Proceedings of the Special Committee on
Illegal Drugs

Issue 5 - Evidence for September 10 - Afternoon Session

The Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs met this day at 1:40 p.m. to reassess Canada's anti-drug legislation and policies.

Senator Pierre Claude Nolin (Chairman) in the Chair.

[English]

The Chairman: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Our first witnesses this afternoon are from Seaton House, Mr. Toby Druce and Mr. Thomas Fulgosi.

Gentlemen, please proceed with your opening remarks, following which there will be a few questions from my colleagues.

Mr. Toby Druce, Seaton House: Thank you for the opportunity to appear here today. I am the program supervisor of the O'Neill House risk reduction program at Seaton House Men's Hostel. My partner here today is Thomas Fulgosi, a shift leader in the program. I would just like to take the opportunity to describe something of the work that goes on with illegal drug users at Seaton House, and then Mr. Fulgosi will fill in on the particulars around the clients and their drug use.

The O'Neill House has been open for one year as of this past Saturday, and was established for the purpose of addressing illegal drug use amongst our clients, the single homeless men who stay at Seaton House.

Seaton House has 690 beds. It is the largest single men's hostel in Canada and has just recently gone through a period of intensive renovation. One of the things that we identified during the renovation of the building was that in a population as large as we have, the impact that clients who have addictions to illegal drugs have on other people who are not addicted is huge.

We already have one harm reduction program in existence, which is the Annex Harm Reduction Program. That program deals specifically with people who have addictions to non-palat able alcohols, such as Listerine, Lysol or rubbing alcohol. Through our experience with the Annex program, we had learned that, in working with people who were addicted to illegal drugs, our options for intervention were quite limited. We had talked about enforcement strategies. We have an enforcement strategy now in the hostel for people who are caught in the possession of or using illegal drugs, primarily crack cocaine and heroin, and that strategy is quite punitive: it involves denying people service to the emergency shelter system. To increase enforcement meant pushing a number of the people addicted in that neighbourhood back out on to the street, which recognized as not being very good for the community or for the service that we provide.

In consultation with 51 Division of the Metropolitan Toronto Police, they had suggested that we try an approach whereby we try to isolate the problem by creating one program with 60 beds that was open only to people who had a history of drug use, and whose drug use had created problems for them in being able to access emergency overnight shelter. Thus we opened such a program. We currently have 60 beds. We have divided the program into two components: We have 40 beds for clients who are currently actively using illegal drugs and we have 20 beds for clients who have been arrested for offences that would make them eligible for the drug diversion court, and who are then bailed back into our program as participants in drug diversion.

The number of hard facts that we learned in the past year, and can speak about, is probably somewhat limited, but what we have identified is that, for the clients whom we see, their addiction is certainly an important part of the reason that they are in the shelter system. However, it is certainly not the primary reason, nor is it the cause for them to be in the shelter system. Therefore what we have tried to downplay is our focus on the actual drug use, and to focus instead on the lifestyle and the risks that are associated with illegal drug use. In that respect, we have learned a great deal from our 60 men, which aspect Mr. Fulgosi will speak about in more depth. However, for the past year our approach has been to accept that people will use drugs, and also accept that the pursuit and use of those drugs creates risks for them.

Approximately 275 people have come through our program in the last year, and of those 275 individuals, 80 per cent stayed for less than six months. When we study those numbers, what we are discovering is that there is a route that our clients are taking, which is either to stay in the emergency hostel system or be incarcerated. Thus they move back and forth between jail and the shelter, and for about half of the year they are incarcerated, and the other half they are staying in a homeless shelter.

Twenty per cent of our clients use the shelter for much more than six months, and they represent 50 per cent of the approximately $2 million that it costs to operate our program per year. Of that 20 per cent, our "frequent flyers," as we call them, are people who have been using drugs and have been in the hostel system for a very long time. Our goal has been to try and move people into a position where we can have them arrested as quickly as possible in connection with their drug use, and then use the courts as an opportunity to engage them in a case plan that would address their drug use over time.

I will now turn the floor over to Mr. Fulgosi, who will talk about some of the specifics of the program, and what kinds of interventions we have been attempting with that client group.

Mr. Thomas Fulgosi, Seaton House: Many of our clients have been in traditional treatment, and many of them have been in traditional treatment centres many times. The O'Neill program has a unique, client-centred style. We have a case planning team that really works with the client. With most of our clients, what we have discovered is that throughout all these failed attempts at treatment, only their drug use was being looked at. Consequently, many of the clients that we have at the O'Neill program, when they first come to us, have not seen a doctor for ten years, or have not seen a dentist, or have lost touch with their families. Their drug use and other factors in their lives have alienated them, isolated them from many of the things that make us complete human being. Thus we have been trying to help them build those bridges back.

Mr. Druce mentioned the drug court, and that was a strategy whereby we hope that our clients can be arrested, and then come back through the courts, mandated to our care, so that we would have a lot more leeway to work with them. We have had some success with some clients in that program. One of the frustrations we have is that when a client is not obeying his conditions, and we report that to the drug court workers, there are not really a lot of consequences of those infractions. What is supposed to happen is that they appear for our program every Tuesday and Thursday, and it is unfortunate that some of them do not. I think it is a communication problem.

The idea behind the program is good, and they are better served with us than they are in jail. For many of our clients, their stays in jail and their stays in hostels have led to some institutionalization, which really diminishes their independence and their confidence in living outside of an institution. At least, that is what we are discovering. In regard to that, we have started some programs at the O'Neill House which are geared towards helping them away from that drug dependence and from that institutionalization; programs such as one on life skills. We have just started those programs, but they are having a good effect already.

Part of the problem with that whole system and cycle of jail and then back to the hostel is the lifestyle, because in order to obtain the illegal drugs, such as crack cocaine and the like - and all of our clients are users - they have to do certain things. That lifestyle leads them to many criminal acts such as shoplifting, "middling" the drugs, or buying the drugs from a dealer to sell to someone else, so that they can take a piece and keep smoking.

When one looks at drug dependence and drug use over a timeline, with most drugs it is a slow progression to abuse; with crack cocaine, it is pretty fast, so that many of our clients' lives are quite purposeful in that way, because of the position that they are in. The dependence and abuse of that drug is purposeful in that it gives them something to focus on. If you look at it from their perspective, they have to get up and their whole day is spent focusing on how they are to acquire their "hit" of crack cocaine for that day. Therefore it keeps them busy and it keeps them distracted from a lot of the issues that they are not dealing with, and that they probably do not want to deal with.

What we are doing as well, in part, through our case management team is addressing that issue by way of a client-centred approach, to try to hook them back up with a lot of things that we need as human beings, such as family, such as purpose, a job, seeing a doctor, health, and we are enjoying some success.

It has been hard. At the start of any program, you make a lot of mistakes. A great deal of the time, we felt out of our depth. However, now we are starting to really move on a lot of things and it has been a great experience. Overall, in taking them into the O'Neill program and offering them the services and not judging them on their drug use, saying it is okay, what I have seen is that when a client first gets to the O'Neill program, their use increases because they think, "Wow, I can smoke all the drugs I want and nobody will say anything to me," and you get that kind of reaction to the freedom when they first come in. Usually, if they can stay past the two-month mark, their drug use starts to decrease and the bingeing stops. They are not out as long. When they first come in, they may be out for four or five days, and that period starts to decrease and they start to really live there. They spend a lot of their time within the O'Neill program.

Mr. Druce: From a public policy perspective, I certainly appreciate that the committee is dealing primarily with issues around cannabis and marijuana use.

I think one of the things that we certainly recognize now, if we had the opportunity to make any changes, would be to say that we have had to accept people's drug use for two reasons: one, primarily because we recognize we can do more good for the people who are addicted by accepting that they have an addiction, and that using drugs will be a part of their lives at least initially while they are with us, and perhaps for some time after they come to us. We have also had to accept it, in part, because it is so very difficult for them to stop. In other words, we could not operate a hostel system in which we decreed that no one with an addiction could ever come into that system. Thus we have been forced into a situation where we have tried to work with people during their addiction, and that presents a lot of challenges.

The drug court certainly was of interest to us because it did provide us with some leverage. For people who wanted to stop and were finding that really difficult, the spectre of incarceration may be just enough to help move them towards a place where they can start to address their drug use. However, as Mr. Fulgosi has told you, the enforcement of some of those conditions and things has been somewhat spotty. We certainly advocate quite strongly that sanctions be put in place that would help such individuals make healthier choices.

Ultimately, with respect to the folks with whom we deal who are addicted to a number of drugs - and certainly, marijuana is rampant; lots of people smoke marijuana; crack is certainly much more visible for us - we would like to see the sanctions in place, but I think alternative sentencing would be an important part of what we would see as being effective in the work that we are doing. Our clients go through the cycle now between incarceration and hostel use, and except for the fact that in the hostel they can leave during the day, there is probably not a whole lot of difference, in their minds, between the two settings.

Increasing the sanctions in terms of punishment and sentence, such as sentencing people to larger jail terms, does not serve anybody's interests. Certainly, those people who are impacted by the crimes consider them to be very serious crimes, and I would not want to diminish that aspect, but they are not the most serious of crimes that are being committed in the system at this time. I do not think that putting people in jail for longer terms for such a crime would be the most effective deterrent.

Senator Kenny: Could you please tell us a bit about your background?

Mr. Druce: I have worked in the hostel system for 16 years. I was a participant in the Katimavik program in 1984, and one of my placements was with a group home.

Senator Kenny: Jacques Hébert would be proud.

Mr. Druce: Yes, he would, God bless him.

The Chairman: Very proud.

Mr. Druce: Following that, my first paid employment, then, was in the social service field, working in group homes. I have a degree from Ryerson University, which I certainly do not discount, but had I started working for the City of Toronto -

Senator Kenny: Your degree is in what subject?

Mr. Druce: Social work. However, I think that most of what I know has come from working in the hostel system. Certainly, my clients have been some of my best teachers, the people whom I have encountered.

From a hiring perspective now, as a manager, I would say our best successes have been with people who have had diverse life experiences. We have people who have been longshoremen; people who have been musicians; people who have certainly been familiar with many of the issues that the clients in the hostel face, and who themselves have been able to overcome that experience and put it behind them, and then come back into the field from the other side, so to speak. However, my own background has been volunteer work, some paid employment, and then a degree in social work.

Mr. Fulgosi: I suppose I might be counted as one of the group that Mr. Druce was speaking about latterly. I am an addictions counsellor. I went to Centennial College. I am also a recovering addict. I have worked in the addictions field for approximately five years.

As Mr. Druce was saying, I have worked in a hostel for three years. I have the benefit of understanding where a lot of these men are coming from, and the issues that they face because I was a homeless, addicted person at one time myself. That makes it easier and, also, more effective for me to talk with the clients because I understand what it is that is happening to them. Sometimes in the field, a lot of people ask clients to do certain things. When I speak with clients, I understand what it is that I am asking them to do, and the risks involved in some of the work that needs to be done with such clients to help them out. That is my background and qualifications.

Senator Kenny: Tell me what a day is like. When do you get to work? Do you work shifts, for example?

Mr. Fulgosi: Yes.

Senator Kenny: Would you describe for us a little what a working day would be like, or a working month would be like, for both of you?

Mr. Druce: The hostel is open 24 hours a day, and we operate 12-hour shifts. We have three people on per shift: two frontline workers and a supervisor.

Senator Kenny: Three workers for how many people? How many clients?

Mr. Druce: Yes. Three workers for 60 clients.

Senator Kenny: Three of you for 60 clients?

Mr. Druce: Yes.

Senator Kenny: Very well.

Mr. Druce: We have a three-and-a-half-month rotation, so everyone works three-and-a-half months of days and then three-and-a-half months of nights. Certainly, with our client group, being able to see what is happening with them at four in the morning is critical in terms of what kinds of things you will be asking them to do at four in the afternoon.

Senator Kenny: Is it 24/7?

Mr. Druce: Yes.

Senator Kenny: Who covers weekends?

Mr. Druce: On our three-and-a-half month rotation, we work through. A third of your weekends you are on duty, and a third of your weekends you are off, and a third of the time, you work one of the two days of the weekend. After working in the hostel system particularly for a long time, weekends are quite arbitrary. It is the two days that you have off in the 14-day period.

For a description of a typical working day, I will turn that over to Mr. Fulgosi.

Mr. Fulgosi: Do you want me to describe that from our perspective or from a client's perspective?

Senator Kenny: If you have seen both, tell us about that.

Mr. Fulgosi: Because of the lifestyle that crack cocaine involves, most of our clients are very active during the late hours.

Senator Kenny: Are you giving us your perspective or the clients' perspective now?

Mr. Fulgosi: I will try to give you both.

Senator Kenny: At the same time?

Mr. Fulgosi: I will speak from my perspective first. At the start of a day shift, it is usually quite quiet at eight o'clock in the morning and the structure we have at the O'Neill program is that by eleven forty-five, everybody should be up and out of bed and getting ready for lunch. We do serve breakfast at seven-thirty, but a lot of the clients sleep through that.

Senator Kenny: Would that be half?

Mr. Fulgosi: On a given day, yes, I would say perhaps a quarter sleep through breakfast. Usually, most of them are up for breakfast, but it depends. I mean, if a group of clients has been out on a run, they will sometimes sleep through breakfast, and we give them that option.

Lunchtime happens, and upstairs in the risk reduction program, we require them to be outside of the program for four hours, from twelve to four. We hope that they will be accessing things in the community, and our case planning team is working with that. That is when they would keep their appointments, see their doctors, whatever it is that they need to do.

At four o'clock, they are welcomed back into the O'Neill program, and dinner is at six-fifteen. In the hours between four and, roughly, eight o'clock on a day shift, there is a great deal of activity, but it is positive activity.

Senator Kenny: What have you been doing all day, though?

Mr. Fulgosi: What have I been doing all day?

Senator Kenny: Yes.

Mr. Fulgosi: From eight until twelve, there is a great deal of file work, reviewing case notes, working with a client that we are reviewing or trying to help; there are a lot of operational things, day-to-day stuff like giving clients towels, making sure they have their day-to-day needs met.

From twelve to four, there again it is mostly file review and filing, making sure that the day-to-day operations are being met. It is kind of a quiet time. If some clients have been given a note by a doctor requiring that they rest, they are around, so we also talk to those clients.

Now that we have programming teams, we are working on programs. We are also trying to reach out into the community, and recently we have been enlisting the aid of the police because there are a few dealers who have taken up a stance across George Street.

We also go outside. Many of our clients "hang out." They do not really go anywhere between twelve and four o'clock.

Senator Kenny: How would your work be different if you were working the night shift?

Mr. Druce: I will jump in here, because I have just finished a run of night shifts.In the evenings, our night shift comes on at 8:00 p.m., and from 8:00 p.m. until midnight, there is a great deal of client interaction. The way our program works, for days and nights, many mundane things need to get done during a day. There is the issuance of linen, there is helping guys get stuff cleaned up, helping somebody do their laundry. All of those things are opportunities for us to spend time with somebody, and we start to build our relationships around helping someone with routine, day-to-day tasks. From 8:00 p.m. until midnight, there is a great deal of that sort of interaction: spending time with clients, seeing how they are doing, addressing medical issues. For example, we see a lot of people who, because of their intravenous drug use, end up with some significant problems with real abscesses.

From midnight until four, lately most of our time has been spent trying to run interference between our clients and the drug dealers who have taken up position outside of our building. Four weeks ago - and if I feel positive at any point about anything that we have done, this is certainly it - we had our clients come to us, identifying that the presence of drug dealers in the community was a real concern to them. We had seen an escalation in the number of fairly violent assaults in our neighbourhood on clients who were staying in our program. Certainly, there has always been a history of that kind of thing. That is one of the risks of the drug use lifestyle. Lately, however, there has been a bit of a power play over who would control the drug trade, and the assaults have increased, and our clients have identified to us that the presence of dealers in and around the building is not something with which they are comfortable. They want to have a place they can come back to where they can be away from the drugs.

Thus we have been spending a fair bit of time during the night with cameras, going out and talking to the dealers, explaining to them that their presence is not welcome. If that does not work, we take their pictures and turn them over to the police, and then they chase us up the street and then the police come and we chase them back down the street.

From 4 a.m. until eight in the morning, we do a bit of cleaning. We have guys who are starting to trickle back in then who have been out, doing their thing. At that time we are also fielding calls from 51 Division of who is in the cells and who is due to be in court that morning. A lot of the work during the day is done in the courthouses, both through drug court and through bail court and plea court.

Senator Kenny: Mr. Fulgosi, what is it like, then, if you are on the other side; if you are a client?

Mr. Fulgosi: It has been some time and I was only a client at Seaton House - I did most of my activity out West. Drug use is very isolating. I recall quite often feeling like I was being judged, and quite often I was. The way in which society regards drug use - and Mr. Druce mentioned it earlier - is a moral approach. It is very punitive. If you use drugs, you are bad; it is against the law and you are going to go to jail, and I have had my fair share of those experiences, so it was isolating, very isolating from society.

I never had the opportunity or the benefit of a place like the O'Neill program where they did not judge me but told me that "We are going to accept you here whether you stop using drugs or not," so I cannot really describe that.

It is hard. In terms of being institutionalized, I felt that a lot of my confidence had gone. I did not feel that I could make it outside of an institution, and when I was outside of an institution, I felt that it would not last for a long time. It was like a small burst. In addition, I had to do a lot of work and I had to have a lot of aid in getting me over that stage, and in building myself up to the point where I could see that I could achieve things and that I could succeed.

I think from the clients' perspective at the O'Neill program, some of my interaction with clients is based on my own experience with addiction. Part of that experience is that there was a great deal of blaming behaviour, because I did not want to look at myself; I wanted to blame my problems on everything else because then I would not have to change anything.

We go through those very same stages with our clients, and some of the rules and regimen that we try to impose in order to give them some structure in their lives often meets with a little resistance.

Mr. Druce: Some issues there.

Senator Kenny: I thought that you might tell us more. What I was expecting to hear, from a client's perspective was that you were spending your day trying to figure out where you would get the next fix.

Mr. Fulgosi: Sure.

Senator Kenny: That that was what was on your mind, and the counsellors were really interfering with you from time to time because they wanted you to do the laundry, or go to lunch, or whatever.

Mr. Fulgosi: I was talking with Toby about this aspect before we came here today. I mentioned this earlier, but the drive for the drug is very purposeful because your world shrinks to just having to do that: waking up, then figuring out how to get the drugs, and then using the drugs. If you can accomplish those three things, then you have had a successful day.

However, because you usually have to commit criminal acts in order to get the drugs, that is quite an expensive lifestyle, and habit. Crack cocaine was supposed to be the poor man's form of cocaine. You could afford it. They call it a twenty-piece on the street, but that is really just the start. You need a lot of money to keep up with a crack cocaine habit. Therefore a lot of the time is spent figuring out ways of how you can do that, which involves you in a lot of risk: risk from dealers, from being beaten, from police, from being arrested. I had a client who got his face smashed in with a two-by-four for breaking up a fight because he happened to be black and he intervened on the part of a white guy, and some dealers smashed in his face.

There are other risks, too. The ingestion of cocaine also leads to psychosis, where you can become so paranoid that you do not feel safe smoking it anywhere. There is a lot of fear involved in the later stages of addiction.

When we first started the program, many of the clients that we took in thought we were doing surveillance; that we were putting their names down on a list and they would be registered as drug addicts and they would get arrested. In other words, there is a lot of distrust. It takes us quite a while to build up that trust. Many of our clients have trust issues to begin with from their dealings with their family of origin or wherever along their life journey.

Just to sum up, let me say that the life of someone who is addicted to crack cocaine is not very pleasant. It is not glamorous at all. However, there is that lot of drama that you perceive being there in order to get the drugs, and a lot of risk involved.

Mr. Druce: One of the tensions that exist a great deal of the time for some of our clients is that they are incredibly bored. One of the most frequent things that people identify to us during the day is: "You know what? There is nothing for me to do, and I am really bored," but knowing full well that, in a couple of hours, it will be time to get ready to go out and get their drugs, and to smoke. Thus, while we can offer alternatives, things that people may want to do to occupy that time, those things would interfere with what will surely happen later in the day. They spend a lot of time sitting around, waiting until it is time to go out, or to get ready for the evening: go out, get their drugs and smoke. While we can offer alternative things that people may want to do to occupy that time, those things would interfere with what is going to happen later in the day so you spend a lot of time waiting around, waiting until it is time to go out, to start to get ready for the evening. That, I think, is probably one of the bigger frustrations that I see for these guys: on the one hand, there is nothing to do; on the other hand, there is only one thing to do, and that is to go out to score.

Senator Kenny: How are they getting money to do that?

Mr. Druce: A lot of shoplifting. There is a certain amount of trafficking in small amounts that supports somebody's habit. We provide a personal needs allowance once a week on Thursday, which is $26.75. Thursday is a good day because you do not have to worry too much about where you will get your money that day.

Senator Kenny: Twenty will get you through a day?

Mr. Druce: It will give you a start to the day.

Mr. Fulgosi: Yes.

Senator Kenny: Mr. Chairman, I could go on with this line of questioning. However, I do not know if I am taking up other people's time.

The Chairman: One colleague has a question, and then we can come back to that line of questioning. Senator Milne?

Senator Milne: This presentation has actually been very interesting. Is O'Neill House physically separate from Seaton House?

Mr. Druce: Yes, although it is in the same building. We have a hallway connecting our building to the main hostel, which is only open during mealtimes. It leads to a cafeteria. The entrances and exits are physically removed from the main entrances.

Senator Milne: Seaton House, if I remember, is down on Sherbourne Street or on Parliament Street?

Mr. Druce: It is on George Street.

Senator Milne: Then you are right near Regent Park?

Mr. Druce: Yes, we are.

Senator Milne: This is where your drug dealers are coming from, is it, when you say you see them out on the street or across the street?

Mr. Fulgosi: From what I have heard from clients, most of the dealers are from Regent Park, but there has also been some dealer activity from as far away as Jane and Finch.

Senator Milne: Boy, oh boy.

Mr. Druce: It is becoming a very popular spot.

Mr. Fulgosi: Yes.

Senator Milne: Oh, dear. That is discouraging.

Mr. Druce: Yes.

Senator Milne: For the members of this committee who do not know, Regent Park was the first public housing development almost anywhere in the world. It was an experiment at the time and, as we now know, it was an experiment that failed. Our ideas of how public housing should be built are a lot better now than they were then.

You say 80 per cent of your clients stay for less than six months?

Mr. Druce: Yes.

Senator Milne: What they are doing during that six months is just going back and forth from jail back to O'Neill House?

Mr. Druce: Yes.

Senator Milne: Are they mandated, then, back to O'Neill House?

Mr. Druce: It depends. With respect to clients who have been arrested, if their charges are suitable to direct them to drug court, we certainly encourage them to take that option.

Some do not want that option. For some, jail is their detox, so they recognize that they need that space. Certainly, no one has yet had a negative test while they were incarcerated. They can access drugs in jail, but certainly not with the same frequency as on the outside. Therefore some people use jail as a detox facility, and they do not want to get out.

We do go to court on behalf of any client and let the court know that if they feel that this is someone whom the court is prepared to release, that they can be released to our care and we will help that person abide by the bail conditions, or report to the court in the event that that person does not abide by his conditions. Here I am referring to such circumstances where things generally start falling apart because someone goes out, uses drugs, we then do a urine test and they test positive. Since they are supposed to be abstaining from drugs, we report that. That, then, sort of leaves that person in limbo.

Senator Milne: You do regular urine testing with these people who are mandated to you?

Mr. Druce: Yes, we do random tests. Generally, if we have a concern that someone has used, we will test everyone.

Senator Di Nino: Do the clients have any responsibilities while they are in O'Neill House?

Mr. Druce: Yes. Do they have lots of responsibilities? They do. Do they fulfil a lot of those responsibilities? No, because they are crack-addicted. Part of our work is to try and help somebody get to the point where they start to accept some of those responsibilities - and primarily those relating to their behaviour is a big one for us.

Senator Di Nino: In the interim, though - and I am not sure this is the right term - they would get 24-hour care?

Mr. Druce: Yes.

Senator Di Nino: Including their own personal needs and so forth?

Mr. Druce: Yes.

Mr. Fulgosi: Following our assessment, when we accept a client into our program, we have something of a contract which spells out what the clients can expect from us, and some of what we expect from the client. For example, when we first started out, it was that they do their own sheets and that they do their laundry and keep up their hygiene. We have recently moved to a new, different type of assessment. However, clients are generally responsible for keeping their bed areas clean, and for keeping up their hygiene. However, what we are really focusing on now, as Mr. Druce has said, is their behaviour, which includes some of their interactions and some of their coping skills.

Senator Di Nino: We are talking about basically an adult population?

Mr. Druce: Yes, we are.

Senator Di Nino: You do not take - What is the age limit, 19?

Mr. Druce: On our books, it is 16.

Senator Di Nino: Sixteen?

Mr. Druce: In practice, if a 16-year-old crack-addicted person showed up at our door, I do not think we would take him; I think we would probably call Children's Aid at that point because it is not a good place for someone to be if they are just entering into their drug use. The average age is 37 for our group.

Senator Di Nino: Do you have a problem with the clients engaging in sexual behaviour, or misbehaviour, if you wish? Is this an issue that you have to deal with?

Mr. Druce: Not yet.

Mr. Fulgosi: Not at the O'Neill.

Mr. Druce: No. People are usually pretty careful about that. I mean, being in a hostel, if there is a same-sex relationship between two clients, certainly that is not a safe place for them to carry out the physical parts of that relationship, and they are well aware of that. They will rent a room, or they will go to a number of spots. We obviously do not allow women in the building, so that sort of limits that issue.

Senator Di Nino: What about the families of your clients, do you make any attempt to get them involved or to contact them?

Mr. Fulgosi: Only if that is a desire of the client. Where it is applicable, we urge the client to do so; however, we never push that on a client.

Senator Di Nino: What has your experience been there?

Mr. Druce: Usually, it has been positive. I mean, if someone wants to make contact with his family, there is usually a long history there of the family hearing that their family member wants to be clean, that he is making an effort, that everything is going to change. Usually, families are somewhat - and sometimes rightly so - cynical about where this is all going to lead.

However, where clients can demonstrate that they have made some progress, either through having been through the court diversion and having demonstrated that, "Yes, I have attended treatment, I have been having clean urine screens," then you can start to re-establish some of those connections.

Senator Di Nino: Obviously, the main focus of this commit tee is with respect to cannabis and marijuana, but your presentation is straight in line with our discussion. Do you have any recommendations that you would list as, perhaps, first, second and third that this committee should take back with it as a reference, if not for this report, perhaps as knowledge for future reports? What is it that you would like to tell us?

Mr. Fulgosi: For myself, I believe a much of the problem that we are facing with respect to illegal drugs is the way that society looks at them. I am not saying that with respect to all drugs, because I think that is a different topic. However, since the focus of your study is marijuana, making it a criminal act to procure and smoke marijuana automatically sets an individual in an undesir able situation because he has to deal with criminals, he has to go down to parts of town like Regent Park in order to pick up the drugs.

Relaxing those policies and treating addiction as a public health issue, as a medical issue rather than a criminal issue, I think, would change a lot of things. I think it would change the face of addiction, quite honestly.

Mr. Druce: Tell them about the store.

Mr. Fulgosi: Yes. If we are focusing only on marijuana, one thing about marijuana that I have seen with clients is that if they are addicted to crack cocaine, they like to go on what we refer to as a marijuana maintenance program, whereby they only smoke marijuana. That is a term that a lot of people are familiar with.

The analogy that I use is that if you, as a client, were to go into a store, and if the store were to put all its different drugs on a shelf, marijuana would be on the same shelf with all the other drugs. Then one day, marijuana may not be on that shelf, and something else would be there, and most likely the client would take that something else. In other words, having it all on the same shelf, I think, is the wider problem.

Mr. Druce: I, certainly, would never minimize the impact that drug use has on both the individual who is using, or on his family, or on the community where he lives. There are huge issues around addiction about which I am sure you must have heard a great deal.

Our focus right now with this group of men is to try and reduce the risks where we can. One of the areas where we can reduce their risk is in the things that they have to do to get high. If they can maintain on marijuana, because that is the one drug that they can obtain legally, than that certainly helps because it takes away all of the associated behaviours. They will still have problems with their addiction, and we will still address those, but it removes the sort of ancillary problems surrounding the addiction that are much harder for us to tackle.

Senator Di Nino: Do you think that smoking cannabis is an addiction?

Mr. Druce: I smoke cigarettes, so I certainly am addicted to cigarettes.

Senator Di Nino: Do not tell Senator Kenny about that. He will be coming to talk to you about that later.

Mr. Fulgosi: In terms of addiction, I think the drug itself is just a substance. It is how the individual uses that substance that would qualify it as being addictive or abusive, or social. It is just the use to which it is put. It is very much about that.

Mr. Druce: In my opinion, no one comes into our system - certainly not into the hostel system - just because they are addicts. Their addiction is a part of something else. If I were an addict, of all the hostels that I would ever have to stay in, I think Seaton House would probably be the best, but it is an awful place in which to stay. I would not recommend to anybody that they would want to stay there for any length of time.

Because of the experiences that many of our clients have had, be it childhood sexual abuse, which is quite prevalent for our population, and the kinds of life experiences that they have had, if what is keeping them going right now is smoking marijuana, then I would say that that is probably the thing to do. Yes, they are dependent on it, but they are dependent on it for probably pretty good reasons, because it is what is keeping them alive right now.

Could there be other things that would keep them alive if they could address those other issues? There certainly are. They could make other choices, but I would agree with Mr. Fulgosi that the addiction is more related to how the substance is used, and not what is used.

The Chairman: How do the neighbours react to your presence in their neighbourhood?

Mr. Druce: I would say it is getting better.

The Chairman: They want you to move?

Senator Di Nino: You should become a politician.

Mr. Druce: Obviously, the presence of a 700-bed facility for homeless men certainly creates issues. However, Seaton House has now been 47 years at its present location. We take up most of the block, and across the street from us is the York Detention Centre for Young Offenders, which takes up most of the other side of the block, so until recently, we did not have a whole lot of neighbours.

Now we have more neighbours, just at the end of our street. Someone demolished some old buildings and in their place built $250,000 houses, and the folks who live in those houses are quite upset about what goes on, at our front door. Our suggestion to them has been that, for 47 years, that sort of thing has been going on right there, and if your real estate agent did not tell you about it, that is really not our problem.

However, it is increasingly becoming our problem. A lot of condos are going up in our neighbourhood, and people who own homes and have owned homes for quite some time certainly have some very legitimate concerns about the activity that goes on. We share those concerns because, in the six years I have worked at Seaton House, every physical intervention that I have ever been involved in has generally been either precipitated by, or has been the result of, a conflict between two people who do not stay at Seaton House. A lot of people come down to Seaton House to buy, to sell, because in all of 51 Division, if people are going to smoke drugs on the street, it is a place where they might as well smoke them because there are fewer neighbours and, again, it has that containment. We cannot prevent it from happening, so we will try and contain it in one area. Furthermore, it is a relatively safe place to come down to and know that you will not get too many hassles.

However, when you get the levels of violence that we are starting to see, that certainly concerns our neighbours. It concerns us, as well, and that is why we are engaging with the neighbours in strategies whereby we can address in some meaningful fashion the people who supply, the dealers who sell to our clients. There is where we want to make some inroads. If we can shut operations down a little further up the food chain, that is really good for us.

The Chairman: You have mentioned marijuana in your testimony. From your experience, is it possible to agree with the Dutch, that there is a separate market for marijuana than there is for other drugs? Can we segregate those two markets?

Mr. Fulgosi: From my experience, I believe you could. Are you talking about making marijuana legal in that sense, or just drugs in general?

The Chairman: No. I am talking about the market.

Mr. Fulgosi: In the market. Yes, there is a larger and more varied group of people who smoke marijuana than those who use drugs such as crack and heroin. However, it is still all on the same shelf because it is all illegal. Therefore you are forced to buy that drug usually in the same places where other drugs are sold, if not from the same person who is selling.

The Chairman:Yes. That is my question. Is that the same network?

Mr. Fulgosi: Usually.

Mr. Druce: From an economic perspective, once you are buying something illegally, the markup for the dealer is much better on harder drugs. The sooner they can move you on to that, certainly it is a bonus for them economically. I would agree, however, that there are probably two markets.

The Chairman: Two markets?

Mr. Druce: Yes. Well, more than one.

Senator Kenny: You raise some interesting issues, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Druce, I am particularly interested in your comment that the sooner the dealer can move you on to a harder drug, the better for him. We have had lots of testimony before this committee to the effect that marijuana is not a gateway drug.

Mr. Druce: Yes.

Senator Kenny: One of the witnesses who was here this morning said, "Look, a lot of people drink coffee, too, and it does not move them on to crack cocaine."

Mr. Druce: It moves you on to espresso, though.

Senator Kenny: It may. Is your experience different than that? I mean, do you see an active effort to move people from marijuana to harder drugs, and then people staying with harder drugs?

Mr. Fulgosi: I do not think it is really a dealer saying, perhaps, "I am going to start this person on marijuana and then start selling them crack cocaine." What usually tends to happen is that a dealer starts by selling marijuana, perhaps, and then realizes that crack cocaine is a much more lucrative market, and probably gets into that.

On the street, it all has very much to do with connections, with who you know, and it is hard to make new connections. Usually, you have to be introduced by a third party, so you stick with the person you know. If all of a sudden your dealer starts selling crack, and if you are going down to see that dealer and you are looking for some kind of release or reward, or to having a good time, you may decide to try crack. I am not saying that that is a rule.

Senator Kenny: But you are going to have a different afternoon.

Mr. Fulgosi: Oh, definitely.

Senator Kenny: The NIMBY question, the not-in-my-back yard question that Senator Nolin raised a moment ago, you were describing for us where you have taken over a whole block. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I have a sense that if you had smaller facilities that were in neighbourhoods, you would be more successful, but I am not sure there is any truth to that.

What is your view? Are you better off having a large facility down in a central part of town, not having a hassle with neighbours, or having neighbours that -

The Chairman: Hate you.

Senator Kenny: - are roughly or generally in the same line of work, such as the detention centre you were talking about? What is the right setting?

Mr. Druce: I will give my opinion and then you can certainly give yours. I do not think there is a right setting, per se. I think that there are values to having a variety of options. When I started at Seaton House, it had two programs: Either you were medically infirm and over 55 and paying rent, or you were everyone else. As an access point, if someone needed emergency shelter, we were obliged not to turn them away. Therefore, having a large facility that is structured in a way that can accept a wide range of individual behaviours is good; it is good for clients to have that kind of a place to come to.

However, in the year that I have worked with the 60 most addicted clients in that 690-person population, I am much more confident that being in a smaller setting has removed the stigma, as Mr. Fulgosi was talking about. In other words, by saying "You know what? In order to get into that program, you must be a crack addict, so if you are addicted to drugs, come on in." Right away, then, there is one thing that, although we do not ignore it, everyone understands: that addictions are an issue for that person. In that respect, it has been much more successful for us to have a smaller setting, albeit a smaller setting attached to the same building. If you could have some sort of "micro-hostels," I think there would be advantages to that approach as well. Perhaps being able to move people away from one central area would certainly spread out the problem a bit, and may just lower the stigma somewhat, although, of course, there is no geographic cure to the clients' issues.

Mr. Fulgosi: I am in agreement with my colleague Mr. Druce. I think Seaton House is an important place, due to the fact that we do offer a great many services geared to the individual needs of our clients. With respect to smaller hostels, I am a firm believer that, in order for our clients to progress and to finally leave the hostel system, they need to be helped in some facility perhaps like a halfway house. I do not know if that is the right description, but a smaller hostel outside of that central area, because a lot of the hostels are focused and concentrated in that area.

I have had conversations with clients who tell me, "I don't want to smoke crack, but every time I walk out the front door, it is all around me," and it has been around them for however long they have been in a hostel. Thus having somewhere where they could - I do not want to use the term "graduate" but where they could take that progression away from the hostel, moving them closer to a community that is not a drug culture, giving them the option of living somewhere where they are not immersed in that drug culture, would be quite helpful, but I think it should be a part of the system. So yes, I am in favour of having smaller hostels, and I believe we will be doing that with the cottage program, when it comes. I understand that that is in the works.

Mr. Druce: The unfortunate reality is, though, that my colleagues who run the Annex are very fond of saying that their job and their successes are to bring people back up to the bottom. We could have smaller hostels in more residential areas, or in areas that were not as impacted by poverty and drugs as the area that we are in right now. but the likelihood is that the results with most of the clients, were they successful, would be much like sending them to treatment centres now. In other words, we might send someone to Windsor for a number of months and they stay clean, but ultimately they will be coming back to Toronto, and they will probably only be able to afford to live somewhere close to a neighbourhood like the one that they were in when they were using. Everything is linked in together. Not being able to say to someone who is successful, "We can find you decent, affordable accommodation somewhere that is not Crack Alley," means that the place that they will be able to afford is probably right back where they started. If they have learned enough tools and restraint to avoid getting back into drug use, then my hat is off to them, because that is a real struggle.

Senator Kenny: I apologize for being so personal, but earlier you talked about some of the risks and some of your concerns. What can you share with the committee about those risks and about, frankly, the satisfactions that you must get, having stayed in the work as long as you have, and, if you will, what are your fears? You talked about some of the problems that you go through in the course of a day, and obviously sometimes you are in situations that do not seem particularly safe to you. Would you care to comment about those sorts of issues?

Mr. Fulgosi: Yes. I have never felt my personal safety threatened. I know that when we started, many of our clients had had some violent histories in their files. The word around Seaton House was that we had all the worst offenders and that it would be a crazy place to work. What we discovered is that the incidence of violence went down, and I think that has something to do with our acceptance of the lifestyle of our clients and who they are; that kind of open acceptance, saying that "We know and we understand. We are not going to judge you on it." I think that brought down the tension that a lot of our clients were feeling.

On a day-to-day basis, the only threat I have ever felt is with the dealers across the street. Some of them exhibit threatening behaviour, and they are quite aggressive sometimes. I feel threatened by their threat to our clients, but I have never felt that my personal, physical self was in any danger with our clients, so I have never felt threatened.

Senator Kenny: What is the positive side? What keeps you going? What motivates you?

Mr. Fulgosi: It is very rewarding to help people. I love to help people. It is particularly rewarding to help people at that level because Seaton House, in many ways, is like the last stand, the last place that they end up, and I think that many people take it for granted that these men are alive and that they are living in Seaton House, and they have a lot of challenges. Working with an individual and addressing some of those challenges and watching them succeed, it is an amazing experience. There is nothing like it.

Senator Milne: How many success stories have you had?

Mr. Fulgosi: In the O'Neill program?

Mr. Druce: I would say about 275. We have people who have not been able to stay in one place long enough for them to be comfortable enough to start to engage them on some of the issues that got them where they were in the first place, and we have that now. We have that through some pretty hard work on the part of some pretty dedicated people, and a lot of support. With respect to how many people have stopped using drugs and moved out of the hostel system, that is a smaller number. About a half a dozen, I would say.

We have managed to get through our first year. At the time that we opened, the sort of analogy was that "The ship is sinking, and there is one lifeboat and that is the O'Neill House." We have now all found our seats on the lifeboat. We have all the oars in the water. Now we are just trying to teach people to sort of row in one direction and once that gets going, we will go somewhere. That is for the next year.

The Chairman: Keep up the good work.

Mr. Druce: Thank you.

The Chairman: You are giving us the will to continue and to make sure that testimony like yours is going public. Thank you very much, both of you, Mr. Druce, Mr. Fulgosi, for agreeing to appear here before us.

The Chairman: Our next witness is Dennis Long from Breakaway.

Please proceed, Mr. Long.

Mr. Dennis Long, Executive Director, Breakaway: I am the Executive Director of Breakaway. Breakaway is one of the larger substance abuse treatment centres in Toronto. We operate a number of programs, all on a harm-reduction basis. Included in our programs is one called Programs For Youth, which is a day treatment program, which is essentially analogous to a school. People go there in the morning and me in the afternoon, and an outpatient clinic for young people involved in substances, and their parents.

We also operate a Street Outreach Program which includes a needle exchange and the provision of safe injection materials and information, crisis counselling and other work on the street with street populations. The operators of that program also spend an extension amount of time in the various detention centres in Toronto: the Don Jail, Metro West, Vanier Centre for Women, and Mimico.

Finally, we operate the second largest methadone clinic in the city, which provides for about 130 people regular doses of methadone, buprenorphine and LAAM, or levo-alpha-acetylmethadol. As I said, all of those programs are operated from a platform of harm reduction. In other words, we take a value-neutral stance towards the use of other drugs. We are not about to say that it is a good thing, nor are we about to say that it is a bad thing; we just accept it as a part of people's lives and we try to work with that in a way to reduce the amount of harm that they are experiencing and to which they are susceptible, and in a way that will help them to improve their quality of life and lifestyle.

I wanted to appear before this committee in order to make a couple of points: One, I think you probably heard of and I just intend to touch on it, really, is that the current legislation, as we have experienced it from the treatment perspective, and so forth, has been an abject failure. It does not reduce the consumption of drugs and it does not seem to reduce any of the kind of social consequences of the consumption of drugs. I am sure you have heard more knowledgeable people speak to you about that throughout your hearings, so I will not spend a lot of time on that, other than to say that from our perspective, at the level that I work, it has become an accepted fact that prohibition and enforcement do not work and are, if anything, a significant impediment to us doing our work.

That, I suppose, is really the major point that I wanted to make in coming here, which is that prohibition of marijuana, in particular, is a rather extraordinarily expensive proposition. I was sitting on the dock of my cottage this year, which is somewhere near North Bay and one day my peace was interrupted by a helicopter bopping back and forth across the sky. I went into the town and asked, "What is with the helicopter?" I was told, "Well, it is the pot police looking for people's marijuana groves." I said, "What does it cost to run a helicopter on a daily basis?" and I was told, "Somewhere in the neighbourhood of $8,000." I am thinking, I am running a clinic where people have not had a raise in seven years, and they are spending $8,000 a day to run around Northern Ontario, trying to find a couple of plants of marijuana. There is something wrong here, significantly wrong.

Also, I have to admit that when I read the newspaper articles about the government's attempt to grow marijuana at the bottom of a mine, I began to wonder about the logic of all that; that we take a weed and stick it in the bottom of a mine at great expense, with several layers of security, in order to provide for some people's medical needs.

With regard to treatment and prevention, at our clinic and particularly in the youth programming at our clinic, the incidence of people who are reporting problems with substances, and with marijuana as a substance is about 50 to 60 per cent, depending on the year. That figure might raise a question in your minds of why would I come to you and say what I am about to say in terms of marijuana legislation? My reply is that those are very soft numbers. What we do find are that most of these cases are kids who are coming to us with problems that are significantly different than the marijuana; that in most cases, the marijuana definition of their problem is coming from second, third parties: their parents, the schools or someone else. They have been caught smoking in a place where they should not be, their parents have found a marijuana joint in their underwear drawer, or whatever, and often these people are then brought in to us and we are asked, "Fix the marijuana problem."

In some cases, we do not do anything but send them home with a pat on the head and some reassuring words for the parents. In many other cases, we find that the problems have very little, if anything to do with the consumption of marijuana. As many other people, I am sure, have said, in many cases probably it is the one thing that is keeping their head above water.

We find that such youth often have severe difficulties with alcohol. It still is our second biggest hitter and, in fact, our most difficult problem to deal with, particularly with young people. We also find that getting past the parental anxiety around the use of marijuana is significant. We frequently have parents come to us with their son and say, "Well, he drinks. You know, he is drunk most weekends, but that is not why we are here. He is smoking dope." From our perspective, we really have a problem because, in many cases, the alcohol abuse will be a more significant problem for that individual than the marijuana use.

One of the others things I want to mention is that the prohibition of this substance is a problem for us from the perspective of treatment and prevention in a very particular way. It is our understanding that when substances are used in a society, people learn what the social strictures are, what the conventions are for that substance use, and the longer the substance has been within a society, the more likely people are to understand the context of its use and understand what its effect is and understand how to deal with problems when they arise.

A good example is alcohol. While we still have not solved all the problems involved in the use of alcohol use, we certainly have a better understanding of how to address them and how that substance can be used effectively and safely within our society. When something is prohibited, that work does not get done, and cannot be done because people cannot admit or acknowledge their use in a public way, and the substance becomes more problematic than it should be.

This is played out in the families we see quite frequently. Parents become very upset about the use of marijuana, and then they find it difficult to get beyond that into dealing with other problems that they should be dealing with. It becomes almost a point of hysteria, in some cases, for families. On a wide-ranging societal basis, the same is true. We will not incorporate this substance into the way we live our lives and run our society as long as it is proscribed because that just simply means that it cannot be openly dealt with.

The other argument I want to make is one is the financial one. I touched on it a little while ago. We are spending enormous amounts of money around prohibition. I understand you heard from Chief Fantino earlier today, who said "We need more resources," and he said something about, if I understand it correctly, that there is a hierarchy or a bunch of different kinds of components that we need to address the problem, and one of them is treatment. I come back to this point again because I think it is a substantially important point. In this province, at any rate - and my understanding is that this is not unusual across the country - we have not had any new resources in the drug treatment area in nine years. If Chief Fantino were here, I would like to ask him how many budget increases he has had in those nine years, and I think they have been significant.

On the other hand, we have the same amount of money to do approximate a quarter more work in those nine years. The number of people coming in and asking for help has increased by about25 per cent in the last nine years, and we still have the same resources on our table to deal with them. Also, we are not able to pay people particularly well, and we are having difficulties retaining staff.

Therefore my recommendation to the committee is one that I think needs a great deal of thought, but one that really needs to be considered quite seriously, which is that marijuana should be legalized and regulated. From a treatment perspective, this would mean that we could then move resources into dealing with people who have problems, which is a very small number of the people who are using this substance, and we would be able to divert those kinds of resources that are currently going to the criminal underclass into more productive social programming and we could tax the hell of it, to be blunt. Also, by taxing the hell of out it, we would be able to realize even more resources that might be able to help us in effective ways of dealing with people who have substance abuse problems.

That was more or less where I wanted to stop and see what questions you might have.

Senator Wilson: Mr. Long, we just heard from Seaton House about their men's program. I see that you have a number of women in your programs.

Mr. Long: Yes. All of our programs are co-ed programs.

Senator Wilson: What is the correlation between homelessness and addictions?

Mr. Long: Homelessness is a significant problem, particularly for the people in our methadone program. Obviously, also, the Street Outreach Program pretty much deals with people who are homeless, either on a temporary basis or on a regular basis. Most of the people we see in Street Outreach are either inadequately housed or not housed at all. At this time of the year, most people are not housed.

The correlation is largely cultural, in my estimation. The street population and the homeless population tend to accept drugs as being more or less an endemic part of their environment. In all of the studies I have read, and the reports that I get back from our Street Outreach workers are that people think basically that, if you are on the street, you are doing drugs or you are drinking, or both - probably both. Therefore the relationship between being homeless and developing a substantive substance abuse problem is very high, and for good reason.

Senator Wilson: Yes.

Mr. Long: The analogy is that if you do not have a place to live that is comfortable and dry, and you do not have this, that and the other thing, it is probably better to be a bit stoned because that will probably allow you to be able to tolerate the situation, at least, such as it is.

Senator Wilson: I gather you are also in favour of decriminalizing cannabis?

Mr. Long: No, I am not in favour of decriminalizing at all, frankly.

Senator Wilson: No? Oh, I am sorry.

Mr. Long: I am in favour of legalizing.

Senator Wilson: I am sorry.

Mr. Long: I want to make that very clear. If you do not mind, I would like to expand on that a little bit? I may have misunderstood your question.

Senator Wilson: You mentioned that you think it should be under controls.

Mr. Long: That is right.

Senator Wilson: Yes. I wanted to ask you what kind of controls?

Mr. Long: I think we can apply the same kinds of controls that are applied to alcohol and other drugs. We have two legal drugs right now, alcohol and tobacco, recreational drugs, so-called.

Senator Wilson: Yes.

Mr. Long: We have extensive controls on those. Some evidence that I have read - and, I have to admit, not all that much recently - indicates that some thinking is that that is the optimal way to reduce the amount of consumption of substances. I think that legalization would result in probably at least the appearance of an increase in use.

Part of the problem would be that there are all kinds of people who are using right now who certainly do not intend to tell anyone, and so if it becomes legal, then they will start telling people. Therefore whether it would be an actual increase or just a revelation in terms of increased use would be a good question. I would expect that there will be.

I do not think legalization is a particularly easy road. It will take a lot of time and it is not particularly viable in a realpolitik sense because certainly our neighbours in the international community and others would be seriously opposed to that kind of a move on the part of this country. However, I do think it makes the most sense.

Senator Di Nino: Put this into some sort of perspective for us: How big is your organization? How many clients do you serve? Can you give us a little bit of that kind of information? If you did at the beginning, I am sorry, but I did not hear you..

Mr. Long: No, I did not. My overall, global budget is$1.5 million. I have 23 employees. In all of our various programs we see about 800 people a year. That is formal clients. Those are people who are actually being seen in some formal context.

Senator Di Nino: On the books.

Mr. Long: We would see, in addition, probably about a thousand on the basis of Street Outreach which, by its very nature, is an informal engagement.

Senator Di Nino: Do you use any volunteers?

Mr. Long: No.

Senator Di Nino: It is all paid staff?

Mr. Long: Yes. Volunteers are too much work.

Senator Di Nino: Some would argue otherwise, but we respect -

Mr. Long: Let me explain: in the work we do, it would just require way too much training. We do not have the resources to do that.

Senator Di Nino: You deal with children, or with those -

Mr. Long: I deal with both children and adults.

Senator Di Nino: Perhaps you could tell us, of your clients, of these 800 to 1,000 people, how many would be children?

Mr. Long: The children's programs encompass about350 per year.

Senator Di Nino: Then it is a substantive, meaningful component?

Mr. Long: Yes, it is.

Senator Di Nino: How many of these individuals would be smoking cannabis in some form?

Mr. Long: Of the older adolescents, probably the majority of them are smoking either on a casual occasional basis or on a regular basis.

Senator Di Nino: Your opinion - and I think you have expressed it; I just want to make sure I understand - is that this is not a particularly difficult problem to deal with as far as cannabis itself is concerned. It is really other problems that are causing the issues that you are dealing with?

Mr. Long: Yes. As a general rule, substance abuse problems in younger people - and in this case, I am talking about people younger than, say, 17, 18 - are almost always contextual in nature. In other words, they usually are a reaction to some other serious difficulty that the individual is experiencing in their social environment, their familiar environment, or possibly psychiatric difficulties are developing. By and large, it is almost never exclusively or purely the addiction that is the problem.

Senator Di Nino: In your experience, have you seen cannabis used as a gateway drug to other drug uses?

Mr. Long: Absolutely not. Actually, it is very interesting that you asked that question. I was more or less expecting it. I was at a conference this morning of the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons. During that conference, we were talking about methadone and we looked at some studies. One study came from a methadone clinic. As you probably know, methadone clinics test urines on a regular basis. In most cases, most people's urine is tested weekly, or twice a week, so we know pretty much what people are doing.

In my clinic, we have 130 people in the main methadone clinic and I think we have another 30 in the ancillary clinic. Marijuana, or cannabinols, are generally found in probably the majority of urines. We do not deal with the use of cannabis as a clinical problem unless it presents as some kind of mood disorder or mood problem or behaviour problem.

The study that we looked at this morning at the conference indicated the likelihood of people to relapse and use other drugs such as cocaine or alcohol at a problematic level, and the determination was how much marijuana they smoked. The study thus looked at a group of people who did not smoke any marijuana, a group of people who smoked occasionally, and a group of people who smoked daily.The daily smokers of marijuana, surprisingly, were significantly less likely to relapse into heroin use; in fact, by 50 per cent. They had virtually no involvement with cocaine, while the other groups were seeing 20 to 30 per cent use of cocaine. In addition, their development of alcohol problems was significantly lower, by about 20 per cent than the other two populations.

This would argue, if you follow the logic, that marijuana is simply not a gateway drug. I have yet to see, clinically, anyone coming and saying, "Well, I started off by smoking a little dope and then, next thing I knew, I was doing heroin." That is not how people describe their experience, at all.

Senator Di Nino: The commentary by witnesses today, I think two or three of them, have suggested that to deal with the problem probably requires a cooperative effort with the different stake holders, if you wish, across the community, including schools and police, et cetera. First, have you found that to be the case and, second, are you working with other agencies or with other stakeholders or groups?

Mr. Long: Just to toot my own horn first before I address the balance of your question, yes, we have three active partnerships right now, formal partnerships: one with the Mental Health Agency, one with the Public Health Department, and one with another addictions agency, so we do work with that.

We work very closely with the police. We feel that running a needle exchange is a really good idea. We work closely with other agencies in the community. However, I think the point is well taken: We are not doing that very well in this country right now. In my opinion, we are spending an enormous amount of our resources on ineffective enforcement at this point, which is way more expensive than treatment, and has quite significantly worse outcomes.

In our methadone program, for example, our success rate and what is called our retention rate is the best in the country, and we have indications from people who are using heroin, for example, in this particular case, that treatment saves something like $40,000 to $50,000 per individual on an annual basis. Someone being in treatment saves that much in costs to the community at large.

The Chairman: Do you have a reference for the studies that you were just talking about?

Mr. Long: The one that I just quoted, no, but I can get it. I just heard about it this morning and I wrote it - I actually scribbled it down in my notes because I thought, "Oh, that is a good one." I will try to get a copy of that study to you, if you wish.

The Chairman: As well as all of the references you made in prior - ?

Mr. Long: I will, yes.

The Chairman: Please do, and we will have the Director of Research of the committee get in touch with you, just to make sure that we have the exact reference.

Mr. Long: Thank you. I appreciate that. Yes.

Senator Milne: The last group of people we had before from Seaton House talked about a marijuana maintenance program. Your view with respect to legalizing marijuana is not just to legalize it but to tax the hell out of it, make some money from it -?

Mr. Long: It has been a long day so far.

Senator Milne: Yes. This idea of a marijuana program, would it help to get people off other harder drugs, to get them off cocaine on to marijuana? That was the first time we had heard of that sort of approach to drug treatment, and I was wondering what was your opinion of it?

Mr. Long: It is an intriguing idea and I did ask the study author this morning about whether we could see marijuana use as a protective factor for other substance use.

The Chairman: What was the answer?

Mr. Long: The answer was no. I think that that is probably a safe answer right now. However, having said that, I do think that we should be thinking very carefully about our whole approach to drugs because what we are doing now is not working very well. We still have increasing numbers of people developing problems with drugs on a regular basis, and it is not getting any better. I am sure you have seen a lot of the studies that I see. Consumption rates are on the rise again, problem rates are on the rise, and so on, so it is not working very well.

I think that we need to think a little bit more carefully about where we put our efforts and how we do things. If we were to decide that marijuana was not a substance worthy of all of this legal and enforcement effort and allow people to use it in a more reasonable way and, as I said, regulate its use, it may in fact decline the use of other drugs. This would be pure speculation on my part at this point, but it would be logical to assume that people would use something that is easy to get and is legal, rather than running the risks of going to unsavoury neighbourhoods and buying things that are unsafe because of the system of buying it.

That is one of the reasons that I am not in favour of decriminalisation, which in effect, I think, would increase the demand and probably pump a whole lot more money into the underground economy because people would feel more safe about using it, but they would still have to buy from people who are criminals because it would still be a criminal act to sell it. That would have a deleterious effect upon what, in fact, we are trying to do.

Senator Milne: That is a very good point.

The Chairman: What you just said about marijuana and its access and effect on the use of harder drugs, are you familiar with the Netherlands' experience?

Mr. Long: Yes, I am.

The Chairman: I am sure that your testimony and your opinion is partly based on that experience?

Mr. Long: Yes. We run a low-threshold methadone program directly modelled on a program in Rotterdam.

The Chairman: I am also sure that you are familiar with the fact that, in the Netherlands, the use of harder drugs is lower than in the rest of Europe?

Mr. Long: That is correct.

The Chairman: However, we still are not positively100 per cent sure that it is because marijuana is more accessible than in other countries?

Mr. Long: Yes. I do not think you can draw that conclusion, and they have not done so, as far as I understand it. However, I think it is also an interesting correlation.

One of the things I have learned through this work, in reading umpteen thousand scientific studies, is you cannot often prove causality.

The Chairman: No. There is nothing 100 per cent -

Mr. Long: However, if something happens at the same time, you can generally assume that there is some kind of relationship between the two.

One would assume, I think, that in Holland, their much more pragmatic approach to drugs in general has probably contributed to a certain extent to the situation that they describe, and they are fairly rigorous in their pursuit of harder drug trading and so forth, but it is an interesting point.

The Chairman: For how many years has Breakaway existed?

Mr. Long: We are in our fourteenth year.

The Chairman: Fourteenth. Who evaluates your work and the result?

Mr. Long: We are evaluated on a regular basis by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care through the Ontario Substance Abuse Bureau, and they are our major funder. They give us about 90 per cent of our operating funds. The balance comes from the Ministry of Community and Social Services, which do not evaluate us.

The Chairman: Do you have access to those evaluations?

Mr. Long: Yes. On a regular basis, we do have access to the data and I have regular contact with my funding representatives.

The Chairman: They remit your permit -

Mr. Long: Yes. We do have access to the data, which we get, which indicates what it looks like in terms of numbers and so forth. Evaluative data, evaluative feedback is rare, to be quite honest.

The Chairman: Rare?

Mr. Long: Yes.

The Chairman: You do not have any that you can share with us?

Mr. Long: I think we had a full evaluation about 11 years ago.

The Chairman: Eleven years ago?

Mr. Long: Yes, when we were three years old. Since then, we have not. Someone comes in and takes a look at the shop from stem to stern and tells us what they think.

The Chairman: They bless you every year and say -

Mr. Long: Yes. I think the issue has been really economic, and we do self-evaluation on a regular basis. All of our programs have evaluative components built into them and the staff and I look at them on a regular basis, but no, not from within a government level.

The Chairman: That is the kind of information you can share with us; those internal evaluations?

Mr. Long: If you would like, yes. I will find what I can.

The Chairman: Our Research Director will be in touch with you.

Mr. Long: Very well.

The Chairman: Mr. Long, thank you very much for accepting our invitation and we will be in touch.

Mr. Long: Thank you.

The Chairman: Our next witness is Mr. Fred Burford.

Mr. Burford, you have the floor.

Mr. Fred Burford, Council on Drug Abuse: I will make my presentation as quickly as possible because I have already given you in writing what I wanted to communicate to you. It is pretty well all there.

To start with, I would say that these comments are based on my total experience, from the time I became a vice-principal and principal in the North York system, which was also the time when drugs came into the schools, and through the experiences I have outlined on the cover page. These are my own views. They are not necessarily the views of the Council on Drug Abuse, and where they are, I will certainly let you know.

The first brief that I would like you to look at is lettered from A to E. I would assume that today you have had the pleasure of hearing from Margaret Stanowski with regard to the Springboard Diversion Program on Cannabis. I must say that from the time I first heard about this program, which was when it started up23 years ago, I was very thrilled at the fact that here was an approach that I believed in; an approach that would have people working with the young people charged with marijuana pos session, and a way that they tried to see them as individuals, show them respect and come up with a favourable result. In most cases, that meant that they would not have a criminal record which, in my opinion, is something to try to stay away from.

However, I call it "meaningful decriminalization" because someone sees the young person, has significant discussions with them and works with them to try to improve their situation as they go through the information with them. Ms Stanowski has already given you the information on that program, and I think it is very impressive.

The Chairman: I understand that you are very supportive of the Springboard program.

Mr. Burford: Yes, very supportive.

The Chairman: Supportive of the Springboard program?

Mr. Burford: Yes. With respect to the other program, the Toronto Drug Treatment Program is one that I know the Council on Drug Abuse supports because one of our consultants is present at all of the advisory committee meetings. Once again, it has the same characteristics as the Springboard Cannabis Diversion Program. Although it is not, strictly speaking, as much of a diversion program as is the Springboard program, it does offer clients the possibility of going through the experience, despite their having initially shown a tendency to be addicted to heroin or cocaine, and to go through it in a very positive way, and successfully. There are two tracks to that program: Track one is the one that is followed by the person who is not in as serious a situation and, once again, after they have gone through that program, they do not have a criminal record.

Therefore I certainly strongly support the Toronto Drug Treatment Program, and I am pleased to be aware that Vancouver is starting up a similar program, because that will have a positive influence on the Vancouver situation.

Next, in the page titled the letter C, from The Globe And Mail, "Welcome to drug court." When The Globe and Mail welcomes someone to some aspect of drug treatment, you know that a program must be very persuasive because of the good qualities of it. Not too often is The Globe and Mail on that side of things. That is a very favourable write-up and I think it outlines the reasons why the drug treatment court programs should be supported.

Police Chief Julian Fantino was here this morning. I do not know what he had to say, but if it was supportive of the Police Chiefs' position that they developed in August of 1999, then once again he would be talking about a flexible situation involving different possibilities, and with the hope that there would not be a criminal record. I am just guessing at what he might have said because that is what the policy is of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police as it was established in August, 1999.

Next is the page lettered E at the top. That item is there because of the needle exchange program which, believe it or not, was introduced in 1989 in Toronto. Many people were concerned about that. As far as the Council on Drug Abuse was concerned - and I was President at that time - we supported it from the outset because there was the opportunity for people to be prevented from catching diseases, and therefore we felt it was something that was worth supporting. That page indicates our support right from the beginning.

I must say that there were some organizations around Toronto that were not so supportive. I do not know what their problem was, but it has been a successful program, I think, from the beginning.

Next I turn to the brief with the pages stapled together, and in the upper right-hand corner the numbers start at 1. At this point, I would like to recall to you a presentation that was made to you by Dr. Harold Kalant, and this was back in Ottawa. Some of the things that he made reference to, the adverse effects of marijuana and the reasons for them, the scientific work behind them, I do not intend going over those again, but I would like to highlight some things that support the information that he supplied.

Page 1 is a study that was made in California where selected policemen on patrol on the highway identified cars that were driving erratically. These cars were stopped and the drivers sent to a place where the blood level could be tested and where it was possible to discover whether they were impaired because of the ingestion of alcohol or marijuana. The results of that study were that 10 to 15 per cent of those who were impaired, their impairment was caused by marijuana only, which is something about which we must be concerned as we look at making changes in the marijuana law.

Also, on the next page, page 3, there is a girl looking out at us, Mary Kelly. She was convinced that she would be able to drive after using marijuana, that it would not impair her driving ability. The result, in this case, was a car accident in which six people were killed. The inquest afterwards certainly determined that the accident was the result of her use of marijuana and, rather interesting, the jury suggested that the clergy become more actively involved in the drug issue in the province.

The next page gives further examples of traffic accidents involving marijuana. This is the page marked 4. "Cannabis Blamed In 22-Death Crash." This was on Mother's Day in one of the southern states, in New Orleans. Then at the bottom there is a reference to the 1987 train wreck in which 16 people died and in which the follow-up investigations resulted in one of the two men operating the train being sentenced to five years' imprisonment on a plea of guilty to manslaughter.

Then the next page, No. 5, "Drivers tested - Pothead crashes on rise." This study report was released on August 31, 1999, and was authored by Bob Mann of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. His study showed that the percentage of drivers killed in crashes who had used pot beforehand was gradually rising in Ontario. By 1986, between 1986 and '89, the presence of pot was detected in 13.9 per cent of the cases; not far off what they found in that test in California.

There is also an aspect here that he makes reference to, but not specifically, and that is the "hangover effect" from the use of marijuana, when a person drives after they have become impaired. The hangover is simply this: Their high is over, and therefore you would expect that their impairment would be over. However, their impairment lasts for one, two or three hours afterwards, and so someone is driving when he thinks, or she thinks, that they are all right, and that is a problem.

Turning now to page 6. This is the result of a Centre for Addiction and Mental Health survey conducted in 1997. They have, as you are probably aware, a student survey every two years. The bottom item here says that among students who use cannabis in the past year, 94.5 per cent also drank alcohol.

The Chairman: Mr. Burford, we have your documentation here, and we will definitely go through it. Is there any other information you want to give us, apart from what is in here, in the document?

Mr. Burford: No. This is it.

The Chairman: You are raising a point that is a concern to us, namely, driving under the influence of marijuana and other illegal drugs. Certainly, the research effort is not up to a level that we consider sufficient, at least from what we know, so we will definitely need to dig into that subject.

We will keep the information you have provided to us. Do any of my colleagues have questions?

Senator Milne: What is Mr. Burford's recommendation?

The Chairman: Do you have a recommendation? Apart from supporting the Springboard program and the other program that you have mentioned at the beginning of your testimony, do you have any other recommendation you want to provide us with?

Mr. Burford: With regard to driving, I think that it is a very serious part of this whole picture.

The Chairman: The Criminal Code already has a prohibition on impaired driving, and that includes everything.

Mr. Burford: Yes.

The Chairman: Automatically, impaired driving is illegal. But you want the committee to be concerned about impaired drivers under the influence of marijuana?

Mr. Burford: I am concerned that if marijuana is decriminalized in a meaningless way, such as the traffic ticket summons approach, which usually results in the parent paying, its deterrent will not be very great, and therefore the chances of drivers being impaired because of their use of marijuana will continue to be there, and they are of enough concern as it is right now.

With regard to the test in California, where the police officers saw that a car was being driven erratically, it has been suggested by some people that marijuana users know that they will be impaired if they drive a car after smoking, and therefore they are more careful. However, when you look at that study, those people did not know that anyone was watching them. They may have been trying to drive carefully, but the policemen saw that they were driving erratically, and so that excuse that is sometimes presented, I do not think, is one that one can depend on.

Now, just very quickly with the other items, No. 5, Harold Kalant mentioned addiction -

The Chairman: Mr. Burford, we have already heard from Dr. Kalant and we have discussed with him the subject of impaired driving under the influence of marijuana.

Mr. Burford: Yes. But this item here, what I -

The Chairman: No. We know the point that Dr. Kalant made, and we are aware of that study, the one that you have tabled before us. We already have that one.

Mr. Burford: Well, the next items refer to addiction.

The Chairman: Which one?

Mr. Burford: Page 7. This is the story of a Toronto police officer who became addicted when he started to use marijuana, after a respite from using it for several years, because of things that happened on the job. He became addicted and he started stealing the cheques of his fellow officers and he was found out. Once again, the story ended up in a very positive way, but it is an indication that there is such a thing as addiction to marijuana.

The Chairman: We already know that.

Mr. Burford: Very well.

The Chairman: For the sake of the other people who have asked to appear, unless there is any question to the witness, I wish to say thank you very much, Mr. Burford, for accepting our invitation to appear. If there is any other information of which you want us to be apprised, please be in touch with us. We have all that information available here, or through our website, or on the phone, or through writing. We will be glad to read and listen to your comments. Thank you very much.

Mr. Burford: I hope you read the pages that are attached.

The Chairman: We will read everything you gave us.

Mr. Burford: Because you would not necessarily have seen that information before.

The Chairman: No. I understand that. We will definitely go through the information you provided us with.

Mr. Burford: One of the questions always is that if we make a change in the law, will it result in young people using marijuana more frequently? On page 13, there is a study that shows that the increase in starting to use or to use more would be 30 per cent, which is a large percentage. In Canada, that would be 1 million extra young people using marijuana, or using it more frequently.

I guarantee there are things in here in the few remaining pages that you would not have heard of before.

The Chairman: Mr. Burford, we will go through all of the information with which you have provided us. Most of that information we already have, and we will consider all of that. Thank you very much.

Mr. Burford: Thank you.

The Chairman: Our next witness is Mr. James Anthony Cavalier.

Mr. James Anthony Cavalier: Mr. Chairman, I have a criminal record to do with possession and trafficking in narcotics. That is the technical charge on which I was convicted. When I was selling drugs, nobody could have convinced me that I was a criminal. I was so keenly interested in legalizing drugs like you would not believe; I was passionate about it. Today, I am equally passionate, but opposed to the idea of legalizing marijuana because as far as I am concerned, the softer the drug, the more dangerous it is.

I would never do drugs that I thought were harmful to me, and the less harmful the drug appeared to be, the more likely I would do it. That is why kids were doing marijuana to begin with. Reefer Madness was the propaganda film. We saw people smoking drugs and they were going insane and killing people. We figured, if they are lying about that, they must be lying about everything else.

People want to use the fear concept of scaring people away from drugs and looking at the chemical and physical harm to the body. That is not my concern. My concern is the psychological harm, and one of the psychological harms I am concerned about is the fact that people are willing to do business with criminal elements of society, or are willing to kill the police in order to deliver that marijuana to their door. That is one of the things that got me out of dealing. Every single seed of marijuana in this country has the blood of a cop on it. I met people whom I could not believe. I never thought the cops were bad. I was raised in Toronto. Tops were cops. They were the best social workers in the world.

I was indoctrinated into the drug culture at 16 years of age. "Marijuana is harmless. Don't worry about it. It's great." The peer influence is absolutely enormous. "You are tied to your mother's apron strings, you know. What is the matter with you?" It is incredible. It is this whole idea of sharing this candy bar of happiness, and that you can change your mood and feel better as a result. There is the problem.

The Harm Reduction Program comes along and says, "We are value-neutral. We are not making a judgment call on that." That is not true. They say that marijuana is not that harmful; then they say that it is not a gateway into harder drugs. They say that it is all the social ills and the problems that have to do with psychological influences on a person's mind that gets them into drugs. Then they tell you that perhaps marijuana will help you get away from another drug. Using a chemical to get you out of another drug that did not get you into it in the first place does not address the reason why people take drugs to begin with.

The reason people take drugs is that they have been sold on the idea that you can change your mood and you can pay for that chemical stimulant, or maybe grow it and take it into your body. Now I am happy. We have got the candy bar of happiness. We have got this wonderful social environment going. We are happy together with our stone, okay.

I was thoroughly convinced. I was so much a part of that culture, you would not believe it. I have a real problem with the idea of using, and wasting, tax dollars fighting drugs. "Oh. Look how much it is costing us." The reason it is costing so much is that there are very ineffective ways of policing the use of drugs. It is not the fact that they spend so much money; it is that it is a terrible way to approach the problem.

The other thing I want to talk about is the idea of giving a criminal record to anyone who possess a drug, uses it or even the people who deal it. There are two kinds of people who sell drugs. There are the people who know it is harmful, but they do not care; they want to make a profit from it. They do not want their own kids doing it, or their own families involved in it, but they do not mind making a profit from it.

Those are not the people who are beating up on people in the ghettos. Those people are wearing suits, and they are very well educated. The whole approach of, "Look at the evil criminal selling the drugs. If we, the governments, sell it, we get rid of the criminal element." That is not it. The criminal element wants the drug legalized. We are paying tax dollars to the police to chase the criminal element and the drugs out of the country.

The drug is illegal because it is harmful to society; it is not harmful to society because it is illegal. I wish someone could have protected me from it. Seventy-five per cent of the resources spent on fighting drugs, and the war on drugs in the United States is waged at the street level. Does that make sense to you? If you remove the source of that drug, you would not be busting people for using it; you would not have people selling it in the ghettos. It would not be available for them to sell it.

When there were dry spells, I can tell you, things were changing in me. I have a relative who can testify that she now cannot believe the way she used to think when she was on pot. She stopped doing pot when she became a mother. Now she is looking at her friends, and all they do is marijuana.

The whole idea of creating a beatitude for marijuana as a wonderful drug by comparing it to a more harmful drug is a propaganda strategy. Holding something, holding a lesser evil in front of a greater evil, therefore, this is less evil, it does not work. It is a lie.

I heard that. I went to the Harm Reduction Program at the YMCA. I was one of probably five people standing there, shaking my head in absolute disbelief at what I am hearing. They had a 2 per cent success rate of getting people off drugs. The intention has nothing to do with getting people off drugs. The intention is to make drugs look more harmless, because the more harmless they appear to be, the more likely people will want to do it. People are only concerned with the physical harm.

The Chairman: Do you have a recommendation?

Mr. Cavalier: I have a lot of recommendations.

The Chairman: This is the time.

Mr. Cavalier: The recommendation is the idea of thinking of prisons in terms of punishment. The jail guards at Kenora were great. Going to jail did not convince me to stop selling drugs. I got better at it after I got out of jail, but I was convinced I was not a criminal. I was thoroughly convinced of that. The police have to understand that, when they start kicking these people and spitting on them and referring to me as the scum of the earth. They think they are superior. I am talking, "Do you think marijuana will ever be legalized?" "Oh, never. Not in my lifetime." Looking at the Molson's and Labatt's "tumour" hanging over his belt, do you think I respected that? This policeman thinks he does not do drugs. What happened when alcohol became legal? Who was running the alcohol industry prior to legalization? People who were willing to kill the cops in order to sell the alcohol. Later, the taxpayers are paying the police to protect the very people who were trying to kill them.

The Chairman: Can you focus on cannabis?

Mr. Cavalier: I am saying the same phenomenon exists today in relation to cannabis. As soon as you create this notion that marijuana is less harmful, you have legitimized the idea that therefore it is not so bad. If it is not so bad, that is fine. What that does is it reinforces that whole social infrastructure revolving around the use of drugs. That is what it does. It makes it look more attractive. People see flashing dollar signs in their eyes, "Look at how much tax it would generate if only we were to legalize it!" The government ends up becoming the world's biggest drug-dealing industry. We do not need to be collecting taxes on more vices in this country.

The Chairman: Questions?

If not, thank you very much, Mr. Cavalier.

Mr. Cavalier: That is amazing. No questions.

The Chairman: Honourable senators, our next witness is Mr. Sean Hunt.

Mr. Sean Hunt: Thank you for allowing me to speak here today. I had a great deal of trouble deciding what I was going to say here. This topic is so large, and its implications so vast, that it is really hard to know where to begin.

At first I thought I might debate the issues, but what could I bring to the discussion that has not already been heard? What facts have been overlooked? What statistic would refute a point made by those who opposed the legalization of marijuana? It was then that I realized that there is really nothing new to say. This topic has been talked to death. Even when forward-thinking recommendations are made, they are ignored and dismissed, and that is why I am here today to ask this committee for something new.

I am here to ask this committee to be bold and daring and submit a report that supports the total legalization of marijuana for adults, and the establishment of a regulated industry for production and distribution. Anything less will be a timid half measure, and that is something that the Canadian people do not need. Right now, 47 per cent of Canadians support the outright legalization of marijuana, according to Professor Bibby at the University of Lethbridge. That figure is going nowhere but up. With the Senate free from the tyranny of an electorate, from the perceived political ramifications of supporting legal marijuana for adults, you are in a unique position to say what needs to be said about this issue.

There are many obstacles standing in the way of the reform of marijuana laws. One of the three largest is the Canadian Police Association, which has been the most vocal critic at these hearings. On the national level we have political and media indifference, and on the international scene we have the ever-present spectre of the United States.

The Canadian Police Association said a lot of crazy things to this committee, but I think the craziest statement was made a couple of weeks ago at the association's annual meeting in Quebec. According to association president Grant Orbst, all this discussion about marijuana is really a moot point because marijuana has already been decriminalized. He goes on to say that, in real terms, the police in this country do not spend resources or time or energy focused on the individual who has one or two joints in his pocket.

I have one word to say in reply to that statement, and that is "bunk, absolute bunk." Before you is an article which clearly shows a man being arrested, and the caption underneath reads, "Constable Shawn MacKenzie checks the pockets of a man arrested for marijuana possession in Christie Pits park yesterday." In a related article on the next page, you get to see the true state of prohibition affairs in Canada. I call your attention to where it says "Drugs." It says:

Police were busy picking up Toronto's youth on drug charges.

Last year, 550 drug-related charges were laid against youths, up considerably from 1999, and more than double the 269 drug-related charges laid in 1996.

The reason for the increase is not indicated in the police reports, but it is noted that the number of drug charges can be "greatly influenced by police enforcement policies and practices."

The article goes on to say that:

Toronto police note that cannabis-related charges continue to be the most common drug offence.

Young men are the most likely to be arrested.

Clearly, the police do spend resources, they do spend time, and they do spend effort in the enforcement of marijuana laws and the arrest of marijuana users with no end in sight, which brings me to political and media apathy.

We found out recently that the Prime Minister plans to stay on until at least April 2003, so no matter what the conclusions of this committee are, no changes can be expected until then; not from a Prime Minister who has publicly stated that changes to the laws regarding marijuana are not part of the agenda at this time.

The Prime Minister also noted correctly, I might add, that this debate has been going on for 30 years, and he sounded as thouhg he did not care if it went on for 30 more.

There is a lone cry in the political wilderness for change, and the source of this voice should serve to illustrate the need to the committee: the need for a bold statement. Joe Clark has called for the decriminalization of marijuana, which is kind of like your dad calling for the decriminalization of marijuana. When Joe Clark says something like this, you know that legalization and regulation are ideas whose time has come.

This could be made easier if the media in general, and TV in particular, would cover this issue seriously. Treat it for what it is: a serious issue that has a serious effect on the lives of real people.

Right here, I have in front of me a full-page ad or a full-page article taken from The Toronto Star in January, and what do we see here? We see a giant hemp leaf made of hemp seed. We see oils, we see pasta, hemp waffles, and my personal favourite, hemp beer. Imagine: alcohol - a far more destructive and dangerous drug than marijuana has ever been - made from a product that was illegal merely a few years ago. Inside, there is a whole page of recipes. Think of that. Two entire pages of a large paper used to cover marijuana as food.

However, you will notice on the third page of the brief that I have handed out, is probably the largest article that The Toronto Star has produced all year regarding marijuana, and that is an article about a Mexican news story covering Canadian marijuana. Imagine, Mexicans talking about Canadian marijuana is news, but Canadians talking about Canadian marijuana is not. That is truly bizarre.

However, the print media's coverage of marijuana could only be called excellent when put next to television. Television news shows stories about the latest field of marijuana discovered by helicopter, with happy police officers traipsing into the woods, joyfully hacking down the clandestine plantation. No thought as to how much it costs to do all of this, or why we need to go to all this trouble in the first place.

Where are the three-part news series? Where are the health updates telling us, contrary to popular opinion, marijuana and heroin are completely different drugs? Without real discussion and debate in the popular media, marijuana legalization for adults and regulation will have very little chance of moving forward.

This also ties in with the prospect of American retaliation for changing our laws. Recently, the chairman of this very committee stated that to change our laws without the Americans doing so is just about impossible, and if we did, the retaliatory measures would be enormous. Imagine, Canadians not being able to change Canadian laws because the Americans will not let us! If this was any other topic, the howl of outrage heard across the country would have been deafening.

Recently, Jamaica released its so-called "Ganja Report." The report stated nothing new. Marijuana should be decriminalized for adults. However, unlike our Prime Minister, Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson found the arguments quite convincing. Reaction from the U.S. was swift and blunt. "The U.S. Administration opposes the decriminalization of marijuana," stated embassy spokesman Michael Koplovski. He also stated that if Jamaica went forward, it could face decertification, which could severely restrict U.S. aid. However, instead of bowing to the American pressure, the Jamaicans are standing up to the bully. "This is a matter that will be decided by the Jamaican Parliament, and the island's sovereign parliament will not be swayed by any external threat," a senior government official is quoted as saying.

This is the kind of courage we need from this committee and from our government. If anything is to change, we need to stand up to the bully and not be afraid to get a bloody nose. We must stand together with other countries strongly if we are ever to break the stranglehold that the U.S. has over global marijuana policy.

That is why we need this committee to be bold and daring. That is why we, as citizens, need to stand up for our rights, and that is why this committee should recommend the legalization of marijuana for adults and the regulation of supply.

I welcome any questions.

The Chairman: I think Senator Milne has a comment on mixing hemp and marijuana.

Senator Milne: That is right. I have a great deal of reservation whenever people tend to make statements that continue the myth that hemp is marijuana. It is not. It is non-narcotic, and I am the person who is responsible for it again being a legal crop in Canada these days. Part of the problem that hemp has in being received as a legal crop is this constant cross-reference to it with marijuana. It is not marijuana.

Mr. Hunt: I understand completely. This article is really pointing out, is really perpetuating that double standard and I thank you for making hemp a legal crop. It is a good thing that hemp is a legal crop, and I am certain that most Canadians are in favour of it.

The Chairman: It is the law. It is the law of the land.

Mr. Hunt: Yes. This is just an example of how, for example, hemp used to make alcohol is more news than Canadians reporting on Canadian marijuana.

Senator Grafstein: The question I asked earlier this morning; Will decriminalization mean to you that more young people will smoke marijuana and therefore perhaps start to smoke cigarettes? Is there a correlation between the two, smoking and smoking?

Mr. Hunt: What do you mean by "it"? Do you mean decriminalization or legalization?

Senator Grafstein: Either.

Mr. Hunt: It could, possibly. I started smoking cigarettes long before I started using marijuana. I heard a person from the Police Association say that they asked their teenage daughter's friends what would happen if they made pot legal, and they said, "Oh, well, more people would use it," That kind of reminded me of Jimmy Carter asking his daughter Amy for her opinion. It might; and then again, it might not.

A previous witness said that, right now, there are many people who use marijuana but do not talk about it. They do not say "yes" when they are asked on a survey, and so you might see a marginal increase, but I doubt it would be anything significant.

I think people who want to use marijuana, use it now and those who do not, do not, and its legal status is almost secondary. As a matter of fact, its illegal status is almost kind of a sign of it being hip and cool.

The Chairman: Mr. Hunt, thank you very much.

The committee adjourned.