Random Thoughts on Drug Policy

I have been thinking about writing on drug policy for awhile but have not been able to develop a framework for my thoughts so I decided to just set them out randomly and see if they organize themselves.

This is written in a Canadian context but will likely apply to other jurisdictions as well. This post is not about medical or prescription drug policy but about the non-medical or recreational use of drugs including drug addiction and what is often referred to as drug abuse.

The first thing to note is that drug addiction is the only medical condition that has been criminalized and the only medical condition that people think can be cured or controlled with only will power.

Have we learned any lessons and will we pay attention to them. I suggest we know that prohibition does not work and education does.

From 1918 to 1920 in Canada and 1920 to 1923 in the United States prohibition of alcohol sales and consumption was enacted. While well intentioned (sparked partly by the effect of drunkenness on the family resulting in families housing and food money being spent on alcohol as swell as the rise in domestic violence) it only made the situation worse by driving the production and sale of alcohol into the hands of organized crime.

On the other hand there was never any talk of tobacco prohibition, even after it’s health effects were well known, mainly due to it’s widespread use in society. What worked instead to reduce consumption was education. While some people did quit smoking the major reduction, from a large majority of people smoking to a small minority of people smoking, was from people not taking up smoking, which is why it took at least two generations to get to where we are now.

However the tobacco/nicotine industry is not ready to fade away. They have promoted vaping, ostensibly as a way for people to give up smoking and as a safer alternative to tobacco, which it may be. However it is clear their real intention is to create a new younger market of people addicted to their products. We need a serious education campaign about the tobacco industry’s true intentions here and the dangers of vaping.

What about marijuana. At one time, at least in Canada, marijuana was legally classed as a narcotic although pharmacologically it is not one. Indeed, marijuana is clearly less harmful than tobacco and arguably less harmful than alcohol. Partly for that reason, although probably more because of it’s increased middle class use, attitudes and laws have changed. It is now available through a legal market, although for purposes of the legal market the scientific name cannabis is now used and anyone with previous marijuana “marketing” experience cannot be involved in the legal sale of cannabis. That is not to say that there are no health concerns, particularly for people under 25, and education about them should be extensive, although certainly not of the inaccurate “Reefer Madness” type. Health Canada has useful and rational information on the health effects of cannabis and other drugs on it’s website.

One major thing legalized cannabis use has done is take the market way from organized crime and reduced the amount of police resources devoted to it.

Then came the opioid crisis and it seemed that people were ready to accept that drug addiction is something that happens to people rather than something they choose. But it soon became apparent that only applied to the middle class where the pushers were the medical system and the dealers the pharmaceutical industry.

We see the same class distinction with harder drugs. Cocaine use by the wealthy class at fancy parties in their lavish homes is glamorized while crack cocaine use by the poor is demonized (unless you are the mayor of a major North American city, then it is just a curiosity).

We even see harm reduction aimed at saving live attacked by the middle class.

What is most puzzling is the objection to safe injection and use sites where users can use drugs safely with clean equipment and dispose of it safely. It seems that people prefer people using drugs on the streets and in parks leaving behind dangerous needles than people being able to do it somewhere without risking their lives.

Safe supply is perhaps even more controversial but it definitely safes lives by ensuring users are using the drug they are addicted to and not given more dangerous and laced deadly drugs. It also requires them to interact with medical professionals that can help them get off the drugs or switch to safer methadone as a transition away from drugs altogether.

And of course it takes a market away from organized crime and frees up police resources and funds that can be more effectively used for health and social services.

The main argument against harm reduction seems to be the idea that the more dangerous you make drug use the more likely people will be to quit, but addiction does not work that way. It more likely just a nicer way of saying “the only good addict is a dead addict”.

This is the point where people usually say what if that was your child, or sibling or someone you know that fell on hard times, but that is not relevant. What is relevant is that drug users are fellow human beings and their lives have value.

Mind Your Own Business

If you work for Siemens Building Technologies and you see people breaking the law, and they are doing it right beside a sign advising them that they are breaking the law, it is best to keep your mouth shut. Otherwise, one of the lawbreakers might report you and you could be fired, especially if the law being broken is a health regulation and the lawbreaker works for Health Canada.

This Could Be You

Random Observations

OC Transpo Screws Up Scheduling On First Days Back

On the first Saturday and Sunday of post-strike service OC Transpo managers, the people who want to take more control over OC Transpo scheduling, screwed it up so that drivers ended up being paid overtime, even though the system is at reduced capacity and drivers are sharing limited working hours.

As the Ottawa Citizen reported “Under questioning from River Councillor Maria McRae, OC Transpo director, Alain Mercier, said when the company made up schedules for drivers returning to work, an error was made and extra drivers had to be called in to cover all the routes.”

Pete Seeger Receives Apology – Better Late Than Never

As the CBC reported:

Nearly a half century ago, amid suspicion and fears of McCarthyism, folk singer Pete Seeger faced an ultimatum from the San Diego school district: Sign an oath against communism or cancel a concert he planned at a high school auditorium.

Seeger, who at the time of the board's demand was under scrutiny for his leftist politics, refused to sign the oath. A judge allowed the concert to proceed anyway.

Decades later, the school board wants to make amends. In a resolution approved Tuesday night, the school district declared that the board "deeply regrets its predecessors' actions" and offered an apology to a man who has become "one of our dearest national treasures."

The 89-year-old songwriter appears willing to accept the board's apology, saying the board's resolution is a "measure of justice that our right to freedom of expression has been vindicated."

E-Cigs – I Got Spammed

As one who thinks that smoking is not cool, but a disgusting habit, I really do not know what to make of this. A SPAM message about this was posted as a response to my post about the Economic Crisis Opportunity. I have deleted it but I do not know what to make of it. Is this a legitimate form of harm reduction or a tool to quit smoking, or just a SCAM. The proponent seem to be marketing it to anyone and everyone, from those that think smoking is cool to those that want to quit, and are clearly only interested in the profit they can make from selling this product.

Canadian Poll Results and Electoral Projections – ThreeHundredEight.com

I was recently asked to promote this website so I went to take a look at it. It reports on Canadian electoral polling and uses a weighting system to predict election results.

I have not analysed their methodology but I doubt if my one Poli Sci statistics course would qualify me to do so anyway. This is a really interesting idea and the site is worthwhile, just to be able to find all the different polling results in one place.

Phasing Out Tobacco

A United States Senator has an interesting idea.

U.S. Senator Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., has proposed a tobacco-control plan that cuts to the chase and simply orders companies to get fewer people to smoke. With roots in the regulation of power plant emissions and the educational reform act known as No Child Left Behind, Enzi's idea is that government would set performance goals for tobacco companies to meet. Instead of conventional "command and control" regulation -- in which government regulators tell people what to do -- under "outcome-based regulation," government tells them what to achieve.

How would tobacco firms comply? They could raise prices, promote cessation aids, sell nontobacco competitive products or innovate in ways we can't imagine. What to do and how to do it is their decision to make.

Under the senator's plan, tobacco companies would be required to reduce their U.S. customer base by approximately 90 percent over two decades. At the end of that period, our country could be down to an incredibly low smoking rate of about 2 percent, an ambitious target. Companies that failed to meet performance goals would face whopping financial penalties, making it fiscally more attractive for them to lose smokers than to gain new ones.

So is this feasible and how would it be done.

The tobacco industry is very much like the oil and gas industry - it is a dying industry with an addicted customer base that will pay almost anything for the product. In both cases, one for environmental and the other for health reasons, they know they have to phase themselves out. The oil and gas industry also knows it has a limited supply of resources. Virtually every oil and gas company has established an alternative and renewable energy component to eventually replace it’s fossil fuel production, in large part from the revenues from higher gasoline prices that they know their automobile dependant customer base will pay no matter what..

The tobacco industry should do what the oil and gas industry has done - not react to it’s decline but be “pro-active” and plan for it.

The tobacco industry could use additional profits from higher prices that it knows it’s addicted customers will pay to move into moral alternatives to tobacco production and sales. Higher prices will deter new customers which will help it achieve its mandated goal, not to mention the fact that enticing people to become addicted to tobacco is about as immoral as you can get.

Governments should immediately remove tobacco taxation from the general revenue stream (Consolidated Revenue Fund) so as not to be dependent on a tax base that it is attempting to phase out. The funds could be dedicated to a fund to pay for tobacco related health costs that will eventually decline over time. Some of it could also go into incentive payments to tobacco companies that lower their sales faster than the mandated targets.

This would all be in addition to government regulations prohibiting cigarette advertising, sales to minors and smoking in public.

Bus Business Butt Ban

Well actually it's a "OC Transpo transit property smoking ban" but "Bus Business Butt Ban" alliterates better.

It's a little late for me now that I am retired, but I remember waiting at the bus stop and how annoying it was trying to avoid smokers. If I can smell the stuff I'm breathing it and and suffering the health consequences.

Indeed, The Canadian Cancer Society reports:

January 2006 - A new study by Canadian Cancer Society researcher Dr Roberta Ferrence may make it more difficult to smoke in outdoor public places.

The Toronto-based researcher is studying the behavior of smokers and non-smokers in outdoor public places in order to encourage new legislation and new designs that will limit outdoor smoking.

“The fact is that there are substantial health hazards from second-hand tobacco smoke exposure outdoors as well as indoors,” says Dr Ferrence, who is also the director of the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit. “This means that we must start thinking about how to protect people from second-hand smoke when they’re in outdoor public places.”

Credit goes to OC Transpo for increasing its protection of transit users from second hand smoke.

Quitting Smoking Can Kill You and Global Warming is a Myth

Yes it is true - “giving up smoking can kill you”, and not only that, not smoking causes “neurotic depression, violent irritability, and obscene weight gain”, not to mention the fact that increased tobacco consumption is responsible for longer life expectancies.

Who would claim that - David Warren, writing in the Ottawa Citizen citing an article in Medical Hypotheses a non-peer reviewed journal in which authors pay to be published.

He also states:

“There is one more hypothesis with which I would like to leave my reader. It is that the kind of quack "science" that was used to ban smoking has now mutated into the kind that is used to flog global warming. It should have been resisted then; it should certainly be resisted now.”

It appears that Mr. Warren thinks that if he can convince us that smoking is good for us we will also believe that global warming is a myth.

And, just for the record, the Canadian Cancer Society states:

Health benefits of quitting

All kinds of smokers – men and women, young or old – can get health benefits from quitting. The minute you stop smoking, your body begins to clean itself of tobacco poisons. Here’s how:

* Within 8 hours, carbon monoxide levels drop in your body and oxygen levels in your blood increases.
* After 2 days, your sense of smell and taste begin to improve.
* Within 2 weeks to 3 months, your lungs work better making it easier to breathe.
* After 6 months, coughing, sinus congestion, tiredness and shortness of breath improve.
* After 1 year, your risk of a smoking-related heart attack is reduced by half.

The younger you are when you quit the greater the health benefits.

Quit and reduce the risk of cancer

Quit now and reduce the risk of developing cancer. In general, the longer you don't smoke the more you lower your risk.

* Within 10 years of quitting, the overall risk of an ex-smoker dying from lung cancer is cut in half.
* After 10 years, the overall risk of an ex-smoker developing cancer approaches that of a non-smoker.