Derek Lee

[Supply, May 17th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I do not underestimate for a moment the amount of money involved in illegal marijuana growing and trafficking. However we cannot convert marijuana to cocaine.

I understand the member's analogy about what goes out and what comes back. However people who use marijuana do not inject the drug. The basic marijuana usage we are thinking about in this issue does not involve addiction or injection drugs.

I am wildly speculating, but if marijuana is for recreational use and not addictive then people are paying for it with their spare change and are paying for it on the black market. However they are not stealing to support their recreational use of marijuana. I am making assumptions that I cannot back up.

When I talk about all of the costs of illegal drug use, I was talking about billions of dollars of direct and indirect costs. The marijuana component of growing and selling on the black market may be part of the big organized crime picture, but in terms of its actual total piece of the whole, in my view it is small.

We may learn more if this committee is put in place. I may learn a great deal. I respect the views that the hon. member has indicated, that the organized crime element of marijuana is big, because it is illegal, because it has been criminalized. If we were to decriminalize it, if it had no addictive properties, if it were treated like tobacco, it would not even be criminalized. It would not show up on the Richter scale. It would be a cash crop.

I will leave it there. I may say too much. The phone may be ringing, as I said.

[Supply, May 17th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member of the opposition who moved this motion. I congratulate members of all parties for participating in the debate. Government members will speak to this issue from various perspectives.

As a member on the government side, I have to acknowledge that governments tend to get stuck in the status quo. I mentioned earlier the obstacles of changing attitudes in relation to fighting the problem of illegal drugs. The government is locked into treaties and the current drug enforcement initiatives. Things are going on. The government is working at it.

Who in the government or in the House has been charged with the challenge of finding a new way to deal with it? Who is going to admit that we are failing? That does not happen often. We are unlikely to find a minister who will stand in the House or anywhere and say that the government is failing at something. Our marks are low and we can do more. I am reasonably confident we will do more.

I have been in the House for 12 years and this is the first time I have had an opportunity to address this issue head on and as comprehensively. I sat in opposition for five of those twelve years.

Not one member of the House, not one opposition party nor not necessarily the governing party, but the whole House will have an opportunity to deal with this issue by way of a vote. This may move the yardsticks in a way that we have not moved them before. I am grateful for that opportunity.

[Supply, May 17th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is quite right. Prevention is a heck of a lot easier and a whole lot cheaper than the cure. We have ongoing drug education programs in schools and various other fora across the country. We spend taxpayer money now doing that. However we are failing. It is not working.

The hon. member would not be far off if he is saying that we should spend more money on it and put more resources into it. I would agree with him 100%. More resources for drug education and a preventative initiative would help a lot.

There has been some drug education since I was a kid in grade school up to now, but we could do more. However we are failing and I do not want to fail any more.

[Supply, May 17th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I will continue speaking.

One of the reasons I will continue speaking is that this is an issue that I brought with me to the House when I was first elected in 1988. I believe that this is the first occasion I as a member have ever had, as a result of the motion being moved today, to address the entire package of the issue of the illegal use of drugs. It has been a long wait.

I think it is fair to say that when I first arrived here the political context was not right in the country to look at new approaches. I found significant political impediments in suggesting new approaches. People were well-meaning, but perhaps 12 or 15 years ago we did not grasp the significance of all of the evil and the costs involved.

Now I think our Canadian society has changed and the country may be ready. We are not sure. Therefore I am not going to suggest that we legalize anything. We do not have to legalize all illegal drug use. I am not even suggesting decriminalization.

The problem is much more serious than could be addressed by simple legalization or simple decriminalization. The reason it is more complex is that we are dealing with the business of organized crime. Whatever move society makes on the chessboard, organized crime will make a countermove. If we legalize, it will work with that. If we decriminalize, it will work with that.

As I look at this, it is my view that we should maintain our strict laws and enforcement of the illegal black marketing of drugs, the importation of them and the conspiracies to do that. I am not advocating any change in that.

What I advocate is what I call medicalization, not legalization, not decriminalization but medicalization. The principal aim is to remove the potential customer from organized crime. Society will get its best bang for the buck by doing this.

The main way we can do that is to recognize when individuals have become addicted and dependant on illegal drugs and as soon as they interface with our justice system or any of our institutions, medical or otherwise, divert them into a medically supervised program. I am not putting parameters on it or being specific about it. What I am saying is when people have become addicted to a drug and are dependent on it, they should be given that drug under medical supervision. At the same time they should also have access to whatever programming is available to get them off the drug and give them back their life. However they must have access to the drug. In some cases if they do get it they die or they do not make it very far. Those are difficult times. I will give a little comparison.

The average Canadian bears the costs of illegal drug use. We have the costs associated with home break-ins, stolen cars, medical costs of needle sharing and the spread of HIV-AIDS and hepatitis. There is also the heartbreak associated with individuals who have to steal and cheat to sustain an illegal drug habit. We could give them the drug for $5, a drug that would cost them $1,000 or $2,000. In other words, medicalize it and bring them into the system.

I recall a friend of mine in the United States took a slightly more liberal view. He said that we should give them a barrel of the drug, then the person would be satisfied. We have to go further than that. We have to realize that an addicted person is essentially a sick person. A drug dependant person needs continuing medical care.

The essential part of this solution, and I hope it is a solution, is to divert the customer of the organized criminal into the medical system and make the drug easily available to the person through a medical doctor's supervision. Maybe the medical doctor could switch the drug from A to B to C, but the doctor's goal would be to service the person's addiction, while at the same time moving that person off the drug dependency.

We are all aware of the methadone treatment programs. Some of these programs work and some do not. However there are many other ways to approach the challenge of moving people away from addiction. We are still experimenting. Federal tax dollars are supporting pilot projects now. Huge dollars are being spent by provincial governments for the same thing. I am not so sure we have added up all the money, as I said earlier, but that is now going on across Canadian society.

We must take away the customer from organized crime. We could ascribe a societal dollar cost to every person who is dependent on illegal drug use, let us say $10,000, $50,000 or $100,000 a year because the costs are huge. We could medicalize the addiction which would stop them from purchasing drugs from organized crime. We would then greatly reduce the direct or indirect costs. I point out that in many cases the medicalization would be there anyway, but it would be done in a much more targeted way for the individual.

I will reiterate the term that I used which is medicalization. It is absolutely essential for Canadians through their government to compete against the ugly, evil organized crime. We have to take away its customers and profits. That will reduce the cost to our society.

[Supply, May 17th, 2001]

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.

[Questions On The Order Paper, May 17th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

[Government Response To Petitions, May 17th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8) I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to four petitions.

[Private Members' Business, May 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, on the third item, I believe you would find consent for the following motion. I move:

That Bill C-222 and Motion No. 241, both private members' business items, be substituted for one another in the order of precedence.

[Committees Of The House, May 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, following renewed and successful consultations among all parties in the House, I wish to deal with three items.

First, if the House gives its consent I move that the 18th report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs presented to the House earlier this day be concurred in.

Second, if the House gives its consent I move that the 19th report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs presented to the House earlier this day be concurred in.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, May 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I hope the hon. member will excuse me. There have been further consultations which are moving us all toward further enlightenment. I think you would find consent in the House to revert to routine proceedings for the purpose of three items.