, forbidding not just heroin, cocaine and marijuana, but also cigarettes, alcohol and even Coca-Cola and chocolate. There is some consistency there, but it is rare to find such consistency anywhere around the world.

This committee should simply come out and assert that Canada will never be a drug-free society. It is essential that anti-drug rhetoric should become part of history and not part of the future. What I have found in my own speaking engagements around the United States and elsewhere is that it becomes more useful to talk about drugs and drug use rather than drug policy itself. Our drug policy is locked in a fairly counterproductive and ineffective state because of some misunderstandings about drugs.

When you think about it, in the U.S. and in Canada, we base our drug policy on a myth. The myth is that we are somehow all born as perfectly balanced chemical creatures; that each of us emerges from the womb as perfectly balanced chemical creatures. If you think about that, that must be a myth. We know that we cannot all be born that way. We are not born perfectly balanced in all sorts of other ways; why in this way?

If you think beyond that, it is not as if drugs are something outside of us. There is an element in which drugs are us. Twenty-five years ago we discovered that the human body produces its own natural opiate drugs, known as endorphins. This is why, when you run, pray, have sex or engage in other activities, you get some feelings, because you are releasing these substances in your body.

It is probably the case that if you were to remove the endorphins from your body and put them back in, you would probably be violating a federal law. We have these substances in our body. We found out five years ago that we produce our own cannabinoids, our own marijuana. In that respect, we are all potheads. One of the reasons that humans respond to cannabis, why it makes people feel good and why some people get addicted to it, is that our brains are primed to accept this thing. We will find in time that we have many other drugs in our body that are much like the drugs outside, some of which are prescribed, made by pharmaceutical companies or are plants.

Then the question is why some people feel the need to take in substances from outside. Part of the answer lies in the fact that we are not born perfectly balanced. Millions of people, including people in my organization, are struggling with the issue of drugs such as Ritalin and its prescription to young people. Why are millions of people, especially young boys, being prescribed these drugs now? I am not sure what to make of it. On the one hand, we have the problem of people prescribing too readily. Teachers do not want to deal with unruly children or parents are frustrated, so they put them on Ritalin. On the other hand, we have people who are dead set against ever putting their children on these things, and some parents have been successful in not doing that, despite the recommendation of doctors. I know of many friends who were absolutely committed to never putting their child on Ritalin. They felt it was inappropriate to put a young person on this drug. They struggled and finally agreed to do it, and now their child is thriving in school, no longer beating up siblings and able to focus. Maybe that child was not born a perfectly balanced chemical creature. Maybe there was an insufficient production in that young child's body to deal with this stuff. These were not parents who were doing it too readily. These were parents who fought doing it.

Then the question is what is the relationship of taking Ritalin to becoming a drug addict when you get older. Here you have studies going both ways. Some studies suggested that children who took Ritalin were more likely to become a drug abuser when they got older because they had become accustomed to the notion of taking a drug into their body, and when they got older they were accustomed to taking other things. Other studies are emerging that show the opposite, that people who were hyperactive as young children and were not medicated for it are more likely to become involved with drugs like cocaine, which is a stimulant as is Ritalin. The answer may be that they were not properly medicated and now they are engaged in a form of self-medication and that cocaine becomes the drug that seems to work for them. In some sense, they were not being treated.

Another example is the opiate drugs. I can think of two drugs that when some people take them for the first time, they claim that they feel normal for the first time in their lives. Those two drugs are Prozac and heroin. We have all met people who say that about Prozac because it is little more open. We are aware that many people we know and love take this drug and it helps them with depression. Sometimes we worry they take it too readily.

However, why do some people respond to heroin and the opiates? Many people who take heroin for the first time throw up, get sick and never want to touch it again, but some people suddenly feel at ease for the first time. It is possibly because they were born with an insufficient supply of endorphins in their body, or maybe they were born fine but grew up in a tough situation or whatever may have happened. We are not born in a constant way with our internal pharmacology remaining constant. Our biochemistry is shaped by the events of life as well. It evolves over time. Perhaps people respond to heroin in part because they have insufficient endorphin production in life. Moreover, when people who are addicted to heroin want to get off heroin, often because they are tired of the life of an illegal heroin user, why does methadone work and why is it necessary? One hypothesis is when people become dependent upon heroin their own body's production of endorphins decreases, and when they stop using heroin, their body does not naturally make a sufficient amount, even if it did in the first place. That is why methadone makes sense. It is replacing something that is missing from the body. That is why the people who have been on methadone for ten, twenty or twenty-five years will consider it to be their medicine. They maintain that they do not get high from methadone and that they are no more addicts than diabetics are insulin addicts. This is their medicine, and it takes the issue of drugs out of their life.

It is the understanding that we live in a world not only in which drugs are widely abundant, but also in which they are abundant even within ourselves. The pharmaceutical companies are so successful because they produce things that people need, whether because of illness or imbalances. Ultimately, if we look toward the future and try to be optimistic about our policies with respect to drugs, they need to be based upon a fundamentally different assumption. The assumption that we must be, aspire to be or can be a drug-free society needs to fade into history as a relic, as almost a perversion of religious ideals that makes no sense in terms of science and is not consistent with or grounded in religious traditions that go back hundreds or thousands of years. It is something that many religious traditions picked up in the last 100 or 200 years in various parts of the world, especially in North America. We need to find a better way of dealing with the reality that we are drugs, that drugs are abundant and that drugs are everywhere.

The Chairman: With respect to your organization and your mandate, can you explain how you finance your yearly budget so that we understand where you are coming from and whom you represent?

Dr. Nadelmann: I was a professor at Princeton University from 1987 to 1994, speaking and writing about drug policy issues. About nine years ago, I received a call from George Soros, the financier and philanthropist who had been concerned about issues of freedom in Eastern Europe and about how to promote an open society in those that had been closed. As Communism fell in Europe, he turned to the United States and wanted to know if the United States is a free and open society. I think his answer was that it is not in every respect. If there is an example in the United States where we do not stand out as an open society, where dialogue is not open and free, and where policy is driven by fear and prejudice, the drug policy stands out. As a result of that meeting with him, I was able to start the Lindesmith Center as the first project of George Soros' Open Society Institute, and built that up as an activist policy institute, funding other organizations and putting out material. We have a Web site, www.drugpolicy.org, where people can go for good information. Last year we merged with another organization, the Drug Policy Foundation, which is a membership-based organization created in the late 1980s. For our funding, we now have 10,000 members. George Soros remains our largest funder, but there are now 10 wealthy men who contribute $100,000 or more to the organization. We are beginning to receive grants from foundations as well. Our support comes from Democrats and Republicans, libertarians and socialists, people who have used drugs and people who have never used drugs. It comes from people whose primary concern is the issue of prisons, corruption, AIDS or the racism of the drug war, all of these perspectives. That is who we are representing now.

The Chairman: Do you finance research within your organization, or do you analyze research done by other organizations?

Dr. Nadelmann: With a few exceptions, we are primarily involved in taking research that has already been produced and making it more publicly available. We put it into forms that the media and the public can understand and accept. As a professor, one of my greatest frustrations was to spend time in the library reviewing incredible scholarship and research papers that no one else was reading. The format of the research was not accessible; it was published in journals with circulations of only few thousand. Often the government would be aggressive in pointing out studies suggesting great harm from some drug, but there would be no mention of the eight following studies that questioned the methodology of earlier studies and provided contrary conclusions.

We are involved mostly in promoting and spreading knowledge about research that is already available. The principal exception has been on the issue of prescribing pharmaceutical heroin to injection-drug users who have been unable or unwilling to stop using drugs on their own.

There is a great variety of opiate drugs that either come from the opium plant or are made synthetically. Those include morphine, methadone, Dilaudid, Demerol, codeine and oxycodone. Those drugs have existed for tens of thousands of years and are widely used in hospitals. They remain the principal drugs used for pain purposes all around the world.

All of those drugs, if used on a very regular basis, can result in dependence, which means that stopping use can become uncomfortable, varying from slight to profound discomfort. All of those drugs are used in hospitals and hospices for pain relief. When used properly and appropriately for pain relief, those drugs are rarely addictive.

In pain treatment, we are embracing more and more the principle that there is a bottom line. Whether for a cancer victim, a burn victim or a sick child, we want to take away that pain. That is our bottom line. As human beings, living with pain is a horrible thing that reduces quality of life and even shortens the length of people's lives. Pain is physically debilitating.

Adequate pain treatment has been a problem in our societies in part because of an irrational fear that might be called opiate phobia. As a result, doctors will not prescribe sufficient pain medication, nurses will not administer sufficient pain medication and even patients themselves are reluctant because of a moral objection to overuse of opiates or a fear of addiction.

There is overwhelming evidence that the proper use of opiate medications can reduce pain. Yet people still remain fearful and ignorant. In the United States, many doctors have been punished for properly prescribing pain medications because some patients require unusually high doses and the regulators in law enforcement or in the medical field do not understand.

Only in the past few years, beginning in the state of Oregon, have doctors been held liable and responsible for under-treating pain, but I believe that is the way that we must proceed.

The core principle for treating pain is to use any drug that works to relieve pain and to improve functioning. Patients can in some cases control the flow of their own analgesics. A child who cannot swallow pills or who is afraid of needles can be given pain-relief medicine in the form of lollipop.

It turns out that methadone is one of the most effective and least expensive pain medications. About 15 years ago, Canadian Parliament passed a law allowing the use of diamorphine, pharmaceutical heroin, in the treatment of pain. I do not believe it is used often here, but that is consistent with what is happening in England and Belgium where all opiate drugs are allowed for medical use. For a small percentage of people, heroin is the ideal pain medication.

When you are dealing with the treatment of addiction, you want to be guided by the same principle. The bottom line in the treatment of addiction is the reduction of death, disease, suffering and crime associated with the use of the illicit drug. Sometimes that means, in the case of heroin, people joining a 12-step program or finding some other way to quit and to become totally clean of this drug.

The National Academy of Sciences, the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and I believe Canadian government organizations, have concluded that the most effective treatment for reducing death, disease, crime and suffering associated will illegal heroin use is methadone maintenance when it is done correctly.

Most methadone maintenance in the United States and in parts of Canada is not done correctly. There is an archaic notion that less is more in methadone use, but that is not grounded in science, only in some misplaced childhood teaching that is contradicted by scientific evidence. Nonetheless, methadone seems to work the best for the most patients, perhaps, as I explained before, because patients' natural endorphins are not sufficient to make them feel normal without this medication.

Another analogy is the use of patches and chewing gums to counteract nicotine addiction. Methadone is to street heroin what those remedies are to cigarettes. The underlying opiate or nicotine is delivered with relatively little harm to the human body. You can live a very long life while taking either of these treatments daily. Methadone causes constipation; nicotine has some slight risk to the heart in older patients, but basically these treatments have minimal risks.

Not all aspects of the addiction are addressed by methadone or by the patch. The satisfaction of holding a cigarette, of putting it in your mouth, and the rituals and the rush of actually injecting heroin are still missing; nonetheless, a motivated user can avoid the greater dangers of street heroin or the dangers of smoking tobacco with these alternatives.

Germany banned methadone until 10 years ago. They have 40,000 users maintained on codeine. In France, which also banned methadone until 10 years ago, they have 40,000 people maintained on a drug called buprenorphine. Although methadone use is more now accepted in both those countries, patients have become accustomed to the using the other medicines. In the United States, we are beginning to use buprenorphine, which may be effective for certain types of people.

There is drug called LAAM, which is a long-acting methadone. However, another drug is now known to be very effective in reducing illicit drug use and the related death, disease, crime and suffering in people who have been addicted for 5, 10 or 20 years, in people who have tried unsuccessfully to quit through methadone or drug-free programs people or who have been forced off through lengthy jail terms. That drug, which is showing a remarkable success rate, is diamorphine; otherwise known as pharmaceutical heroin.

If you look at your most committed illegal heroin using population, the people who have tried to quit, you are dealing with people mostly in their late 20s, 30s and sometimes in their 40s. You are dealing with people who have been part of a street scene, off and on, for five to twenty years. You are dealing with people who are tired of living the life of a street junkie but who cannot imagine a life without heroin. You are talking about people who do not get high any more. You are talking about people who take heroin just to feel normal at this point. It is part of them. It is woven into their essence.

The Swiss showed, in the last seven or eight years, that if you set up a clinic and allow not only methadone, because they also prescribe a baseline of methadone, but also pharmaceutical heroin, that the people will succeed dramatically. Success means they stop using illegal heroin, but they even stop using illegal cocaine, which should not happen pharmacologically because methadone use will not reduce that.

The point is that the people are motivated to withdraw from illegal drug scene. As they start to withdraw from that scene. They start getting housing and their health improves dramatically. Fewer of them are injecting, so the risk of spreading hepatitis or HIV declines dramatically. Criminality also dropped dramatically. A significant number of these people have legal jobs.

Once you have been taking heroin for 10 or 15 years, you do not get high. I have been with people who have taken heroin who have been on it for 10 or 15 years, and they continue talking like we are here. They do not meet the image you expect. They say that they feel warmth through their chest and that they now feel fine. They are not high. They can continue to function.

The Dutch than wanted to try the same program and they set up their own national trials. Next year the Germans will start their trials. Next year the Spanish will set up their trials. In France, it seems only a matter of time. In Britain, they have long prescribed this on a small basis but have never really studied it. Now they are beginning to study it. In Australia, there is an election coming up next month. Prime Minister John Howard has been the only remaining opposition to some of these harm-reduction drug policies. If he losses office, whoever succeeds him will certainly move forward with heroin maintenance trials. It is only a matter of time.

The Chairman: I want to talk about North America in that trial. Before you go to that, Senator Fairbairn has a question.

Senator Fairbairn: The committee is actually doing exactly what you are suggesting must be done. If I recall, this was not an easy committee to set up. It was not easy to get acceptance.

I think one of our biggest problems surely has to be the great success of the initial messages, which have been conveyed for a considerable period of time, that drugs are bad and that we are working toward a drug-free society, which as you say, is not really a practical thing to contemplate. However, it has been successful, and it has been successful partly because of the visible health issue and the destruction. It has been successful because of the connection with organized crime. Even now, we are in a very extraordinary situation where we are all grappling with the issue of terrorism. If you peel away how the financing of that is done, there you find the drug trade as well.

The other message that is struggling to get out, the message you are trying to give, is that there is another useful and positive element by which we can make people's lives better if done under proper supervision and control. We are having that discussion in Canada about using heroin and marijuana for medicinal purposes. What advice do you have on how to push the message that there are people in our society who can be legitimately helped by the use of some forms of drugs that have long been prohibited and that are viewed as bad by the public? How can we get that message out more effectively? In Canada, it is a very blurred message.

I was surprised to hear you say, and perhaps I heard you wrongly, that Sweden was more attached to the American situation than Canada is in terms of messaging. What advice do you have for a committee that will be advising the government and the people that there is value here? How do we do it after having been so successful in undoing it in the beginning?

Dr. Nadelmann: We have to start by challenging your initial assumption, which is that we have been successful. We do not know that we have been successful. Why? Because we have not compared our past policy to another policy. You can only tell you are successful if you compare it to something else. In a way, we assume we have been successful, and the question is, by what criteria are we successful? If the criterion is that a substantial majority of people say that they are scared of drugs, one might say we are successful.

The question becomes how we evaluate success or failure. What are the criteria for knowing whether one policy is better than another? We need a set of criteria to determine this. In the United States, and perhaps in Canada as well, the criteria of success or failure we are going by are the annual surveys that ask someone it they have ever used an illegal drug and if they have used one in the last year. Typically, we say that if the numbers went up, we are not a success, and if the numbers went down, we are a success. Much of that focuses on marijuana. My sense is that that criterion is one of the less important ones.

The really important criteria are; what number of people died as a result of either drug use or the drug policies; what happened to the level of crime associated with either the drug use or the drug policies; and what happened to the level of disease associated with either the drug use or the drug policies. The best policy will be one that most reduces not so much drug use, but the death, the disease, the crime and the suffering.

By way of analogy, I turn to terrorism. I worry that if the United States models our war on terrorism the way we did our war on drugs, we are doomed. We will end up focusing on the wrong bottom line. If success or failure is evaluated in terms of how many nail scissors are seized at the airport rather than how much death, disease, crime or suffering resulted, then we are losing sight of the fundamental bottom line.

If we want to get out the message about the proper use of drugs in medicine, it has to be part and parcel of an overall message grounded in science and health. If we look at the numbers, the biggest drug problem in recent decades in the U.S. and in Canada has not even been alcohol or cigarettes, which are bigger than any of the illegal drugs, but the under-treatment of pain in the hospitals. More unnecessary pain has resulted from that failing than has resulted from the evils of alcohol and cigarettes. If that is the price we have paid for our anti-drug message, it is a tremendous price.

In the United States, during the period of prohibition, we prohibited alcohol because we knew alcohol was a terrible drug with devastating consequences. During the first years of alcohol prohibition, from 1916 to 1922, the program was effective. Alcohol use dropped and prohibition appeared to be working. The number of alcohol-related domestic beatings and the numbers of cirrhosis cases fell.

In 1922, alcohol use started to increase. From 1922 to 1933, we saw alcohol abuse going up. Beer was not popular with traffickers because it is mostly water; they went for hard liquor. Hard liquor consumption increased as did the amount the government paid for alcohol prohibition enforcement. There were more prohibition agencies each year, and more people behind bars. We saw also Al Capone, organized crime, violence and corruption. Al Capone was seen not as a result of alcohol, but as a result of prohibition laws. He would not have existed but for prohibition.

The United Nations estimated a few years ago that the illegal market in drugs is $400 billion a year. That situation exists for two reasons. First, people around the world want to consume these things. Second, 70 or 80 years ago, we decided that rather than regulate those markets, we would prohibit them.

We now have an underground reservoir of $200 billion to $400 billion a year that empowers organized criminals and terrorists such as Osama bin Laden and others. That is not to say that we must legalize drugs, but rather that we must understand that one negative consequence of a prohibitionist policy is that there is a cost and we must acknowledge that cost.

If we are to move into the future where people make educated decisions about Ritalin, Prozac, morphine and other mood-altering drugs, as well as alcohol and cigarettes, we must become grounded in scientific evidence and in public health. People need to focus on a bottom line.

In America we have 300,000 people who have either died or are infected with drug-related HIV or AIDS. We still do not have a cure. In some cities, the HIV-positive rates are 40 to 60 per cent of the injecting drug users. We have thousands of babies born with AIDS. Drugs do not spread AIDS; the sharing of dirty needles spreads AIDS.

Fifteen years ago, we could have done what the Australians, British and Dutch did, and made clean needles readily available at pharmacies and needle exchange programs. Canada did that in some places before the United States did. We did not do that because we thought we needed to hang on to the idea of sending a message about drugs. By becoming so focused on sending a message about drugs, or at least thinking we are sending a message, we did not do things we needed to do. We did not stop the spread of AIDS. We did not stop the spread of hepatitis. We did not stop the black market. There were many things we did not do.

We must question whether we have been successful in sending our message. In the United States, when a new drug reform program is proposed, someone will typically say that it is sending the wrong message. The Governor of New Jersey said that they could not have a needle exchange program because that would send the wrong message to kids that drugs are okay.

There are two interesting points about that. The first one is they never provide any evidence that these programs send the wrong message. There are no studies that I have ever seen in Canada or the United States that show that setting up a needle exchange program, medical marijuana or heroin maintenance sends the wrong message. There is no evidence that children see that and think it is okay to use drugs. I have not seen that yet. It would be interesting to do such a study.

The second point is, about 50 per cent of the people in the United States between the age of 20 and 50 have now tried marijuana. Today, roughly 50 per cent of high school graduates will have tried marijuana at least once. For the last 35 years, in Canada and the United States, teenagers have had easier and better access to marijuana than anyone else. I know many people my age that used to smoke marijuana. Many of them would still want to smoke it, but they cannot find it anywhere unless they ask their teenager and they do not want to ask their teenager.

In the United States, marijuana use went up during the 1960s and 1970s; it fell in the 1980s; and in the 1990s it plateaued. Every year teenagers are asked how easy it is to get marijuana. That number has stayed constant; 80 per cent of the teenagers say they can get marijuana. They may be getting messages at certain times, but basically young people are not getting the message.

If we want to promote the rational use and non-use of drugs in our society, we must start with less messaging and more of what science says. Mandated government drug policies must be grounded in science. The bottom line should be the reduction of death, disease, crime and suffering associated with both drugs and our drug laws. If that is the new bottom line, then it will promote better treatment of pain and less adolescent drug use at the same time.

Senator Fairbairn: You are talking about a new kind of public education program. In order to get that new kind of public education program, the public officials, the government, the enforcement agencies and whatever part of society that has been dealing with the other message, will have to undergo a significant education program. Otherwise the message will not be disseminated. We have some good health messages going out in Canada now, but it is still not easy to do. The people running the show must have a better understanding before they can have a positive influence on the public.

Dr. Nadelmann: I do not know what your experience in Canada is with sex education, but it is analogous here. The fear was that if sex education were taught, more people would engage in sex at a younger age. I understand that there is not a significant amount of evidence that would lead to that conclusion. However, if that is the result, at least you are reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies, the transmission of sexual disease and incidents of irresponsible sex.

In Canada and the United States, a majority of kids lose their drug virginity before they lose their sexual virginity. I have a 13-year old daughter. My view is that just saying no is fine for children in elementary school. However, in high school you are dealing with 16- to 18-year-olds, almost all of who can get marijuana if they want. One third or more of this population is beginning to experiment. Alcohol, cigarettes and pharmaceuticals are out there as well. In these cases, a more honest approach to drug education is needed.

Our institute is promoting this approach. We call it both "Safety First" and "Just Say Know," which we spell K-N-O-W. We do that to convey the notion that there should be honest drug education. Our message to young people with respect to the drug ecstasy is not to use it. However, if they are going to use it, we tell them to make sure that they drink a lot of water, not take more than one, to make sure they have a place to chill out, and to make sure they have someone to get them home. I tell my kids that if they have any problems, call me because I don't want them getting hurt on the roads. My bottom line with my kids is not do they or don't they, it is whether she will grow up, be healthy and make me nice grandkids.

When determining who the messengers should be, it is appropriate for the police to go to schools to talk about public safety, but when the police go to schools to talk about drugs and marijuana, we are making a farce of it. Impressionable elementary school kids listen to it, but all of the studies, for example, from the American DARE program, come to the same conclusion. The programs are effective in getting young people to like and trust police more, but they have no impact on the level of drug use when they get older. Who should be speaking about this in our schools? I think it would be enormously valuable if people who knew something about drugs, such as people from the field of pharmacology and those who treat pain, were to convey these messages. That is something our young people need to understand.

If you start in the context of explaining why medicines are effective in treating pain, then it becomes a good way to explain to young people the difference between the responsible and irresponsible use of drugs. The people who know something about treating pain are the same people who understand the tough questions about other drugs as well.

We need to either change the teachers or re-educate the people who have been teaching this so that their message is more consistent with the science. I actually believe in an alternative drug policy, one that is significantly different from the one we have now and one that begins to look more like what some of the Europeans are doing. Something like that could be dramatically more successful than what we are doing in Canada and the U.S. It could be more successful not in reducing crime, disease and all these other things, but it could be more successful in reducing the number of young people who get into trouble with drugs.

Senator Chalifoux: Vancouver is one of the largest cities in Canada with one of the largest drug problems, if that is what you want to call it. They have needle exchange programs that appear to be working quite well. The program takes place in the area where the drug issues are. British Columbia grows the best marijuana in North America.

Dr. Nadelmann: There are people in the United States who would dispute that.

Senator Chalifoux: We have the numbers from the export underground. We also have marijuana cops in Vancouver who go around looking at all the hydroponic places and, once they find them, smash them to pieces. Canada has been looking at this issue for quite a while. The government has enacted a law and they are researching the use of marijuana in the control of pain. Some growers in northern Manitoba are licensed and they are growing marijuana in one of the mines.

I can say that marijuana works for the treatment of pain. I had a young daughter who had cancer and her pain was managed, as best as it could be, with the marijuana and the cocktails that were developed. Marijuana for use in pain control is very important. It is what Canada is looking at.

We have other illegal drug problems, and I imagine you also have them in the United States. In our Aboriginal communities, there are prescription drug problems and gas sniffing. We have many types of very serious issues. These issues are a result of the social conditions, specifically, poverty and unemployment. Does your institute look at the root causes of that?

In Canada, we have seen a very large increase in fetal alcohol syndrome and fetal alcohol effect in babies. It will have a devastating effect on the future of both our countries. I have seen documentaries from the United States that show that you are facing the same thing. It is not only AIDS babies, it is FAS babies and FAE children. Does your institute look at this issue at all? Have you done any studies on that, especially in the area of marijuana?

Yes, we have a very serious issue with ecstasy, heroin and other drugs. We also have to look at the very serious issues of the demise of our populations in Canada and the United States. It is getting to the point where there are serious drug issues in the territories, for example, in Nunavut. This is not a United States problem, it is a North American problem. Is your institute doing any research in that regard?

Dr. Nadelmann: Those are wonderful questions, senator. I have spent a fair amount of time in Vancouver. I have talked to the mayor, the premier and other legislators. I have been to the downtown east side where the problems are terrible. Thus, I am familiar with what is happening on all sides of this issue.

You are absolutely right that fetal alcohol syndrome is a devastating thing. One of the great tragedies in the United States is that we became obsessed with the notion of the crack baby. If you look at the hundreds of studies about cocaine and pregnancy, what you find is that although it is not a good thing to use these drugs, the overwhelming factors affecting the quality of a newborn's life have less to do with cocaine and more to do with poverty and lack of prenatal care. There is evidence to suggest that the regular use of cigarettes while pregnant is more harmful to the newborn than is the use of cocaine by the mother in anything other than massive doses.

Being a heroin or cocaine addict can cause harm to the fetus, but the vast majority of crack babies grow up fine. There is not something analogous to fetal alcohol syndrome associated with the use of marijuana, cocaine or heroin during pregnancy. It is fetal alcohol syndrome that can have devastating and lifelong consequences. In the United States, some states have policies to criminalize pregnant women who use unlawful substances, yet there is nothing similar with regard to those women who abuse alcohol.

The babies born to drug-using mothers are likely to be born premature and with slightly smaller head circumferences. However, if they are cared for properly after birth, a drug-addicted baby is not addicted after a few weeks. That is not true with fetal alcohol syndrome. Unfortunately, my organization has not focused on the alcohol issue so far. There are other organizations working on the issue. We will be doing more on it.

All around the world the most devastating substance abuse happens among aboriginal populations, for reasons we do not fully understand, but it probably is a combination of poverty and social dislocation. It is important to understand that poverty alone is not associated with drug abuse. Social dislocation alone is not associated with drug abuse. It is the combination of poverty and social dislocation that creates high levels of drug abuse.

I am familiar with the problems you have in your territories. We have similar issues on our Native American reservations. We see the same thing in Australia and in other parts of the world among aboriginal people. I do not know what the answer is. I know that some tribes have passed their own prohibition laws.

One of the consequences has been the dozens of people dying on the roads literally freezing to death while walking back from the bars to the reservation. I know this happens in Canada.

The notion of harm reduction is that even when people will not stop using drugs, you try to reduce the harms associated with drugs, which may mean getting them to switch from more dangerous to less dangerous forms. There are people and organizations that regard helping young Aboriginal kids to switch from gasoline to marijuana as progress because the gasoline can cause long term brain damage whereas marijuana is a problem drug, but it will not do those harms to them.

It is very interesting that the Native American Church has been successful in dealing with substance abuse. This is a Christian church that uses a hallucinogenic drug, peyote, as part of the ceremony. They also use sweat lodges and other non-drug things.

There is a strong spiritual tradition with a practice that involves the use of a powerful drug that seems to be associated with quite low rates of substance abuse relative to other tribes, but I do not know if the peyote is responsible for that.

You cannot import those things. You cannot prescribe those things. I really do not know what the answer is to the Aboriginal problems.

The other issue that you raised would be a nice way to finish because I went into a long answer about pain. Do we support any research? The one area in which we have supported research is heroin maintenance. We do that because the U.S. government refuses to support research on controversial subjects such as this.

We organized a conference a few years ago. The European academy of medicine, two leading hospitals and two leading schools of public health - Yale and Columbia - met on the subject of heroin maintenance. People from the government were afraid to be seen attending.

We started that conference three years ago. It is a U.S and Canada research project. It is called NAOMI, the North American Opiate Medication Initiative. The next meeting will be in New York tomorrow.

We have provided seed money for research in that one area of heroin maintenance. Fortunately, the Canadian government funding agency gave the NAOMI proposal, being managed by Marty Schecter and Mike O'Shaugnesey of the B.C. Centre of Excellence in HIV/AIDS, the second highest score of all the medical proposals submitted.

That will probably move forward on the heroin maintenance side starting in Vancouver. There are teams in Toronto and Montreal that will move forward with the basic notion of trying to do in Canada what the Swiss, Spanish, Dutch, French and others are doing.

The situation that you have in downtown east side of Vancouver is one of the worst in the world. There is combined heroin and cocaine use with people doing dozens of injections a day and living in old hotels without proper facilities. As the Dutch maintain, part of the answer is a sensible drug policy, access to medical care, access to sterile syringes, the proper use of methadone maintenance and proscribing appropriate pharmaceuticals. However, social policy is the other part. I do not know the answer for east side Vancouver. I think that there are efforts to move in the right direction on that.

My understanding is that in the last poll, a small majority of people who voted in both British Columbia and Quebec now favour cannabis legalization. British Columbia is a major producer of cannabis. My hope is that it will lead the way in terms of a national policy. My hope is that Canada will follow the direction of the Swiss, Dutch, other Europeans and Australians. Hopefully, the U.S. will increasingly feel isolated in its policy.

Senator Chalifoux: I do not come from Vancouver, but I am concerned about this. Have you heard about Poundmaker's Lodge and the Nechi Institute?

Dr. Nadelmann: No.

Senator Chalifoux: We started this as Aboriginal people in the early 1970s. It is known worldwide in aboriginal communities for dealing with alcoholism and drugs. We train trainers at the Nechi Institute to go out and work in the communities.

I am sorry that you have not heard about it. It is the best-kept secret in the country. We have gone to Australia and elsewhere to talk about it. We have also gone to the United States to work with trainers and aboriginal communities to deal with the horrendous tragedy happening with in our nations. I would strongly suggest that you contact Ruth Warren of the Nechi Institute.

Dr. Nadelmann: I will follow up on that. We have not done much work with native communities and alcohol. I work with a funding agency and I see more and more proposals coming from Native American organizations in trying to deal with substance abuse issues.

Senator Chalifoux: The fastest growing population in North America is the aboriginal people. We are the youngest population, as well. Fifty per cent of our population within the next five years will be between 15 years and 24 years of age.

I would strongly recommend that you do become directly involved in this area, because it is so important. As I say, we as Aboriginal people have been working in this area since 1969.

Dr. Nadelmann: I am familiar with the situation with alcohol and solvents. What is the situation with marijuana among the Aboriginal groups?

Senator Chalifoux: The situation is serious. Once they leave the reserve or isolated communities and come into the urban centres, it becomes serious. Aboriginals are introduced to marijuana right away. It is a horrendous tragedy.

Prescription drugs is another area that is very serious. How do we deal with that? How do we prevent them from getting the prescription drugs and selling them? That is happening within the communities.

Dr. Nadelmann: The percentages of abuse are sometimes at 40 per cent or 50 per cent of the teens. They are engaged not only in experimentation, but also in devastating substance abuse with whole ranges of substances.

You want to try to reduce substance abuse. Harm reduction is essentially the fallback strategy. I would suggest that among a community engaged in devastating substance, one alternative approach is to examine which among the substances would be the least harmful.

We are beginning to see communities in the United States with people who were addicted to heroin, cocaine or alcohol being able to stay free of those substances by relying on marijuana. It is remarkable. We have seen this in marijuana buyers' clubs. We have seen in a range of places. It is still anecdotal. There are not hard studies on this. I do not think that the U.S. government is interested in funding studies to show this.

Cannabis is still dangerous drug. If you smoke too much, it can be harmful to your lungs and can be disorienting. However, as substances go, cannabis is remarkably less dangerous than alcohol, solvents, cocaine and heroin.

It is worth looking at a harm-reduction strategy that tries to identify the least harmful substance for a population that seems to be unable to become substance free.

Senator Robichaud: You talk about legalizing certain drugs. There are some that are controlled now. Senator Chalifoux was talking about alcohol and what it is creating in some communities. There is a fear. You said that you are a parent. I am a parent, and I have grandchildren.

If we open the door to widespread use and legalize drugs so everyone can use them, it will lead from one to another. As a parent, you resist opening this can of worms, because there is much fear that maybe your child or someone you know will eventually be caught up in this web.

Peace officers are sent to schools to tell their side of the stories. However, what do we do to provide parents with the appropriate information that will comfort them that they are not opening another avenue for their children to be consumed by the next danger?

Dr. Nadelmann:Every parent wants to put their baby in a protective bubble. We live in a world of motorcycle helmets, bicycle helmets and seatbelts. When I was growing up, my mother would throw my three siblings and me into the back seat of the station wagon for a ride. Today, she would be prosecuted for child abuse if she did that.

We are afraid these drugs will pierce the protective bubble. As parents, we engage in the most extensive and oftentimes silly illusions. My organization advocates the legalization of cannabis but not the legalization of other drugs. We advocate a harm reduction and public health approach in respect of the other drugs. Cannabis for adults should be taxed, controlled and regulated. The resources should be put into educating young people about it.

In respect of the notion that the legalization of cannabis will open the door, the door is already wide open. Already 80 per cent of our young people say that they can get cannabis. Their older brothers said the same thing back five, 10 and 15 years ago. They will say the same thing five years from now. We cannot really close that door.

We live in a society where drugs are everywhere. They are in us, and they are around us. My daughter, who is 13, does not use drugs. I do not want her using drugs when she is 16, 17, 18 or 19. However, if she has two parties she can attend, and one party has people smoking marijuana, and the other party has people drinking, I will be much more concerned about the party with the drinking. I do not think there is anything I can do to ultimately keep her from going to either of those parties.

As parents, we feel an obligation to protect our children and therefore, we acknowledge that they are already vulnerable and that they are already out there. Maybe most of them are more resilient than we give them credit for.

Senator Robichaud: I agree.

Dr. Nadelmann: You asked me about the parents. On a societal level, the more open and honest the conversations are, the better off we are. There is oftentimes an assumption that we should not talk about drugs. Our government tells us to talk about drugs with our kids, but they do not really want us to talk about drugs; they want us to tell our kids not to do drug. Forty or 50 per cent of parents under the age of 50 in Canada and in the U.S. smoked marijuana when they were younger. In Canada, between 1 and 2 million, and in the States between 20 and 30 million, have tried LSD or other drugs. We all do dumb things when we are young. We think about those dumb things.

Often there is the sense that the only message you are allowed to give about drugs is that they can be dangerous, and if you do them, you will get in trouble or you will go on to other drugs. That part of the message is true, but it is not the only truth. Our efforts to have our children respect what we say about drugs are undermined by including only a part of the truth.

The director at our office in San Francisco publishes a little booklet called Safety First. We are receiving requests from every state in the country, from parts of Canada and even from parents on military bases, who are looking for a more pragmatic approach to this issue. Everyone agrees that it should be kept simple, but how do you deal with teenagers on drugs? How do we communicate honestly about this? Parents need to be educated. If a parent believes that one dose of ecstasy will cause brain damage for the rest of a person's life, then that parent is not making an educated decision. There are things we know and things we do not know about ecstasy, and there is also information available that makes sense - there is a major difference between using one or two ecstasy pills once or twice a year, and taking four or five pills every weekend.

If the government is not willing to make a distinction between those two types of drug use, then that is like saying there is no distinction between having a glass of wine or a beer and drinking a bottle of whiskey. Common sense tells us there is a difference. We would hope that the government's message on alcohol makes that distinction. We must make that same distinction in respect of drugs. We must be honest.

As parents, we give the messages that ecstasy will do this and marijuana will do that. Our children look around them, and they see that their parents' message is not true of most of the people they know. Thus, where is our credibility as parents about these messages? We talk about drug education for young people, but we need drug education for parents too. We are trying to get that out now.

Senator Robichaud: As parents, we might have a false sense of security. We know that the drugs are available. I come from a little village in New Brunswick, and it is quite apparent that the drugs are available. People no longer believe that we can live in a drug-free society. There are those who use marijuana every day.

Rather than simply say that we should take a closer look to see the effects of proper education, our children would be better protected if we ensure that the information is provided on a regular basis and always available. The parents must also understand the information. Rather than do that, we prefer not to open the door. The drug issue is there, but we like to think that it is kept under control by some form or another.

Dr. Nadelmann: I think that this is actually dangerous. If we think it is under control but it is not, which is what we are dealing with today, it is more dangerous. For example, in New Brunswick there must be raves of young people, some of whom take ecstasy. The parents of teenagers hear that there is to be a rave. What is the proper response of parents to the teenagers who attend the rave? Ultimately, the police will respond to the parents in the community. Police have the laws to enforce, but they also have the parents to deal with. The parents can be directed and often the police are parents themselves. If you hear there is going to be a rave the coming Saturday night, one approach is to have the police go and arrest the people, or close it down. What is the consequence of that? Does that mean that young people will not go to a rave or will not use ecstasy, or that they will find some place else to do it? That some place may be more hidden and more dangerous.

I was at a conference last year in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland has many problems, but it is worried about drugs. It is worried about young people and ecstasy, marijuana and alcohol. This group discussed whether, when it is known that a bar has raves going on, public transportation can be kept running late so that people are not obliged to drive. People want the rave owner to be required to increase the price of the tickets so that the price includes having transportation to get people home at the end of the night.

They also want to have the rave owner held liable if water is not freely available at the site of that rave. When one takes ecstasy, it is important to drink water; otherwise, dehydration may occur. They want to ensure that there is a cooling-off place. Ultimately, their principal concern is that they do not want the kids doing drugs, but they know they can only do so much to stop them. After all, who knows what teenagers are doing sometimes? Their bottom line as parents is to ensure that their kids come home safe at night.

We are now seeing more and more parent groups, especially since more and more parents have themselves experimented with or used drugs when they themselves were younger, coming up with more pragmatic strategies.

All politics is local. There is an old motto: Think globally; act locally. In a way, it is the small communities where the best solutions will be created. The small communities can focus on the bottom line most effectively without being caught up in what the federal police will be doing. I think it comes down to figuring out what will be the rational approach to the tough questions.

You are suggesting that parents have an ostrich-like strategy, which is to put your head in the sand, do not deal with this, and just pray or pretend there are not drugs there. However, maybe we will see fewer fatalities, fewer people dying on the roads and fewer kids getting in trouble if we took our heads out of the sand and faced reality.

The Chairman: We now have the great pleasure to receive Governor Gary Johnson from New Mexico. He is well known for his efforts on the drug policy scene. My colleagues and I are thankful to you for accepting our invitation.

Governor Johnson is the first governor in the history of New Mexico to be elected to two consecutive four-year terms. He is a successful self-made businessman, family man and accomplished triathlete. He was first elected to be the twenty-sixth governor of New Mexico in 1994 and was re-elected in November of 1998. His term expires in 14 months.

Please proceed.

Mr. Gary E. Johnson, Governor, State of New Mexico: My wife Dee is with me today. I want to thank her for being my wife. I could not ask for more support. That is the way it is in all our lives and I recognize that. We have a couple of really great kids. We have a son Erik, who this year is a sophomore at the University of Denver; and we have a daughter Seah, who graduated from the University of Colorado this last spring. Out of 2,600 students in the college of arts and sciences, Seah was designated the outstanding graduate in arts and sciences. I am telling you this in the hopes that you will think there are some brains here by association.

As the chairman mentioned, I am a businessman. I started in 1974 as a one-person handyman, and was soon joined by my wife to form a two-person business. From 1974 to 1994, I grew that business to employ over 1,000 people in the fields of electrical, mechanical, plumbing and pipefitting. I am living proof that if you show up on time and you do a little more than what you say you will, you can be successful.

I am also an athlete. I am 48 years old and you would be hard pressed to find anyone in better physical condition. I work at it. I am someone who gets up regularly before five o'clock in the morning and spends a couple of hours training. I have competed in the Iron Man Triathlon in Hawaii twice as governor. I have an aspiration to climb Mount Everest when I am through with office and to become the world age-group champion in the triathlon in Hawaii. That is easy to say; it will be another thing to do. The point is that this is my hobby and I take great pride in being in the physical condition that I am in.

I have always believed that politics was a high calling and one that puts you in a position to do good by others. I have now come to find out that the ultimate job in politics is to receive a lifetime appointment as a senator. That would have to be the best job in politics because you would only have to concentrate on doing what was right.

You recognize that 50,000 people would line up in New Mexico to say that I have been nothing but a scourge on New Mexico. I understand that. Having never been involved in politics before, I introduced myself to the Republican Party a couple of weeks before I announced my candidacy. I told them what I had in mind and they said that they liked me, but that it was not possible for someone to come from outside of politics and get elected. I ended up paying for my own campaign in the primary. I did this believing that it was a high calling and believing that this is what I wanted to do with my life. I actually got elected.

Why would you vote for someone who had never been involved in politics before, someone who was promising to bring a common-sense business approach to state government and promising to put the issues on the front burner? I think you would vote for someone like that, because maybe that person would actually do what he promised to do. If you think about that, you realize that at some point this person will upset everyone in the entire state. In that regard, I have been totally successful as governor. I have upset everyone in the entire state.

I happen to believe that the United States is founded on the concept of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I have dedicated my governorship to ensuring there is a level playing field in accessing that American dream; that is, in accessing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I believe in limited government. I believe in lower taxes. I believe in an eye for an eye. If one person does harm to another person, whether it is property crime or violent crime, that person should be punished. I believe in individual property rights. I believe in the right to bear arms. I believe in a woman's right to choose. I believe in the Constitution of the United States of America. I believe that if one works hard and is honest one ought to get ahead, but not at the expense or hardship of others.

There have been some issues in the United States that absolutely defy logic. Before we became a country we actually burned witches in the United States. We burned people because of their religious beliefs. Maybe that is one of the reasons for becoming a country. Women were not permitted to vote. In the United States of America, how did we ever refuse women the right to vote? How was it that slavery was ever allowed in the United States? How was it that after slavery we allowed segregation to occur in the United States?

Rush Limbaugh, an individual who is a well-known talk show personality in the United States, declared that prohibition was the worst law of the 20th century. Segregation was also present in the 20th century, as was the absence of a woman's right to vote. Given these last two, Mr. Limbaugh declared that prohibition was the worst law in the 20th century.

It absolutely defies logic that we allowed these laws to exist, yet we have one of those laws today. That law deals with the use of drugs. I happen to believe that the war on drugs is an absolute miserable failure. People ask me why I talk about drugs when there are so many other important issues that are facing our state and our country. When I witness that half of what we spend on law enforcement, half of what we spend on the courts and half of what we spend on the prisons is drug related, I know that there is no bigger issue facing us today.

In the United States we are spending $50 billion each year on drug-related crime. That includes state and federal dollars. I am involved in the allocation of some of those state dollars. Two-thirds of all prisoners in the United States are incarcerated on drug charges. Nearly 500,000 incarcerations, one quarter of the prison population, are directly related to drugs. It costs over $8.6 billion each year just to keep drug offenders locked up in the United States. Even with all of those expenditures, illegal drugs are now cheaper, more available and more potent than they were 20 years ago. Is there a bigger issue today when you consider how intertwined drugs are in virtually everything we do?

Some people tell me that I am sending the wrong message and I ought to be ashamed. Well, I have a message when it comes to drugs. Do not do drugs. I also have another message. Quit drinking alcohol. For those who drink here, I want to suggest that you make the last drink you had your last. It is an incredible handicap and not until you stop drinking do you understand that it is a handicap. Having quit, I have had the good fortune to understand what a handicap it was.

I tell people not to do drugs, not to drink, and I tell people not to smoke cigarettes. There is absolutely nothing that is redeeming about smoking cigarettes and, of course, people still smoke. Regardless, to drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes is a decision an individual must make and with which they must live.

I would like to tell you about my own experience regarding drugs. I was a regular smoker of marijuana for about six years. I have tried cocaine on a few occasions. I do not smoke marijuana, I do not do any drugs, I do not drink and I certainly do not do tobacco, but I understand why people get high. You smoke marijuana for the first time and it feels cool. You have a drink for the first time and you like the feeling. I understand all that. I had a bit of a cigarette habit going for a while. I understand that cigarette buzz you get. I also understand the whole concept of diminishing returns. The more you drink, the whole aspect of this being cool goes away over a period of time. The same is true with smoking marijuana, with drugs and with tobacco.

I have come personally to understand natural high, to be able to feel really good, but not be under the influence of anything. It is as a result of being active and having a job that I love. My brain can function in all sorts of ways. I have been very fortunate.

Is anyone, law enforcement, elected official, parents or teachers, sending a positive message when it comes to drugs? No one is sending a positive message when it comes to drugs and yet 80 million Americans have done illegal drugs. Illegal drugs were used by 54 per cent of the graduating class of high school students in 2000. I do not know how we increase use from where we are right now. People tell me that I am sending the wrong message to kids. However, my message to kids tells them not to do drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

My message is that I also love my kids and because of that I want to do anything I can to keep them from getting hurt. We should tell our kids the truth about pot, we should tell them the truth about LSD and we should tell them the truth about heroin, so they are less likely to get hurt if they are in a situation where these drugs are present. We could stick our heads in the sand or we can understand that kids put themselves in bad situations.

My instruction to my kids is not to do any of this stuff, but if you are in a situation where you need a ride, if you are faced with having to drive and you are uncomfortable about it, or you are faced with riding with someone and you are uncomfortable it, then call me. I will drive to pick them up because I love them. No questions asked. We would be kidding ourselves if we do not recognize that our kids do these things. We do not want to see them get hurt. First and foremost we love our kids and that is what we are concerned with.

Some people maintain that deaths from drug overdose will skyrocket with this talk about legalization of any sort. I was shocked to learn that it is estimated that 450,000 people in the United States died last year from their use of tobacco. That is what the people who are anti-tobacco say and they have documentation to back it up.

It is estimated that 110,000 people in the United States died last year from their use of alcohol. I am not talking about drinking and driving; I am talking about the health consequence of drinking alcohol. I can see that. As well, 100,000 people died last year as a consequence of legal prescription drugs. People take too many Aspirin. This happens.

I broke my back earlier this year. I had to take Percocet for about 10 days to get rid of the pain. After the 10 days, I stopped using Percocet, and I saw how insidious painkilling drugs are. I needed to take Percocet, but after a couple of weeks, I could not sleep and my bowels had shut down. I wondered what the consequence of taking Percocet for years on end would be. The point being that legal prescription drugs kill people.

I was shocked to find out that an estimated 10,000 people died last year from cocaine and heroin. I was shocked to find out that the figure was so low relative to the 450,000 deaths from tobacco, the 110,000 deaths from alcohol and the 100,000 deaths from legal prescription drugs. In the United States, there are no recorded deaths from marijuana, yet one must assume that a few people have smoked themselves to death. People will argue that we have so few deaths from heroin and cocaine because of our policies and because of the law. Nevertheless, overdose is a function of prohibition, and that is what we need to understand. Arguably, 10,000 deaths are occurring because these substances are illegal. They are not controlled. People do not know the quality or the quantity, and, as a result, they die. If we could control these substances, we could bring those overdoses down.

Cigarettes are killing us, alcohol is killing us and legal prescription drugs not taken properly are killing us. People are dying from heroin and cocaine. Could we make that a better situation? We can make that a better situation. Keep in mind marijuana does not even make the list.In the United States, which one of these substances gets people arrested? We are arresting 1.6 million people every year. New Mexico has a population of 1.8 million. I live and I drive in New Mexico, a giant state, and I cannot help but think the equivalent of the population of New Mexico is getting arrested in the United States every single year. It is absolutely shocking.

Out of those 1.6 million arrests, there are 800,000 are for marijuana, and half of those arrests involve Hispanics. Are half the users of marijuana in the United States Hispanic? No, yet half the arrests disproportionately fall on the Hispanic communities. If a person of colour is arrested in the United States, that person is eight times more likely than a white person to go to jail.

Given that situation, what do we need to do? First, we need to legalize marijuana. Second, we need to adopt harm reduction strategies with regard to all the other drugs. Third, we need to move away from a criminal model to a medical model.

It will never be legal to sell drugs to kids nor will it be legal for kids to do drugs. It will never be legal to do drugs and do harm to someone else, just as the case with alcohol. If you have many drinks in the bar and you get smashed, it is a decision you have made and will have to live with. However, should it be criminal? I do not think so, unless you get into an automobile. If you get into an automobile, you have just crossed the line. What we ought to concentrate on the instances when consuming alcohol, smoking marijuana or doing any sort of drug, puts a person in a position to do harm to others or putting someone else in harm's way.

We hear from the drug authorities in the United States that drug use has been cut in half since the late 1970s. They are saying 11 million Americans have stopped using illegal drugs since 1979 in the United States. That is absolutely absurd. It is an absolute insult to an American's intelligence that 11 million people have quit using drugs since 1979, yet 20 million people have been arrested in the United States since 1979. The same poll that was conducted in the late 1970s was conducted today where people were asked whether they smoked pot. In the 1970s, people said, "Yeah, doesn't everyone?" Today when people are asked that same question, they either hang up or respond that they certainly do not do it because we recognize just how serious the government has become.

I think it is absolutely crazy. At a minimum, we have to stop getting tougher on drugs in the United States. We have to eliminate mandatory sentencing. We are letting violent felons out of jail in the United States to make room for mandatory sentencing of non-violent drug felons. We need to get tough on doing drugs and doing harm, or doing drugs and being in a position to do harm. People say marijuana is a gateway drug and that legalizing it will lead to harder drugs. As flippant as it sounds, that is like saying that milk leads to alcoholism. It just is not the case. Argue against the legalization of marijuana, but not on the fact that it is a gateway drug. It is not a gateway drug. One out of 110 users of marijuana go on to use cocaine on a regular basis. If there is a gateway aspect to marijuana, it is in the black market in that the person one buys marijuana from also has other drugs. I say legalizing marijuana will truly do away with the gateway aspects that marijuana might present.

Crack cocaine came and went. There was recognition that it was incredibly dangerous, not that it is still not around. During prohibition, people drank themselves to death. People went blind as a result of drinking bathtub gin and wood alcohol when there was prohibition on alcohol. Today people still kill themselves, but it is much harder to do. The same situation exists when it comes to drugs. These problems with drug abuse will never go away.

People say that legalizing marijuana and harm reduction strategies regarding all other drugs will lead to increased use. That is a fundamental flaw, and what we are doing today is basing our success on use. Imagine if we read in the paper today that alcohol use in Canada is up 3 per cent over the last year. What would you all think? Nobody would care because we understand that alcohol use is cyclical. It is up and it is down. What we do care about is whether DWI is up or down, and whether the health consequence of drinking are worse or better. Are property crime and violent crime associated with alcohol use up or down? That is what we care about. Why can we not apply the same criteria to the use of marijuana or any of these other drugs? Why can we not apply the criteria of whether death, disease and crime are going up or down?

There is a consensus, and it must be this way here in Canada, that you should not go to jail for smoking pot in the confines of your own home, doing harm to no one, other than yourself. There seems to be a consensus that that should not be criminal. However, it is criminal in the United States, and 90 per cent of all drug arrests there are for possession only. It is a fallacy that we are not arresting people on the basis of possession alone.

If you ask a group of people who believe it is okay to smoke marijuana whether a person should go to jail for selling small amounts of marijuana, a few hands will go up. Ask that same group if a person should go to jail for selling large quantities of marijuana or other drugs, and a lot of hands will go up. How can the user be any less guilty than the seller? The seller is just responding to a marketplace by providing the product for the existing demand. That is really hypocritical. That is no way to deal with this problem.

I have been led to believe for my entire life that the worst thing an expectant mother can do is use cocaine. Do not take my word for that. The American Medical Association, last February, issued a warning for expectant mothers not to use cocaine, crack or powder, because of the terrible consequence to the unborn child. The American Medical Association went on to say that the effect was no worse than alcohol and no worse than tobacco. That is not to condone any one of those three, but which one of those three results in a baby taken away at birth? Only cocaine use by the mother has her baby taken from her at birth.

I read recently about a crack-cocaine-addicted mother who gave birth to a stillborn child. She was sentenced to 25 years in jail. She should not have been using cocaine but there is hypocrisy there. Stillborn children are born to mothers who regularly use tobacco. Stillborn babies are born to mothers who are alcoholics. Yet we do not send them to prison for 25 years. I am not condoning the use of cocaine. I am only identifying the situation as an incredible double standard.

In the United States, a student who has been convicted of any drug-related offence, including possession of marijuana paraphernalia, will be denied a student loan. My first reaction was that a person who breaks the law should face the consequence and lose the privilege of having a student loan. Then I discovered that a student convicted of rape, murder, armed robbery or burglary could get a student loan. That is hypocrisy. It sends the wrong message.

We in the United States need to get serious and enforce these laws or deal with them differently. Let us just line up everyone up, drug test them and put everyone who tests positive goes in jail and let the others go away. You know the result of that. The system could not handle the estimated 40 million people who would test positive on that first day. We cannot ignore this problem.

If marijuana were legalized, I believe there will be less overall substance abuse. When I began to realize that the whole war on drugs was a miserable failure and that we needed to look at alternatives, I heard a criticism that we would become like Holland where drug use and crime have skyrocketed.

At first I believed what I was told by the United States government that Holland had skyrocketing drug use rates and skyrocketing crime. I then discovered that Holland has 60 per cent the drug use, compared to the United States, among kids and adults who use hard drugs and marijuana. Their violent crime rate is 25 per cent of ours. Their homicide rate is 10 percent of ours. Their incarceration rate is 10 percent of ours. Holland's experience suggests that we should look at their system as a potential alternative. We may have many arguments on why Holland is not relative to Canada or to the United States, but none of those arguments should revolve around higher usage or higher crime rates.

Switzerland sets an example of harm reduction with its heroin maintenance programs. Heroin addicts can get a prescription from a doctor, go to a clinic, and ingest heroin safely. Zurich chose the goal of reducing death, disease and crime by providing clean needles, a known product that would not kill the user and would avoiding the user's need to commit crime to pay for the habit.

I met with the Zurich chief of police in Albuquerque last December. He originally thought the idea was crazy and that death, disease and crime would skyrocket. All his law enforcement associates agreed with him. He confirmed in our meeting that death, disease and crime have plummeted, and that Zurich is a much better place to live today as a result of these policies.

Any representative or elected official will say their local drug abuse situation is the worst. However, drug abuse is not an isolated phenomenon. It exists everywhere. Northern New Mexico statistically has a problem with heroin overdose that is acknowledged as being the worst in the country. More than a year ago we had a drug bust in northern New Mexico in which 289 people were arrested for distribution of heroin. We predicted that the heroin overdose on the upcoming weekend would skyrocket because the heroin addicts, not being able to go without their fix, would get it from another source of unknown quality, unknown quantity. That is exactly what happened.

I hear this response all the time: "That is the law. If that is the law, should we just disobey the law? And if we disobey that law, then murder must okay, too."

Murder is doing harm to someone else; it will always be against the law. We need to understand that harm to others is what the government should prevent. I think a good comparison is the seat belt legislation we have in the United States. I assume you also have seat belt laws in Canada. That legislation saves lives. In New Mexico, 94 per cent of the people comply with seat belt laws. No one goes to jail for not complying, though non-compliance might result in a fine.

What if, in New Mexico, only 40 per cent of the people complied with the seat belt law? Would legislators in their wisdom make non-compliance a criminal offence? If they did make it criminal at what point would they do so? If 50 per cent of our costs for law enforcement, courts, and prisons were related to non-compliance with the seat-belt law, would we change the law at that point? I would hope so. What if an individual had been charged three times for not buckling up and, when pulled over again by a police officer, shot the police officer to try to avoid the federally mandated 20-year prison sentence for a fourth offence? At that point would we change the law? I would hope so.

Then I hear these responses: "I guess it is okay to do drugs then and play fly an airplane?" or "I guess then it is okay to do drugs and be a law enforcement officer?" No, it is not okay. Those actions are illegal today and will always be illegal. Drug testing is in place for law enforcement personnel.

As we look forward to laws that would accompany legalization of marijuana and harm reduction strategies on all these other drugs, I would hope new laws would allow employers to discriminate against drug users.

As an electrical contractor, if I do not want to employ individuals who do drugs, I think I ought to be able to discriminate. An individual should be able to make a choice. They can become an astronaut or they can smoke pot and wash dishes, but I do not think they should have to go to jail as a result of their decision.

People have said to me: "Kids are living in squalor and you want to legalize marijuana and you want to adopt these other strategies. Marijuana sells for more than gold." Kids doing drugs, kids selling drugs, kids carrying drugs - I think is all a function of prohibition. It is an out-of-control black market. Kids get a second chance with our laws, so much of the heavy lifting is falling on kids. How many drugs overdoses do we need to read about? How many homes are being burglarized right now to pay for a heroin or drug habit? I think drug prohibition is tearing us apart, not drug use, and that is not to diminish the problem with drug use.

Earlier this year, in New Mexico, we had a legislative reform package. We presented bills before the New Mexico legislature, with little steps. My promise to New Mexicans was, "If you adopt these bills, we will take little steps that I promise you will reduce death, disease and crime, and that we will put more money into education and more resources into treatment for those individuals who want treatment."

Whether you agree or disagree with what I have said here today, I would like to end with the seven principles that I live by. The first one is to be reality driven. Find out what is what, and base your decisions and actions on that.

The second principle is to always be honest and tell the truth. It is extremely difficult to do any damage to someone who is willing to tell the truth regardless of the consequences.

The third one is to always do what is right and fair. The more you accomplish, the louder your critics become. You have to learn to ignore your critics and continue to do what you think is right.

The fourth one is to determine your goal, develop a plan to reach that goal, and then act. Do not procrastinate.

The fifth principle is to make sure everyone who ought to know what you are doing knows what you are doing. It is important to communicate.

The sixth one is to not hesitate to deliver bad news. There is always time to fix things. Anything that can be revealed eventually should be revealed immediately.

The seventh principle that I follow is to be willing to do whatever it takes to get your job done. If you do not love your job enough to do what is takes to get it done, then quit and get one a different job tomorrow that you will enjoy doing.

I appreciate that I was invited to speak here today. I know that you have jobs like I have where your blood boils. We are in a position to make a positive difference. I think your medical marijuana program is an example for the United States, as is your debate on the issue of marijuana decriminalization. You are leading the way to a real and rational drug policy, and that is my motivation for being here today. Maybe Canada takes the lead here that the United States can follow and learn. I think we look to Canada as brethren and as our closest ally. You have that opportunity. Hopefully we will have the same opportunity and others will follow the example that we set.

The Chairman: Thank you governor. Your comments have been quite uplifting. Our realities seem to be the same.

What is the state of the legislation that you introduced? Could you explain the process? What is the likelihood of that legislation becoming law?

Mr. Johnson: We passed legislation concerning needle exchange. We passed a limiting liability for anti-overdose drugs. We passed legislation to purchase syringes in pharmacies. We passed legislation that would allow individuals convicted of felonies to work at the horse race tracks in New Mexico, which is a step in the right direction and a recognition that we cannot continue.

I will live to see 80 million Americans arrested in my life time, and maybe more, given that arrest rate that we are now engaged in, which is staggering.

What is left on the plate? Medical marijuana. We came very close to passing medical marijuana. I am optimistic we will do that this upcoming session.

We had a true decriminalized marijuana bill, making it similar to a parking ticket in New Mexico. That is not so close to being passed. There is great reluctance due to increased use and the fear that somehow you will send the wrong message to kids that it is okay to use it. If we do not talk about decriminalizing these substances, our kids will ends up with arrest records and be precluded from the opportunities that the United States has to offer.

We gave judges leniency. We had legislation that would have done away with mandatory sentencing and giving judges discretion. We had legislation that would have decriminalized or allowed for treatment even in the case of selling small amounts of drugs. That even extended to the sellers, which again I thought was very positive.

We passed an anti-opiate piece of legislation limiting liability for law enforcement to administer anti-opiate drugs. I was at a gathering the other day. Someone raised their hand and said, "You know, Holland is a lot different than the United States because the police are your friends in Holland." I said: "Well, law enforcement is your friend wherever you go. Law enforcement protects us. They are our friends." In the United States, law enforcement has really taken it on the chin, and they have taken it on the chin because of our drug laws. I would have to assume to some degree it is the same in Canada. We passed this limiting liability for the administration of anti-opiates. There is a drug by the name of Narcan that costs $1.50. An individual who is passed out on the floor from heroin, dead for all intents and purposes, can be injected this $1.50 dose of Narcan, and it is like a miracle drug. They are alive. It saves lives.

Imagine the situation now. Law enforcement shows up on an overdose scene. All they have on their mind is, "Who did this and who will we arrest." That is what happens now. With this new anti-opiate drug, the first thing on their minds is, "We will save a life." That is the first thing they will do. Even in law enforcement's mind, there will be a redirection on what they are really about, which is saving lives and protecting us.

What will happen when the using community understands that law enforcement can save a life because they are equipped with this anti-overdose drug? The using community will be looking for law enforcement because they are friends and they will save lives.

These little steps that we take do make a huge difference. In New Mexico, we are taking little steps with the goal being reduced death, disease, crime, and to put more of our resources into education and more of our resources into individuals who want and need treatment.

The Chairman: Could you explain the reaction of your Republican colleagues, both in the state and nationwide?

Mr. Johnson: I have found that this is not a Republican or Democrat issue in the United States. It not divided along party lines. I have found that Republicans in New Mexico have not shied away from this issue at all. I talked to an individual who is running for Congress in southern New Mexico and he said: "I will tell you something that you already know, and that is that conservative Republicans are not shying away from this issue. They understand this issue."

To New Mexico's credit, I will argue that we are having a more advanced discussion on drug reform than any other state in the United States and that we have made some great strides. John Dendahl, who is the Republican Party Chairman in New Mexico, has been very supportive of me on this dialogue from the beginning. He would deliver the same talk that I have given you here today.

As chairman of the Republican Party in New Mexico, he has come under some criticism, just like I have come under some criticism. Our biggest critic, who is a Republican state representative in New Mexico, ran against John Dendahl this summer for the chairmanship of the Republican Party in New Mexico. Republicans in New Mexico are not unlike Republicans anywhere else. Your core Republicans are those who come to the state convention. They have their beliefs and they cuss and discuss. At our state convention this summer, this was arguably the topic. It is not that you support drug legalization or anything like it, but do you not support a dialogue. This individual actually distributed pens during the convention in the shape of syringes on which were written, "Stick it to John." It was very pronounced. There was a lot of attention focused on it.

John Dendahl won his re-election by a margin of three to one. That was among those Republicans in New Mexico who attended the convention and voted.

In New Mexico we have really come a long way in terms of education and understanding. However, I do not see it divided along Republican-Democrat lines. I see an understanding that goes beyond party lines.

Again, my reason for appearing here today is that I am in a position to make a difference. We are putting issues on the front burner that should be on the front burner, regardless of the political consequences. I only have one shot at this. I know you all feel the same way or you would not be in the positions that you are in.

I am trying to make the most of this, and this was not about public opinion. This was never about public opinion or I would not have done it. From the minute I started talking about this, I understood that public opinion would be extremely negative, which is exactly what happened. But that was over two and one-half years ago. I do not do polls, nor do I base my decision making on polls - that ought to be obvious. I might make the outrageous statement that I will leave office with a higher approval than when all this started.

That has been as a result of getting out and talking about it and having people engage in it. This is not a taboo subject for discussion in New Mexico. In my opinion, it would be a political negative right now in New Mexico if you were unwilling to discuss alternatives to what we are currently doing.

The Chairman: What is the reaction of your fellow politicians nationwide? I do not want to limit that only to Republicans.

Mr. Johnson: I realized a phenomenon that you all probably recognize. When I started this, I knew that I would get attention nationwide. I knew that I would get faxes, letters, phone calls and e-mails. I thought all this would be running at about 75 per cent in the negative. At the beginning, it ran about 85 per cent positive. It is now running at about 98 per cent positive.

I also recognize the phenomenon of what I call "potheads on speed dial." That is to say, when I am on some sort of talk show, I have found overwhelming support. It is my belief that there are probably somewhere in the vicinity of 50 million Americans who agree with this right off the bat. There is a huge segment which, just for lack of a little bit of education on the topic, would not become the majority.

I understand that outside New Mexico it is really still kind of a foreign concept. Once people get a grasp of what we are after, which is a true reduction in death, disease, crime, help for people who want treatment and a reduction in corruption, and how it relates to prohibition, there is an awakening. Prohibition is not really the problem. Should not the new line of differentiation be doing drugs and doing harm versus, arguably, no harm and the cost associated with arresting 1.6 million people a year?

A Gallup poll that came out about six weeks ago in the United States reported that over 35 per cent of Americans believe that marijuana should be legalized. That is the highest number ever recorded since they started polling. That is still a long way from 50 per cent, but it is very significant. I believe it is up 10 points from just the last few years.

Senator Chalifoux: Thank you so much for your very interesting presentation. I found it both enlightening and encouraging.

In Canada, the incarceration rate is unbelievable. In the meantime, what is happening in the penitentiaries and jails is that the drug situation is running rampant. No matter what they try to do to curb it, it is there. Do you know of anything that is happening in New Mexico with regard to drug abuse in the prison system?

Mr. Johnson: The ultimate irony that you make very clear, senator, is how can we keep drugs out of the hands of citizens in a free society when we cannot keep drugs out of any of our prisons? To my understanding there is only one prison in the United States that is drug free. I refer to Marion Prison. To what costs will we subject ourselves to make our country drug free? Again, it is just crazy.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again, somehow expecting different results. This is insane. We continue to do the same thing over and over and over again believing that somehow it will have a different result tomorrow. It is not going to happen, as you point out.

The Chairman: Governor, I will ask you a question to which I already know the answer. However, I want you to voice your answer. My question has to do with your neighbours, both within the U.S. and Mexico. I know you are part of a council of governors and I want you to explain that.

Mr. Johnson: I have put this issue on the agenda of the Western Governors Association of the United States. That association includes all states west of the Mississippi. To their credit, they have moved significantly on this issue. When I say "moved," I think there is the sense that, first, they have stopped getting tougher. There is a recognition of that. There is also a recognition that political safe ground has now been reached with regard to looking at treating individuals rather than locking them up. There is a recognition that we should look at the drug problem as a health problem rather than a criminal justice problem.

I have made this presentation to western governors. I will tell you that my colleagues have moved significantly on this issue. It has been very gratifying.

I also belong to an association of border governors. It is composed of American governors and their Mexican counterparts. There are nine border governors in Mexico along with four U.S. border governors. They have asked that this drug issue be studied by an independent commission of scholars. I volunteered to put such a commission together. That commission has met. I look for great things here. I look for the recognition that this is a health problem and not a criminal justice problem. This is a very significant problem in light of our border with Mexico. We have a militarized border with Mexico. It is militarized because of drugs.

In Mexico, they long ago figured out that a certain amount of these drug shipments would be intercepted. There is no drug king pin hauling drugs across the border. There are only mules hauling drugs across the border. They are part of a mathematical drug accountant's formula that a certain percentage will get caught and locked up by the United States at great cost to the U.S. and Mexico. It is a problem that is not being addressed.

We hope to make great strides on the border with the border Governors' conference. I am looking for great things to happen from that. We have made great strides with the Western Governors Association. Jane Hull of Arizona, the incoming chairman, wants to keep it on the agenda.

The outgoing chairman held a drug summit in Boise, Idaho. I want you to know that what I have said here today has been said before all the western governors at that drug conference. It was very meaningful when the United States ONDCP, which is the national drug organization, was there talking about the need for treatment and that treatment needs to go hand in hand with the criminal justice model. I disagree with that, However it seems to be the first time that we have made a differentiation between treatment and arrest and lock-up.

I am here today in the hope that again you can make strides. I continue to believe that this is the biggest issue facing the world today, and we have our heads in the sand.

The Chairman: You have alluded to the ONDCP. What is the relationship that you have with that office, which is a very powerful office in Washington?

Mr. Johnson: Significantly, I was absolutely dismissed by Barry McCaffrey. Today, they are debating me. I cannot ask for more in that Asa Hutchinson debated me. We will have a debate next week at Yale University. This is great.

The Chairman: Knowing that she will debate you is good news.

Mr. Johnson: Yes, and that is positive. It is positive that there is now seemingly a dialogue. Their policy until now has been to not even debate the issue.

I am an individual where the glass is always half full. Any advancement at all I always view as positive. I view these developments as positive. Has it gone far enough? No, but it is definitely moving.

Senator Robichaud: I want to thank you for coming to meet with us, Governor Johnson. You say that you have opened the dialogue with the people of Mexico. You have gone a long way.

How far away are you from realizing treatment programs for marijuana? You say that the opinion polls reflect a very positive opinion towards treatment - probably 98 per cent are in favour. Is that based on the different programs that you have put together, or is that a positive opinion towards the legalization?

Mr. Johnson: No, it is not going to be a positive opinion towards legalization. Interestingly, in New Mexico we commissioned a poll. You know how polls work. Depending on the question asked, you could massage a favourable response.

We commissioned a poll asking questions as we wanted them asked. Seventy-five per cent of the people in New Mexico agreed with the way that we wanted them to go. In other words, without exception, they agreed that there should be treatment rather than incarceration. There were positive responses all down the line - again, asking just the right questions.

When I say I am going to leave office with an approval rating, I am talking about a personal approval rating. Although a person in New Mexico may not agree with what I have to say on this issue, there seems to be a recognition that I am at least speaking factually and honestly. That is also part of it.

There is no question in my mind that we are going to, at some point, adopt rational drug policy. The question is, will it take 10 years or will it take 80 years? I would hope that it would be a shorter time.

I do believe that this is an issue with a tipping point. I talk to groups all the time. At minimum, people seem to leave saying that they had come completely opposed but are leaving with an open mind. There are countless individuals who say the light bulb has gone on. They understand what I am saying and completely agree.

This is the phenomenon that I have witnessed. With a little bit of education on this issue, people understand and tell others.

Senator Wiebe: I should know the answer to this, but unfortunately, I do not. Let us say, for example, that New Mexico passed a state law making medical marijuana legal. Could the federal government override that law?

Mr. Johnson: If I could read into your question, can the federal government override anything basically that the state does? Yes, they can. They can come in and enforce federal law. My understanding is that the end of alcohol prohibition was the result of the state of New York saying that they were not going to enforce prohibition laws any more. The federal government would have to do it. Given the resources of the federal government, prohibition collapsed. That is when we had a collapse of alcohol prohibition.

That phenomenon could exist in any state, but would they put forth the resources to do that? You would find that you would have the eventual collapse of prohibitive laws.

Senator Wiebe: I certainly congratulate you on the stand and what you are doing. I was in Washington in August 2001 with a committee dealing with agriculture. Due to the movement that we have made in regard to legalizing marijuana here for medical use, about 30 of the senators were very interested in it. They asked us questions about it. They seemed very sympathetic to it, but when asked whether that would ever be undertaken in the U.S. the response was a quick "no."

There was no possible way that the U.S. would move in that direction. The senators themselves appeared to be convinced that legal medical use of marijuana was the way to go. However, they do not seem to have the conviction that they could move it any further.

Is the problem a lack of education? Those of us in office have studies and other information made available to us. We realize and understand that there is a tremendous amount of value to legalizing some things. Is the problem that we are not getting that message out to the electorate? Perhaps we should be doing more that in regard?

Mr. Johnson: This is my motivation for being here. You, as appointed senators till the age of 75, have an incredible opportunity here to do what is right. In the United States, the group that is opposed are those individuals to elected office. They fear they will not be re-elected if they do anything but the status quo.

In my opinion, the elected representatives are way behind the people, given a little bit of information. Their position is that they will not do anything on this issue based on the people not wanting it. In fact, their big fear is that they will not be ere-elected. That is my observation.

My reason for being here is that you have an amazing opportunity to lead the world.

Senator Wiebe: When the independent study that you are having done with some of your Mexican counterparts is completed, would you mind making it available to us?

Mr. Johnson: Absolutely. It got off to a great start. The idea was to use independent scholars. We are talking about academics from all of the states. Again, it got off to a great start. We will send you the results of that.

The Chairman: To go back to educating the population, do I understand that is probably the missing ingredient?

Is it correct to say that the more the population is properly educated on the subject, the more the politicians, both state and federal, will react to that? Then, the war on drugs, although it will not stop, will at least change course.

Mr. Johnson: Even in New Mexico, over the last two and one-half years, there are places to which I have not been. It is the fifth largest geographic state of the 50 states. There have been places that I have not been to talk about drugs. A couple of weeks ago I made a trip to Southern New Mexico where I spoke to about 400 school kids in Hobbs and then I went on to speak to another 300 students in Roswell.

In Roswell, all of the elected officials and many parents attended, but it was for the kids and so they were the only ones allowed to speak. They spoke, but the principal prefaced this by saying that he understood how controversial this has been and that there were parents who did not want to see this discussion happen. But did happen, and I sat next to a panel of kids who were elected school representatives - leaders. It went on for two and one-half hours; we had discussion, debate and questions. The young lady sitting next to me was 17 years old - an Hispanic - and turned to me at the end and said, "I could not have been more opposed to drugs coming into this. I am leaving here with a complete open mind to this topic, and I did not believe that I would have turned like this."

That is the experience that I have found. Those 300 kids and the 400 kids earlier, will answer their parents' questions on these issues. Whether it is kids or adults, it is a matter of education. People leave with answers to questions that they have heard. They are loaded with a little bit of education and again, it is an issue with a tipping point. Give people the information, and they will understand - it does not take much. It does not take weeks or years; it takes minutes.

The Chairman: The million dollar question is: What will be the reaction of the U.S. government, if Canada decides to change the course on prohibition? Let us say that we follow up on your suggestion and do our homework. As I said at the beginning of our hearings, we are now in the knowledge-based phase of our work. After that, we will engage in dialogue with Canadians.

Mr. Johnson: Again, the great opportunity and the reason that I am here, is so that you will do this. If you do this, and forget about the politicians for a minute, 50 million Americans will know immediately just exactly what you have done and they will applaud what you have done. Another 100 million Americans will be sure to ask, "What could Canada be doing here, legalizing marijuana?" What could they possibly be doing?" They will understand what you have done, and you will change public opinion - in my opinion - of the majority in the United States.

As you are probably aware, Great Britain, in the last few months, has stopped enforcement of marijuana possession and selling laws. They put a focus on the harder drugs and, if in the context of enforcing harder drugs they come across marijuana, they will enforce marijuana. Effectively, they have stopped enforcing the sale or the use of marijuana.

The United States does not understand that, so back to Canada and your ability to do what is right and the resulting effect on America. Perhaps, it blows America up for a few weeks, but there will be a raging conversational fire that will go on in the United States that public opinion, in a very short amount of time, changes to the positive because this is a factually, scientifically common-sense-based policy.

The Chairman: I do not want to leave you without asking about Aboriginals. I know that in New Mexico, you have an important segment of your population that is Aboriginal. You have heard questions from my colleague, Senator Chalifoux to Dr. Nadelmann earlier today. How do you relate how the drug problem and the substance abuse problem is happening in your state? What is being done for that? I understand that most of it encompasses federally driven policies.

Mr. Johnson: I hate to even talk about one group having a worse problem than another group. Just as every city has the worst drug problem in the world, every ethnicity has the same worst problem with drug use as another. That exists. Often we stereotype a native American who happens to have a drug problem. We will assume that anyone who uses drugs has that same kind of problem, when in fact, they may be the smartest individuals who are at the absolute top of the pyramid in their professions, and they happen to use marijuana. Again, I am not condoning marijuana use. They could be better if they did not use marijuana, but the reality is that even the best use drugs.

How do we address the actual abuse problems that we have? As I have said before, 90 per cent of the problem with drugs has to do, in my opinion, with prohibition. That is not to discount the problems surrounding use and addictions. However, if we can focus all of our much greater resource on actually helping people with problems, would we not do a better job?

The treatment model that we have in the United States is a forced treatment model, and it must be that way here, to a degree. If you have been arrested for drug abuse - for possession and use of a narcotic - you have a choice: You can go to jail or you can go to treatment. That is the end choice. Treatment under those circumstances does not work. We need to redirect our resources so that we provide the help for those who need help - whether they be native Americans or whoever. We would have those resources available to do that. We will still have the problems.

Senator Chalifoux: I would like to respond to what you have stated. Aboriginals, especially in the United States, are a conquered people. They have lived that way for many years. In the early 1970s, when we were in Denver, Colorado, with the Native Communications Conference, there was a sit-in at the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington. I asked one young fellow why they were doing that, because in Canada negotiate and it is not that bad. He said that he would rather die fighting than watch his people starve to death. He was from a reservation in Washington.

In the United States, the reservations are much different than they are here. Do they fall under federal law, or do they fall under state law? Also, the stereotyping and education issues are important. I find we are well hidden in the huge populations of our country. I would like some comments on that, please.

Mr. Johnson: I have been an absolute advocate for Indian sovereignty, believing that the Indian nations in the United States - the pueblos and reservations in New Mexico, of which we have 23 - are sovereign. They have some incredible opportunities as a result of their legal status, of which they have not taken advantage. I have tried to be a part of how that might be an advantage.

There is federal jurisdiction and state jurisdiction, and there is sovereign jurisdiction. We meld the three jurisdictions.

Senator Chalifoux: Have you attempted to do that?

Mr. Johnson: Absolutely.

Senator Chalifoux: How are you making out with that?

Mr. Johnson: I would argue that I have made more advances than any other governor in the history of statehood.

The Chairman: Some large reservations overlap with other states. How do you work that out with your colleagues from other states?

Mr. Johnson: Again, these are what I always like to refer to as opportunities rather than problems.

The Chairman: The optimistic side of the half-filled glass.

Mr. Johnson: There is a positive side to sovereignty. That is that the Indian tribes and pueblos in New Mexico have the opportunity to solve nationwide problems as a result of their unique legal status.

Senator Chalifoux: That is the difference between Canada and New Mexico.

Mr. Johnson: You must understand that you might not have every governor understand sovereignty or believe in it as I have.

The Chairman: Governor, before I let you go, I thank you very much for accepting our invitation. Your words will be very important for our future work. Our researcher and his group will have other questions to ask. I will take the opportunity to write you for your answers. I am convinced I will receive favourable answers to those questions.

Mr. Johnson: Thank you all very much. This is a great opportunity for all of you.

The Chairman: Once again, we welcome Dr. Nadelmann. Do you have a reaction to what Governor Johnson said?

Dr. Nadelmann: The Lindesmith Center is working closely with Governor Johnson in Mexico. We opened an office there in response to his courageous stand in advocating for reform. We have been working there in terms of building on everything from educating the public to interacting with the media in an effort to make this more of a bipartisan effort so that it does not get caught up into partisan politics. We are at the point now where we have been hiring a lobbyist to work on this, as well as organizing at the community level.

Few politicians were brave enough to step out as Governor Johnson did, and as Mayor Kurt Schmoke of Baltimore and Mayor Rocky Anderson of Salt Lake City have done for the past few years. We will get behind those political leaders and try to help them as much as possible. I am extremely happy with what Governor Johnson is doing.

The Chairman: Governor Johnson spoke about the neighbouring states and their reaction. What is the evolution of the minds within the political arena in those surrounding states? Let us start with the western states.

Dr. Nadelmann: It is crucial to understand that in the United States - and I do not know if this is true in Canada as well - typically, almost all new reforms start at the state and local level and then eventually bubble up to the national level. The last place we will see significant change in the United States is in Congress.

Senator Wiebe asked Governor Johnson about the medical marijuana issue. The polls show that 70 per cent or more now believe that marijuana should be legally available for medical purposes. One of my jobs is to pull together funding in those efforts. Wherever we have mounted a ballot initiative to allow the voters to vote on this, in every state - that is, in California, Arizona, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Nevada, Maine and Washington, D.C - we have won every single one of those ballots. We would probably win in all but a handful of states in the United States. Yet, Congress is still opposed to this.

Just over a week ago, the federal drug enforcement administration raided a medical marijuana club. Congress will be the last place to change. Some of the congressional opposition is, in some respects, analogous to what you saw with respect to civil rights in the United States in the 1960s, where a majority of the American public had finally embraced civil rights but a significant number of legislators from certain states, who were beholden to segregationist constituencies, refused to move. It is the same here. We see a number of influential legislators who are "legally beholden" to a minority of fanatical anti-marijuana organizations. They keep things moving in Congress and create the federal obstacles.

It is really at the state and local level and it varies from one state to another. In some cases, as I said before, it is political leadership, for example, a Mayor Schmoke or an Anderson or a Governor Johnson. Sometimes it in a particular community - the San Francisco-Berkeley-Oakland community is fairly progressive. Sometimes, it is a crucial cohort in a state legislature. For example, in Connecticut or in California, a remarkable number of state legislators in the health, criminal justice and other sort of codes committees are sympathetic to reform so you develop a critical mass that supports it.

In Seattle and Washington state, there is probably a greater diversity and sophistication of drug policy reform efforts than almost anywhere else in the United States. In Arizona, we won the ballot initiative in 1996; we will probably be doing another one there in 2002. Governor Johnson spoke about Governor Hull and her potential turn around. That is significant.

The greatest opposition is in the South; that is, in Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. We do not tend see much momentum for reform there. However, we have been doing public opinion polling on the issue of substituting treatment for incarceration. In California, we won 61 per cent of the vote notwithstanding the opposition of most of the law enforcement and political establishment. We have now polled in Florida and in Ohio - which one would perceive as much more conservative state than California. Yet our polling shows that support for treatment centre incarceration is at least as high in those states as it was in California. We are optimistic that we will see some major reform even in those states.

The coming economic recession and the budget deficits will be creating some interesting new alliances between cost-cutting conservatives and liberals. They will see a trade-off to be made and that substantial billions of dollars can be saved by stopping the incarceration of non-violent drug possession offenders and by deprioritizing marijuana enforcement. It is very much localized.

The Chairman: You have just touched on the fiscal or financial effort. Can you give us a ballpark as to the total federal effort not only on drug enforcement but also on drug policy both within the country and outside?

Dr. Nadelmann: In 1980, the federal government spent about U.S. $1 billion on drug control. This year, it is roughly just under $20 billion on drug control, of which roughly two-thirds is for enforcement and international interdiction programs and one-third is for prevention and treatment. The international piece does not amount to more than a few billion dollars. We put hundreds of millions into the source control efforts in Latin America and elsewhere with remarkably little to show for it. The interdiction - that is, the money that goes to the Coast Guard and to the military - may amount to a few billion dollars, which is just money down the drain.

What we know, and economists will show, is that simple prohibition with a minimum level of enforcement dramatically increases the price of drugs in the United States. When you double, triple or quadruple your expenditures on the Coast Guard or on other military interdiction levels, it has virtually no impact on the price in the United States of illegal drugs. That is happening much more.

What you saw happening in the late 1980s and early 1990s was actually the military resisting the increased funding for this area, saying this was not appropriate for their mission. Congress insisted that they nonetheless take the money and do more, notwithstanding the already apparent economic evidence that it would have no impact. Keep in mind that state and local governments spend more money on local drug enforcement than does the federal government.

Senator Wiebe: The state of California has done a tremendous job in educating the young people against cigarette smoking. I mention this is because we recently had a debate here in the Senate after which we passed a bill, which had the support of all of the cigarette companies, by the way. That bill included the requirement that a certain percentage of the price of a cigarette go toward an independent fund that would be used strictly for educating young people in this country to not take up smoking and for those who had to quit. Whether it will get through the other House or not, that is another question.

Has there been any kind of dedicated advertising campaign in regard to drugs similar to what the State of California did with youth cigarette smoking? If so, what are the results of that particular campaign?

Dr. Nadelmann: The answer is "yes." There is something called the "Partnership for a Drug-Free America" that was started in the late 1980s, which has raised billions of dollars to promote anti-drug messages. The federal government has now matched that in the last few years to roughly $1 billion a year. In the United States we have extensive advertising and promotions against drug use.

Unfortunately, the message of the partnership appears to have been limited. The Partnership for a Drug-Free America was initially funded to a good extent by alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical company money to target marijuana. That brought some sense that this was not all together a legitimate effort. In recent years the Partnership for a Drug-Free America has abstained from taking any alcohol or tobacco money. I believe the principal source is still the pharmaceutical companies. While they have been encouraged to focus more on problems with alcohol use or tobacco problems, they have tended to say that they wanted to stay focused on marijuana.

In terms of an evaluation of their impact, the results appear to be mixed. There are many people who believe, and there is some significant evidence, that it has had minimal impact on consumption. There is a generic anti-drug message that gets out there, but we do not see any relation between how much money they are putting in and whether drug use goes up or down.

With respect to the California success with the cigarette tax, we are actually looking at the possibility of doing other initiatives based on that sort of model where there might be a tax on tobacco or alcohol, with the funds going to promote harm-reduction oriented drug prevention and drug treatment.

This does raise an interesting point. What we see is that much of the California success was not just the advertising, it was also the increased tax. There is good evidence that the single most significant thing the government can do to reduce adolescent cigarette use is to increase the tax, therefore, the price of cigarettes. That appears to be more effective than almost all the promotional campaigns. Promotional educational campaigns can make some difference, but most of the studies I have seen say that price has more impact than restrictions on the time and place of sale, more impact than advertising messages and what have you.

That raises the issue - to return to the question of whether marijuana should be legal - if instead of spending billions of dollars on a marijuana prohibition effort that has not reduced the availability, as I said before, most studies show that young people say that marijuana is more available to them than alcohol. It suggests that maybe a much more effective campaign, both in terms of efficiently using government resources, more efficiently utilizing taxpayer dollars and more effectively reducing drug abuse among young people, might be one that treated cannabis as a legal substance for adults, then advertise and put those resources into a tough taxation policy and educational campaign with young people.

Senator Wiebe: When you come right down to it, cigarette smoking is a drug. We have legalized that. It is the users who pay for the advertising campaign. Maybe that is a good argument, as you say, to legalize marijuana.

Dr. Nadelmann: I agree.

Senator Wiebe: By doing that, the price is lowered. Yet that lower price, with a tax on it that is dedicated toward advertising, would not cost the federal treasury any money at all.

Dr. Nadelmann: If you think about it, our educational efforts with respect to cigarettes are much more honest. In other words, what we know with cigarettes is that if you succeed in smoking a pack of cigarettes the odds are better than 50-50 you will become dependent. That is not true with marijuana, although we try to tell kids it is.

Similarly, your chance of dying from a cigarette-related illness is roughly one in three if you smoke with some regularity during the course of your lifetime. With marijuana, there has never been an overdose death and the percentage of marijuana smokers who smoke enough to get a lung disease is a small percentage of marijuana smokers. One marijuana joint may contain as many carcinogens as three or four cigarettes, but the typical cigarette smoker smokes about 15, 20, 25 cigarettes a day. The typical marijuana smoker may smoke barely a joint a day, if not a week, so there is a massive difference in consumption.

One of the other distinctions is that our anti-cigarette campaign has been much more grounded in science and evidence, whereas the anti-marijuana campaign has not been as much grounded. In relation to the advertisements of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, or the U.S. government office of drug control policy, I have sat down with the head of the partnership and reviewed his ads. Some of them are exactly what you would want to be doing, a good "don't-use" message that is realistic. Others are just over the top silly. If they had a group of scientists evaluating these they would tell them they could not say that. If you want anti-drug advertising to be truth-based and science-based, there are some things that we should not be saying that are nonetheless being said.

Senator Wiebe: That could partly because the general public perceives smoking as a bad habit. A cigarette is not perceived as a drug, whereas marijuana is perceived as a drug therefore it is automatically perceived as very bad. Legalizing and educating people that marijuana is not as bad as cigarettes might be an area to start with.

Dr. Nadelmann: I sometimes think that when you look at the drop in marijuana use in the 1980s, some significant part of that had more to do about the drop in smoking. I remember with my students, when I would ask them why they had never tried marijuana or why they did not smoke it, they said they did not want to smoke, whether it is cigarettes or marijuana. It was almost more of an anti-smoking thing, the notion of why would I bring smoke and let carcinogens into my lungs? There might be a hook there.

As I said this morning, we fear legalization because we think that will open the floodgates or open the doors. In fact, the doors are wide open and have been for a long time. We are sort of pretending. People ask whether marijuana legalization would make marijuana more accessible to people of our age group - many of whom cannot get it or find it any more. For young people, it is about as available as it can be already.

The Chairman: What is the value of the black market?

Dr. Nadelmann: Nobody knows for sure. It is like trying to estimate the value of illegal prostitution or illegal gambling markets. The best estimates are that it is between $40 billion and $100 billion in the U.S., and the U.N. estimated $400 billion globally. Those are always tough numbers to come up with.

On the international front, I know the committee will be having hearings in the future on the Swiss and the Dutch, and I have spoken with Daniel Sansfaçon about his efforts to organize those. There is some movement. I was just speaking with colleagues regarding the United Nations in the UNDCP - the United Nations Drug Control Program - which has been the UN organizational focus. Even there we are seeing some significant movement now. Someone who is a little more open to reformist ideas will probably replace the outgoing head of the organization, Pino Arlacchi.

With respect to our efforts to prioritize stopping the spread of HIV and hepatitis and other diseases, even that organization, which was very much beholden to the United States government until recently, appears to be opening up as well. There is a global opening. In Canada there is this rapid transition in public opinion on the cannabis issue, the movement in British Columbia, the methadone maintenance expanding in Ontario and British Columbia, the opening of needle exchange, the discussion of a safe injection room in Vancouver and the possibility of heroin maintenance trials. Those are all consistent with what is happening in more countries of the advanced industrialized Western world.

I am a loyal American, I love my country and I think it is the greatest country on earth; however, I am also despondent at times when we fall behind. There are some areas such civil and other fundamental rights where we have sometimes lagged. It took us longer than almost any place else to abandon slavery. It took us longer to abandon official racism in our laws.

Unfortunately, for deep-seated historical reasons, the United States will be very much a follower rather than a leader when it comes to sensible drug policy. I have no doubt that if Canada moves forward aggressively, there will be protests from the U.S. We heard this a few years ago with the leaked or implied threats to review Canada's most-favoured-nation status.

President Fox's Foreign Minister, Jorge Castaneda, had spoken out in favour of legalization before he entered government. A number of other people, including some leading police officials, had spoken out in favour of legalization. When President Fox was asked, what he thought, he said, "Well, I mean, it would be the best thing in the long run, certainly, for my country and probably yours, economically speaking. That is hopefully where we will end up, but, of course, I am not going to do it tomorrow and I will cooperate with the United States."

It was interesting. There was no public response from the U.S. government. There may have been a private response. Canada and Mexico are two of our three principal trading partners. We have a close relationship. There is a leverage that happens from having this relationship and being so close.

I disagree a little bit with Governor Johnson. He was trying to be more inspiring when he said America can look to Canada. Unfortunately, we do not look, and even the one time we did on national health insurance, it was "Oh, that is Canada." Nonetheless, there is a sense that if a country that speaks the same language and borders many of our states is able to show that this is working here, it will make some difference.

There will undoubtedly be an effort, as you move in this direction, where the American government will fund studies to show that the Canadian experiment is not working.

That happened with the Vancouver needle exchange study. There was a study that suggested that some aspects of needle exchange might be counter-productive. The U.S. government and drug czar Barry McCaffery instantly jumped on that and started speaking about that everywhere. Their doing that was like the cigarette companies finding the one study in a hundred saying that cigarettes do not cause cancer and heralding that everywhere.

There undoubtedly will be the efforts to legitimize, the threats and the congressional committees that will perhaps try to make an issue of this.

The bottom line is the U.S. government has too much invested in its relationship with Canada and Mexico to make the drug issue a priority issue. Some congressman will be able to afford to make a stake, but more responsible heads will weigh in on this.

The Chairman: We have heard Governor Johnson talk quite convincingly about more education for the population. Nobody can be against educating the population. What is the relationship you have with the ONDCP? If you read between the lines of the American policy on drugs, you understand the problem. However, officially it talks about educating the population. You mentioned those partnerships with the media and the entertainment industry. You can look at that in a positive way, but you can also look at that in a non-positive way and say it could be a scheme to convince everyone that it is bad.

Dr. Nadelmann: One of the dominant features of the drug policy issue, and one of the reasons why George Soros became engaged in it some years ago when we met, is the trepidation regarding real debate on drug policy. What is notable is that the head of the DEA is willing to debate Governor Johnson publicly, which is a step forward. I have had the experience over the last number of years where, for example, the drug czar, Barry McCaffery, and I would be invited to appear on MTV or Nightline. If he found out I was to be there, he would withdraw. Invitations from distinguished bodies would refuse to ever engage in any debate whatsoever. There was a real resistance to having any debate. A position on the part of the U.S. government to even have a committee like this and to have these issues would be to legitimize a perspective that we dare not legitimize in the United States.

The fact that Asa Hutchison, the head of the DEA, has begun to debate Governor Johnson is a step forward. Whether Republican or Democrat, there are powerful minority forces in both parties that are beginning to say we have to engage this issue.

The other thing I would say is John Stuart Mill talked about the marketplace of ideas and that we needed freedom in order to have the best ideas. The way the marketplace of ideas works is not that the best inevitably wins out, although I would like to believe that. The ideas that are the most successfully promoted are the ones that win out.

When this parliamentary hearing releases its report, it seems almost inevitable that the report will recommend some reforms and changes in Canadian government drug policy. My organization is dedicated to helping publicize the conclusions and recommendations of this body. There is a long tradition of official organizations appointed by governments, for example, the LeDain commission here, the Schaeffer commission in New York and similar commissions in Australia, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. What all of those commission reports have in common, is, first, that they are composed of distinguished people from across the political spectrum who enter with fairly open minds on the drug issue and are not necessarily inclined to reform. The second aspect is that they come to the conclusion that drug policies must be reformed in a major way, in the direction of decriminalization and harm reduction, but not necessarily legalization. Every one of them has come to that conclusion. The third aspect is they have been repudiated or ignored by the government that commissioned them.

One other failing was that the commissions assumed that it was sufficient to issue the report and their job was done. If you stop there, you make a mistake. If you are going to put this much energy into doing this study, the analysis and holding these hearings, there should be some commitment and, hopefully, the resources so that when you issue a report, an almost comparable amount of energy will go into the promotion of this. One choice is to say, "We did our job and now I will go on to something else." The alternative is to feel some political and personal commitment to educating the public regarding the findings of this committee. If the senators have that commitment to putting this out and engaging in public education in a proactive way, that is what will really make the difference. My organization will help as much as possible to encourage that and assist that process.

The Chairman: Your wish is probably already alive. Part of our mandate is not only to do the phase that we are in now, which is the knowledge-based phase, but the second phase will be to engage in a dialogue with Canadians, first, to inform them and then to share with them that information and find a common thread in all of that. At the end of the day, it is their law. It is their Parliament.

Dr. Nadelmann: Look at what happened in the United Kingdom in the last two years. Two years ago the Police Foundation, a distinguished independent body, came out with a report recommending major reforms. It was chaired by Lady Ruth Runciman - a distinguished figure in the United Kingdom. When the report came out, it was rejected by Prime Minister Tony Blair and by the Home Secretary, Jack Straw. However, there was a commitment to getting this information out there.

Now, in the last few months that Police Foundation report is beginning to pop up as a major influence on policy. The new Home Secretary, Mr. Blunkett, who people assumed would be even more hard line than Jack Straw, stood up last week and recommended that marijuana-cannabis be rescheduled and has called for opening of the debate.

A few years ago, within the conservative British Tory party, their Shadow Home Secretary, Mrs. Widdecombe, recommended increasing penalties on cannabis. To the surprise of everyone, a number of members of her own party, not just backbenchers and others, said, "What are you talking about? We did this when we were younger. Will we be penalizing our children for engaging in activities that we did?" You now have senior members of both political parties, as well as the third and fourth parties in the U.K., who are stimulating a much more substantial debate. One always has optimistic hopes for releasing a report that is comprehensive and for the way the media will respond. Part of that depends on what else is happening in the news when you release it, and part of it depends on the commitment that happens here.

The Chairman: It is like stopping a baseball game at the end of the eighth inning.

Dr. Nadelmann: That is right.

The Chairman: Dr. Nadelmann, it was a pleasure to hear from you today. As I said to Mr. Johnson, our research group will have other questions to ask you. I will send you a letter setting out those questions. Hopefully, we will receive answers.

Dr. Nadelmann: Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you. We are travelling this week to Vancouver to hear from Mayor Owen. We will also travel one-on-one in the lower east side of Vancouver. The next meeting is on November 19, in the Netherlands.

The committee adjourned.

Illegal Drugs (Special)

Proceedings of the Special Committee on Illegal Drugs

Issue 9 - Evidence

Proceedings of the Special Committee on
Illegal Drugs