{"id":14642,"date":"2012-04-17T08:07:58","date_gmt":"2012-04-17T13:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=14642"},"modified":"2012-04-17T10:12:51","modified_gmt":"2012-04-17T15:12:51","slug":"stephen-harper-admits-the-current-drug-war-approach-is-not-working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/04\/17\/stephen-harper-admits-the-current-drug-war-approach-is-not-working\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Harper admits the current drug war approach is “not working”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay, pretty pedestrian stuff for most Canadians, but an amazing admission<\/a> for one of Canada’s foremost and outspoken drug warriors to make:<\/p>\n

\n

Harper met Canadian journalists and readily admitted differences over the exclusion of Cuba from the Latin summit. He admitted, too, to a disagreement over British rule in the Falkland Islands.<\/p>\n

But he was not ready to agree that the division over drug policy is so clear-cut. Rather, he insisted that there is much agreement. Then came the most interesting quote of the day.<\/p>\n

“What I think everybody believes,” Harper said, “is that the current approach is not working. But it is not clear what we should do.”<\/p>\n

This would be intriguing from any prime minister. From Stephen Harper, whose government’s crime bill ratchets up the penalties for drug possession, it was startling.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But don’t worry, Conservative hard-liners: after that brief slip into honest talk about the ongoing failure of drug prohibition, he quickly rallied and got back to the standard drug warrior talking points:<\/p>\n

\n

Lest anyone think he’d undergone a conversion in Cartagena, Harper quickly added the other side of the story.<\/p>\n

Drugs, he said, “are illegal because they quickly and totally \u2014 with many of the drugs \u2014 destroy people’s lives.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Update<\/b>: Chris Selley<\/a> reads the tea leaves and thinks there’s a hint in Harper’s words that may indicate a slight improvement:<\/p>\n

\n

So, there\u2019s the same old lunacy. Ending alcohol prohibition was a pretty \u201csimple answer,\u201d wasn\u2019t it? One doesn\u2019t hear many regrets about it nowadays. It is amazing that it still needs to be said, but one more time: Prohibition ensures the overall supply of any given drug will be far more dangerous, if not more addictive, than it would be otherwise. Criminals have only made as much money trafficking drugs, only killed as many scores of thousands of people as they have, because those drugs are illegal. And in light of this, cracking down on otherwise law-abiding people for growing and distributing small amounts of marijuana is patently insane.<\/p>\n

Still, if we parse Mr. Harper\u2019s words closely \u2014 perhaps too closely \u2014 we find him arguing that \u201cmany\u201d drugs \u201cdestroy people\u2019s lives,\u201d which implies that some don\u2019t. If the \u201ccurrent approach is not working,\u201d as Mr. Harper says, and if \u201cthere is a willingness\u201d to consider other approaches \u2026 well, what else can we possibly be talking about except, at the very least, lightening up on pot?<\/p>\n

Most likely, of course, this was just situational rhetoric. If Mr. Harper was going to go temporarily squishy on drugs, it would be among presidents and prime ministers whose constituents are slaughtered to feed Mr. Harper\u2019s constituents\u2019 habits. Central and South American leaders grow weary of this, as you might imagine.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, pretty pedestrian stuff for most Canadians, but an amazing admission for one of Canada’s foremost and outspoken drug warriors to make: Harper met Canadian journalists and readily admitted differences over the exclusion of Cuba from the Latin summit. He admitted, too, to a disagreement over British rule in the Falkland Islands. But he was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9,10],"tags":[119,199,258],"class_list":["post-14642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-law","category-liberty","tag-drugs","tag-prohibition","tag-stephenharper"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3Oa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14642"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14651,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14642\/revisions\/14651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}