The criminalization of drugs creates more crime than it prevents

Posted on June 25, 2023 in Child & Family Debates

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TheStar.com – Opinion/Contributors
June 25, 2023.    By Reid Rusonik, Contributor

Instead of treating illegal drug use as a public health issue we waste millions of dollars trying to treat it as a criminal issue.

No country would declare war against an enemy after giving it money to buy weapons and raise an army.

Yet that is precisely what we are doing in our war on drugs.

People do not use illegal drugs because of their high cost, but suppliers only supply them because of that cost.

What makes illicit drugs so costly isthe fact that they are illegal.

Our law is the cause of that cost.

The drugs we criminalize are dirt cheap to produce, transport and distribute.

The mark up comes from the surcharges added for taking the risk to produce, transport (import) and distribute (traffic) as well as the lengthy jail sentences if you are caught doing any of them.

The profits are extraordinary. The promise of sharing in these extraordinary profits ensures easy recruitment of soldiers for the illegal drug industry’s army. And it is a frighteningly well-armed army.

In fact, nothing contributes more to the illegal trade in firearms in Canada than the illegal drug industry.

It is an extraordinarily profitable industry and therefore is extraordinarily competitive. This is because it has a limited market.

Only so many Canadians use illegal drugs. And of them, only so many have the means or the will to acquire the means to pay for drugs.

To keep prices high and to increase market share, the competition is constantly under the threat of actual elimination, resulting in wanton and indiscriminate violence.

And so the criminalization of drugs, therefore, does is not nearlypreventing crime so much as it is creating crime — everything from petty thefts and break and enters by small time users desperate for a fix to multiple homicides carried out to protect or win turf wars.

When was the last time anyone claimed we were winning the war on drugs? We are not winning it. We are perpetually losing it because we are the enemy’s greatest ally.

Illegal drug use is, always has been, and always will be a public health issue. Legal drugs are consumed to get through life — or simply escape life’s despair. Users inevitably end up addicted.

This is a public health issue and instead of treating it as such, we waste incalculable millions trying to treat it as a criminal issue.

So why do we not scrap the whole insane criminalization strategy and decriminalize all drugs?

Profits.

This insane war goes on largely because it is extremely lucrative and creates jobs — for the police and for the rest of the criminal justice system, including judges and jailers and lawyers (like me).

We are all paying our mortgages at the expense of a sound public health policy and we will protest vehemently if our ability to do so is threatened.

But this senseless war must end. Like all wars, it has bred rampant corruption among many of its enforcers and a denigration of our fundamental liberties. And it has bred terrible misery.

It needs to be replaced with a war on poverty and support for and with a war for public health. Then, hopefully we can banish the underlying despair that feeds illegal drug use in the first place.

Reid Rusonik, criminal defence lawyer, Rusonik, O’Connor, Robbins, Ross & Angelini, LLP

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2023/06/25/the-criminalization-of-drugs-creates-more-crime-than-it-prevents.html

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