The Other Drug Border

In a world where information, technology, and commodities are constantly moving and crossing borders, it is no wonder governments should care to know what is coming and what is going. It is also no surprise that governments would be concerned about other countries drug policies compared with their own as a result of drugs being a part of those commodities. Though we have to wonder, to what extent does US influence play on other countries drug policies? We constantly hear about cocaine and other drugs coming up through the US-Mexican border, but what we hear less about are the drugs and drug policies coming down from Canada. Furthermore, what we hear virtually none of, is of US influence of Canadian drug policy through physical enforcement, media and economic threats. With the US and Canada being so close, the US cannot continue to run its war on drugs while Canada is trying to look at a more health-issue based approach. I propose that as a result of connected borders, US zero-tolerance influence is slowing the progress of Canadian reform towards a more health-based harm reduction policy.

In order to understand the modern complications of American forces fighting Canadian reform attempts, one has to understand the history of both US and Canadian drug prohibition. It was not long ago when US and Canadian drug policy was practically one in the same. Canada began its drug prohibition much in the same style of the US, yet it formed separately without US interference for many years. In 1908 Canada passed its first anti-opium act shortly after the US had passed its legislation to try and curb Chinese immigrant opium smoking (Geber 122). This first act concentrated on only opium, but would eventually move on to cover all narcotics with the Canadian Opium and Narcotic Drug Act of 1929, thus suggesting that Canada has not assumed a follower, but a leader's position in drug policy (Gerber 122). Continuing through the history of US and Canadian drug usage, a lot of similarities can be seen. With the waves of drug usage being similar in style (ie: heroin usage spiking in the 1950s, hallucinogen and marijuana usage spiking in the 1960s and 1970, and finally cocaine usage in the 1980s) it is no wonder that US and Canadian drug laws would also be produced at the same time, with similar controls in mind. Although the media had always portrayed it to seem as if the Canadian drug problem was just as severe as the US drug problem, throughout all of these spikes, the usage per capita was always higher in the US (Gerber 122). With drug usage spikes being similar (in relation to the popular drug of the time) in both the US and Canada, response to the problem was also similar in that both countries invested their efforts in enforcement and criminal legislation rather than putting resources into prevention, education and treatment (Erickson & Ottaway).

At the beginning of the 1980s, Canada's drug laws were some of the toughest in Western democracies (Gerber 122). Yet, in 1982 Canada introduced The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which set up protections for the individual rights of drug users and sellers. This was the beginning of a movement towards a more understanding and health-issue related Canadian drug policy. In 1986 when then US President Ronald Reagan turned up the heat on the war on drugs, then Prime Minister of Canada, Brian Mulroney, began to sweat. Two days later Mulroney made an announcement stating, "drug abuse has become an epidemic that undermines our economic as well as our social fabric." All this despite surveys showing that the drug use in Canada had been on the decline since 1981, in response to Mulroney, a government official replied, "When Mulroney made that statement, then we had to make it a problem" (Gerber 123). So while it seemed that Canada would be jumping back on the US zero-tolerance bandwagon, this is actually where the two begin to diverge.

The new Canadian National Drug Strategy (NDS) was announced in May of 1987. The new plan aimed to be much more focused on harm-reduction programs and less on arresting and prosecuting individual users (Fischer). Canada took on the drug problem with Health Canada stating that "substance abuse is primarily a health issue" and would look into setting up safe-needle injection sites, investing money into treatment rather than enforcement, and education efforts (Health Canada). Soon Canada's policies seemed to be taking a "radical" new approach to the Americans right across the border, or was it that America was just falling behind on its approach?

While it may not be completely black and white to see the effect that American pressure has or has had on Canadian drug policy, there are observable accounts of the influence. Ranging from Canadian law enforcement responding to US media attention, to outright economic threats to Canada, the evidence is there. In 1998, US State Department officials threatened to blacklist Canada as a country, "lax on the war on drugs," After much disproval was expressed by Canadian officials, the US retracted its statement, but Canada still took notice (Gerber 127). "We can't seem to get beyond the repressive American policy on drugs...If we were to reform our laws, it would put tremendous pressure on U.S. lawmakers to do the same. So we maintain this cowardly insistence of being little foot soldiers to the American war on drugs," explains lawyer Alan Young in response to the US's empty threat (Gerber 128).

In another example of the US influence on Canadian policy, one can look at the case of a Canadian student caught with marijuana in school. In 1998 the student was searched in the presence of his principal and an RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) officer, they found a small bag of marijuana hidden in his sock. The case was appealed to the supreme court after he had been acquitted by lower courts, where they ruled in favor of the school officials. The supreme court pointed to a 1985 US Supreme Court decision ruling that allowed for the search of students if there is a "reasonable suspicion." The student was therefor tried again on the same charges in a lower court (Gerber 130).

Canadian policy makers have also felt indirect pressure from the US through the United Nations. In the summer of 1998 the UN Drug Summit was held and Canada was nowhere to be found (Gerber 133). Instead, Canadian lawyers, professors, ministers of Parliament and other high ranking officials sent a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan declaring that "the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself." It was signed off by 80 different Canadian officials and 40 foreign officials (Gerber 133). US Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey would soon follow with statements saying "there is a carefully camoflaged, exorbitantly funded, well-heeled elitist group whose ultimate goal is to legalize drug use in the United States" and "these individuals perpetrate a fraud on the American people, a fraud so devious that even some of the nation's most respectable newspapers and sophisticated media are capable of echoing their falsehoods." Though it seems that these statements ignored that the signatories were from more than 40 countries and that the letter was written towards the UN, not the US (Gerber 134). It seemed as if, according to McCaffrey, US drug policy was indistinguishable from that of UN policy. This outrageous claim by McCaffrey shows how the US uses the UN as a vehicle through which it can impose its own drug policies.

Evidence of US pressure on Canadian Law enforcement exists in many cases, but none more obvious than in the case of Hemp BC and 3 of its employees, Marc Emery, Greg Williams and Michelle Rainey. Hemp BC began in the early 1990s selling smoking paraphernalia, hemp clothing, literature and viable cannabis seeds. The store owner, Marc Emery, began taking his profits and putting them into Canadian political reform groups supporting the legalization of marijuana. In December of 1995 an article was published in the Wall Street Journal by Quentin Hardy titled, "Pot Seed Merchant, Winked at by Police, Prospers in Canada." Exactly one month after the article was published, Hemp BC was raided by RCMP officials, Emery received no jail time but instead was fined (Gerber 131). In October of 1997, Hemp BC was featured on the American CNN program, "Impact." The program claimed that the Vancouver police had a "tolerant attitude" towards Hemp BC and Marc Emery. The report finished with the CNN correspondent stating, "US Customs Service and Border Patrol believe Canada should move toward the US Policy of zero tolerance about marijuana." Hemp BC then would appear in the New York Times twice in November of 1997 (Gerber 132). Shortly after on December 16, 1997 Hemp BC was raided by Vancouver City police, once again no jail time. Marc Emery would go on to appear in Rolling Stone Magazine in April of 1998, and by the end of the month, Hemp BC would once again be raided. Successive American media appearances would also lead to raids on Hemp BC and Marc Emery though none resulted in jail time. Hemp BC would not be able to obtain another business license so Emery opened another store under his political party's name, The British Columbia Marijuana Party (BCMP) (Gerber 133) .

The BCMP would go 6 years without a raid until on July 29, 2005 Emery and his employees, Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams would all be raided and arrested by the RCMP in conjunction with US DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) officers ("Marc Emery"). The DEA would arrest the BC3, as they're nicknamed, and plan to extradite them to America to be tried under US law for distributing seeds from Canada to America. While the most Hemp BC ever faced in Canada was a 200 dollar fine, as determined by the BC Supreme Court in 2000, they would be tried for extradition to the US to face up to life imprisonment ("No Extradition"). US officials estimated Emery had made over 3 million dollars from marijuana seed sales, and records show Emery donated millions of dollars back to marijuana legalization efforts. While it is understandable that the US would want to target a seed vendor selling to Americans, it is also important to note that Emery is only one of hundreds of Canadian vendors selling to the US, but he is the only one with his foot in political waters ("Marc Emery"). A quote by the then DEA Administrator Karen Tandy shows the political motivation, "Today's DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture Magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group, is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the US and Canada, but also the marijuana legalization movement. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery's illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the United States and Canada. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on." Their extradition hearing has been continually delayed and will take place on January 21st, 2008. At the hearing a BC Supreme Court will decide whether or not to turn the BC3 over to the US where they will be tried again as drug kingpins (under US law, 1 seed=1plant, the BC3 has sold over millions of seeds) ("No Extradition"). This example of the US physically entering and attempting to remove a Canadian citizen, that was seen as less than a problem by Canadian officials, is the most dramatic example of US attempts at influencing Canadian drug policy to date.

Now that the interaction between US policy and Canadian policy can be seen in a clearer light, there still leaves the question, why should we reform our laws, why shouldn't we want Canada to be tough on drugs? Simply put, after nearly 100 years of continuing drug wars, and after 35 years of a much more extensive drug war, criminalizing drugs does not work. Harm-Reduction policies have been found to be a much more effective use of our resources. Every year we spend billions of dollars on a war that has had no influence on the use, distribution, violence, or adverse affects related to drug use. Under a Harm-Reduction system, citizens are educated on drug's dangers and given treatment for addiction, rather than criminalized and jailed. Examples of successful harm-reduction strategies are popping up all over the globe ranging from Canada to Australia. The US is among the highest consumers of drugs, yet has the harshest penalties, and as a result while the US only has 5% of the world population, it holds 25% of the world's prisoners. The American approach to the drug war must end now, and we must stop holding our neighbors back from a system that we know is more effective.

Works Cited
Erickson, P. & Ottaway, C. (1994). "Policy-Alcohol and Other Drugs." In P. Nathan, J. Langenbucher, B. McCrady, & W. Frankenstein (Eds.), Annual Review of Addictions Research and Treatment 3:331-341. New York: Elsevier
Fischer, B. (1998). "Prohibition as the Art of Political Diplomacy: The Benign Guises of the 'War on Drugs,' in Canada." In E. Jensen and J. Gerber (Eds.), The New War on Drugs: Symbolic Politics and Criminal Justice Policy. Cincinnati: Anderson Publishing Co. and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.
Gerber, Jurg. Drug War American Style. 2001. New York: Garland Publishing, 2001.
Health Canada. (1998). Canada's Drug Strategy. Ottawa: Minister of Public Works.
"Marc Emery Gets High on the Seeds of Activism." 5 Sept. 2006. National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws-Canada. 1 Dec. 2007.

"No Extradition for the BC3!" November 2007. Cannabis Culture 1 Dec. 2007.