Mr. Speaker, I have been listening closely to the debate. I congratulate the member for Nanaimo—Cowichan for his informed remarks.
I took note of the latter reference in the remarks to the medical use of marijuana, but I have to say that this is an infinitesimally small piece of whatever this problem is. In the overall scheme of what we are dealing with today, marijuana has to be very low in priority. In my own personal view I am not too sure why it even shows up on the Richter scale. However, it is an illegal substance in our law now. Let us focus on the big picture.
We all know the costs of illegal drug use. There are of course the huge costs of lost lives, the policing costs, costs of prosecution in the courts and sentencing in our institutions, incarceration costs, rehabilitation costs, medical treatment costs, the costs of theft of goods, break and enters in homes, thefts of automobiles, the VCR, and the jewellery. How many grandmother's rings have been stolen in the last year by people stealing to pay for a drug habit? It is an epidemic.
There are also corruption costs. In some quarters our society is being undermined by the sheer corruption of the organized crime that drives the illegal drug trade. If left unchecked it will undermine our society, as it has some other societies around the world. It is insidious. So far we have been lucky but we should not take our luck for granted.
The costs of needle sharing are huge. One statistic I have here covers injection drug use, with all the harm it causes, such as overdosing, HIV, hepatitis and other communicable pathogens, suicides, abscesses, infections, poor nutrition and endocarditis.
An estimate for all the direct and indirect costs for only injection drug use is $8.7 billion over a six year period. That is principally related to HIV-AIDS. The costs related to hepatitis C that comes from injection drug use are anticipated to overtake even the costs of treating HIV-AIDS over the years.
These are huge costs which we as a society are now bearing or are about to bear. I do not think anyone has truly added up the costs. Is there one minister in the House whose responsibility it is to add up the costs of illegal drug use? The Minister of Health will have a perspective. The solicitor general will have a perspective. The customs and revenue agency will have a perspective. There are a lot of perspectives.
My taxpayer constituents do not have the total number, but it is huge. I am sure most members in the House will agree with that. We do not even know what the total is. What cost do we put on a young life snuffed out by illegal drug use?
I maintain that we have to radically change the way we look at illegal drug use. We must radically change it because the methods we are using now are virtually the same methods we have used for the last 75 or 100 years. Essentially they involve criminalizing the use of certain drugs.
There will be some real restraints in changing the way we deal with this. I know that and most members of the House know that. I am sure that by the end of this debate, maybe by the end of my own remarks, there may be some phone calls to my constituency office. I do not know. However, I am suggesting that we have to radically change the way we look at this if we are to make any progress as a society. I think we are afraid to change. Some of us are and some of us are not, but I think a lot of us are afraid to change the way we look at drugs.
There is another constraint. We as a country are bound into certain international treaties that oblige us to criminalize possession or use of certain drugs. We as a country are a good boy scout. We criminalize it, we prosecute it and we follow the other countries in these international conventions. That does not give us much freedom. We have to be bold and take the initiative. We do not have to reject the treaties, but we have to find ways to find new approaches.
Our neighbour to the south, the U.S.A., is a constraint, believe it or not. The way the U.S.A. treats this issue is the same way it has treated it for 75 or 100 years. It is based on enforcement and interdiction. That is not working. It is not working there and it is not working here. It is imported across our border just about the same way that a lot of other things are imported across our border. I am not talking about the drugs. I am talking about the policy, the method of enforcement.
It is difficult for us here to do things in a way that is radically different from the way policing and medical counterparts deal with it across the border, but we have to find a way to do it.
Lastly, we have to look at our own attitudes toward these drugs. Why do we criminalize certain drugs? Is it that the drug removes some degree of sobriety? Is it that individuals get a bit of a buzz with marijuana? Is that the evil thing? However, maybe that is the same thing that alcohol does. We do not criminalize alcohol.
Is it that some drugs are addictive? Is it evil because it is addictive? Possibly, but cigarette tobacco is addictive. It is just about as addictive as a drug can get. We do not criminalize tobacco, but we can identify the drug, it is addictive and we sell it in corner stores.
It is not intrinsically sobriety or addictedness that is the key to why we criminalize. I do not think we know why we criminalize certain drugs, but it is in our law and we just cannot change. However we have to, we must, find a way to break out of that paradigm. If we do not, we will not find any new solutions and we will stay on the same track we have been on since the years of prohibition.
I will suggest that we make a significant change. We do not have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We will have to maintain strict laws and strict enforcement. For those who distribute, for those who create the stuff, for those who break the laws, we will maintain strictness. We cannot forget that we are dealing with organized crime as a business. Organized crime is driving virtually the entire gamut of illegal drug use.
We must keep the dynamic in mind. The dynamic is not that people intrinsically as individuals walk out and seek addictive drugs. The problem is that a businessman, a criminal, is bringing in the drug and marketing it to the individual. That is the most important part of this dynamic.
Am I suggesting that we legalize drugs? No.
Mr. Speaker, I notice that you have been indicating the passage of time. It is not my intention to split my time. I would like to continue and if there is some time left perhaps my colleague could use that.