Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to participate in the debate on Bill C-475, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (methamphetamine and ecstasy), which stands in the name of the member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country. I also want to express my appreciation for his putting this bill forward and giving us the opportunity to debate drug policy once again here in the House of Commons.
Let me say at the outset that New Democrats will be supporting this bill to get it to committee where it can be carefully examined once again. I say that even though I do have concerns about this legislation and the kind of direction it espouses and supports.
I do have very serious concerns about the criminal justice model of dealing with drugs in our society. I believe it has been a colossal failure, frankly. We need to be moving to a health issue model of dealing with drug use in our society. There are a lot of examples of how the criminal justice model has failed us. It has failed to deal with the problems of drug use in our society. It has failed to find any major improvement in that situation over many years of dealing with it.
The parallels to alcohol prohibition are absolutely clear when we consider drug prohibition in our society. I have spoken at length about that in the House on previous occasions. When we take a careful look at alcohol prohibition and compare that to drug prohibition, we are going to see an exact parallel in terms of the kinds of social problems that were evident, especially in the United States during the period of alcohol prohibition.
Those problems have an exact parallel to the experience we have today under drug prohibition. Very basic things like grow ops in homes and the problems they cause to housing, the problems they cause to neighbourhoods were very evident in the 1920s during alcohol prohibition in the United States. People had illegal stills all over the place and caused serious problems, including fires when the stills exploded. The family dislocation for a crime that was considered illegal and, therefore, underground was very similar in the 1920s as it is today around drug prohibition and the stigma that goes along with drug use. They are things like the activities of organized crime. They are infamous. There are many stories about the organized crime activities related to alcohol in the period of alcohol prohibition in the United States, which have an exact parallel to the illegal drug activities that we see in our society today.
We have to carefully examine that. We have to look to the example that we have established with the policies on alcohol restriction, that we allow its use in our society and apply that to what we know about drugs. Indeed, other jurisdictions have done that already. Portugal is an excellent example of significant change and improvement in this area.
It is interesting that we are having this debate today because this afternoon I was able to meet with students who are visiting members of Parliament here on the Hill about the whole issue of drug policy. I met with two representatives of Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy. That is a national grassroots organization composed of student groups at secondary and post-secondary schools across Canada. The various chapters of Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy are encouraged to mobilize around drug-related issues that are important to their members and their communities. Their projects range from open peer drug and alcohol education, to public awareness campaigns, to lobbying MPs, as they were doing today. They were lobbying MPs for smart, sustainable, viable drug policies.
There is a chapter of Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy at Simon Fraser University in my constituency of Burnaby—Douglas.
One of the things the folks from Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy were asking today is whether I, as an MP, was ready for Canada to move toward honest and non-judgmental youth drug education. I was able to answer that with a resounding “yes”. They are doing an anonymous survey. They are keeping tally of what MPs told them. I am proud to go public and say that I do support the goals of their campaign around this and that I believe that honest and non-judgmental drug education is something that is absolutely crucial for youth in Canada.
When they talk about drug education and the kind of education and information that youth and young people need in Canada, they break it down into a number of categories. I want to go through some of the documentation they have provided to show what another vision of moving toward a better situation with regard to drug use in our society might look like. They break down three categories in drug education. They talk about the need for honesty, the need for prevention and the need for a non-judgemental approach.
With regard to honesty, there are a number of side issues that they think should be covered. They believe it is important to talk about drugs as a serious issue, but they also believe we should do it in a way that does not exaggerate the negative effects that drugs and alcohol can have on an individual family or community. They believe young people, especially those with any experience of drug use, are aware of this because of their experience and intimate knowledge of that. However, they believe it is very important to create an honest, respectful dialogue so young people are given the opportunity to discuss these issues with their peers.
In terms of honesty, they also believe we need to make it clear that drugs are a part of life. It is undeniable. We use drugs in all kinds of different situations. It is not just illicit drugs in this case, but many other kinds of drugs are used freely and appropriately in our society. There is an important aspect of recognizing that. This is not about promoting drug use; it is a recognition of their place in our lives and in our society.
They believe it is important to point out that illegal drugs are not always dangerous and that legal drugs are not always safe. We know there is much abuse of prescription drugs and there is often much misunderstanding about the effects of these drugs. They believe this needs to be part of the conversation about drug use. It cannot always be on the one side around so-called illicit drugs. We need a broader appreciation of legal drugs that are available and used in our society.
They also say we should talk about use and abuse not being the same thing. Young people know, in any conversation about drug use, from their experience of how we use drugs and alcohol in our society, that there are ways to use them appropriately and ways to use them inappropriately. They know there is a difference between having a glass of wine at dinner and having a glass of wine at breakfast. They see adults and others making those kinds of decisions all the time and that approach needs to be part of the kind of conversation we have drug education.
With regard to prevention, they have a number of points in that general area as well. They point out that not using drugs is the only way to completely avoid the risk of drugs. Abstaining from drug use is the best way to avoid the individual risks of each substance and this has to be a key part of any discussion. We do not want to avoid talking about that.
We also need to talk honestly about preventing problematic drug use. We have to recognize that often young people will do risky things whether we want them to or not, but we have to find a way to engage those young people who already take those kinds of risks. As part of that, harm reduction needs to be part of the conversation. We have to ensure that young people who make those choices know how to reduce the harm that they do, having made that decision. This does not necessarily mean encouraging the use of drugs. It means ensuring young people who make those choices have appropriate information. A lot of good work has been done in the whole area of harm reduction to make it very clear why this is a very effective strategy.
They also want to talk about delaying first use. For youth who think of using drugs, they believe it is important that drug education stress the importance of delaying first use in a non-judgmental fashion. If people make those decisions, they need to make them at a point in their life when they have the information at their fingertips and the background they need to make those kinds of decisions.
Finally, in their category of non-judgmental approach, they point out some things that should be fairly obvious to us. They point out that drug use is not a moral failing. They point out the need for inclusive and respective dialogue. They point out the need for creating stronger peer groups. They say we keep safer sex, why not safer drug use.
There is a great approach here and I would hope we might pay more attention to this alternative approach to dealing with substance use in our society.