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PrintProhibition benefits Vancouver gangs
A retired judge has doubts about whether Premier Gordon Campbell’s response to the recent upsurge in gang-related shootings in the Lower Mainland will quell organized-crime-related violence in the long term.
Jerry Paradis, who was a provincial court judge for 28 years until he retired in 2003, said that putting more police officers on the ground won’t lessen the danger to ordinary citizens, who are at risk of getting caught in the crossfire.
“The police will be unaware of when the next explosion will happen,” Paradis told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview from his North Vancouver residence. “They don’t know about them [shootings] until they happen.”
Paradis is a board member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a Massachusetts-based group composed of current and former members of the police and justice communities who are critical of current drug policies around the world.
“I’m satisfied in my own mind that although organized crime is involved in other things at the moment, while this particular or several gang wars may be due to other things that I’m not aware of, I have no doubt in my mind that it’s [an] attempt to either get status or maintain status in the drug market and protect turf,” he said.
In Canada, drug laws are a federal matter. Judging by pronouncements from Campbell and Attorney General Wally Oppal, it seems the province will be seeking federal help with this problem, but only in terms of expanding legal provisions for wiretapping, and toughening laws for bail and criminal sentencing.
The experience of the United States with outlawing alcohol in the 1920s and early 1930s is instructive, according to Paradis. Criminal organizations proliferated and made huge amounts of money from the illegal-alcohol market. With this came gang rivalries and violence. When Prohibition ended in 1933, Paradis stressed, the widespread gang violence disappeared almost overnight.
According to Paradis, “The same thing happens here, and until we legalize and regulate drugs—all drugs, but at least we can start with marijuana; that’s the one that’s got the most demand and therefore needs the most supply, and therefore is the most lucrative to get involved with—until we do that, it’s just not going to get better, no matter how many cops we put on the street or how much money we throw at the problem.”
Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, which is chaired by RCMP Commissioner William Elliott, has noted that B.C.’s Lower Mainland, Southern Ontario, and the Greater Montreal region are the country’s organized-crime centres.
“The illicit drug market remains the largest criminal market in terms of extent, scope, and the degree of involvement by the majority of organized crime groups,” CISC stated in its 2008 annual report on organized crime.
The report also noted that marijuana “remains one of the most trafficked illicit drugs in Canada, with extensive organized crime involvement at all levels of production, distribution and exportation”.
A 2006 drug situation report by the RCMP estimated annual cannabis production in Canada at 1,399 to 3,498 tonnes and said it “continues to be predominant in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec”.
In 2002, the Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs released a report noting that the criminalization of marijuana has seen the “power and wealth of organized crime enhanced as criminals benefit from prohibition; and governments see their ability to prevent at-risk use diminished”.
Paradis said that the value of drugs on the street is grossly out
of proportion to the real cost of production. He noted that a single shot of cocaine should cost about $3.50, with a “reasonable” return to the producer. He said that, in fact, it’s sold on the black market for about 10 times that price.
“As soon as you decriminalize, it becomes something like alcohol, which the provinces are in charge of,” Paradis said. “I see no reason why it shouldn’t be exactly the same as the liquor stores. The only difference would be—and I think it should be this way with liquor as well—there would be no marketing, no advertising, no promotion, zero.
“We managed to price alcohol in such a way, in a variety of alcohols, that people who are addicted to alcohol but have little funds don’t steal to get what they want,” he added.
Comments
Were I a cynic, I'd say the sky high prices are regarded as favourable, because of the baksheesh...........
And today I heard Mr. Oppal on CBC explaining that we can't do that because the US wouldn't like it.
Doing only those things the US likes has really benefitted us, hasn't it - NOT!
It would be good if Canada realized that there would be a positive contribution made to the GNP if marijuana was legal. It could be a very lucrative industry which could vastly improve the Canadian economy. More money made in taxes, less money spent in jails and courtrooms. More jobs for the unemployed.
Left unspoken in the discussion of the evils of prohibition is the view from the "other side of the coin". All black market drugs combined kill approximately 1700 people a year in Canada. Tobacco, alcohol and legal pharmaceuticals kill approx. 90,000 even though those legal substances have the benefit of sterile and expensive manufacturing processes with rigid quality control. One can imagine that profit is the main motivator for gangsters but it might surprise you to know that many gangsters are fully aware of the massive hypocrisy in a system that persecutes people who want to relax or stimulate themselves with drugs that are far less deadly than those that governments and their ethically and morally challenged police forces condone. This knowledge is more than a little empowering for these purveyors of forbidden delights.
Now, due to the antics of a very small percentage of the ranks of local black market players, you have right wing mass media fear mongering over recent gunplay so Gordon Campbell can appear to be effective and useful instead of just being a convicted drunk driver who has spent most of his time selling off choice public assets to Republican Party connected American interests.
With the US now so weakened and distracted with it's own nightmares, now is the time for Canada to do the right thing for this country and completely lift the prohibition on marijuana. The benefits to the country would be many: dramatically reduce gang violence, create a whole new industry that will provide jobs, and create a windfall of new tax revenue for every province! It will make our streets safer and our economy stronger, what's not to like about this??
Gang violence in Canada will continue to grow and get worse unless the marijuana prohibition is removed. All you have to do is look at the "success" of the War on Drugs the US has waged over the past 20+ years to see that it's the WRONG SOLUTION to the problem! THE USA DOES NOT MAKE THE LAWS IN CANADA!
Changing our laws and policies won't do much untill the US does as well.
Look at Colombia and Mexico who also mainly export.
When young people leave home and try to make a living on minimum wage, they quickly found out it is an impossibility in this province, if they want to have any kind of life. Vancouver demands lots of cash in order for someone to LIVE, so the young, who simply cannot live on minimum wage "jobs", make lots of cash from the gangsters who exploit the youth of Vancouver today.
Gangster used to be primarily Italian or Sicilian. Nowadays they are Asian and from every country the low-life get kicked out of. Canada will always take in some other country's low life. That's why Canada is the criminal's favourite country to immigrate to. THEY are protected here.
Of course their are lots of missing people (166 by my count) and the organ trade (among many others) is BOOMING. Someone is making a killing. There are so many new ways for gangsters to make money that we really need to make pot legal so cops can, if they have the desire to, concentrate on missing people.
Legalizing pot would be a good idea. Not only is it one of Canada's favourite past times, it would give the country a greater GNP and provide many new jobs. Look at how much money BAR owners make selling BOOZE to drunk drivers. If booze was illegal there would be even more gangsters.
Frankly if I walk down Water Street on a Saturday night, I am praying the group of youth, coming down the street toward me, are potheads; the drunks will kill you, while the worst the potheads will do is laugh at you. So the only reason I can see for keeping pot illegal is so that someone(s) higher up gets kick-backs.
The only way a cop/higher up can obtain pot, is in the evidence room. Let's take that stuff right out of the evidence room and put it on store shelves. The money we could save with police NOT busy busting grow ops, could easily supply a $16 an hour minimum wage.
Youth may not be terribly wise and judicious but they do know hypocrisy when they see it and persecuting the users of black market drugs while a youth's family member dies from tobacco or spin out of control on booze only serves to alienate many youth and make them suspicious of the value in becoming a law abiding member of society.
The problems of the Lower Eastside are spreading across BC and the root cause is prohibition. Without prohibition in place as a government policy decisiuon, some of these problems would still exist, but they could be addressed. So long as prohibition remains in place, neither governance nor other agencies or professions can begin to successfully help them. Not only is prohibition much of the cause- it also stands in the way of the cure. All this has been studied and known for decades. Hence, when government continues its prohibition policy, it does so in full knowledge, and therefore responsibility, for the inevitable and constant results. As Einstein said: 'Insanity is to repeat doing the same thing, expecting different results." Well, the government does not expect different results because it knows better, and so it keeps doing the same thing because that is its policy intention. Prohibition is one aspect where 'Blame the government" is absolutely apt, because prohibition exists solely and only because of government policy; no one else accounts for prohibition and all the radiating harm it does to a society.
BC’s recent 6 homicides related to the government’s prohibition policy show that those predicting 5 years ago that BC would soon follow the footsteps of other drug prohibition- fostered economies like Jamaica and Northern Mexico, were right. This trend is inevitable when a government follows the prohibition model: a reliable tried and true model if you want the inevitable results of prohibition as indicated once again by the recent spate of prohibition murders in BC.
With a governance model as tried and true as this one, governments cannot pretend they are unaware of the inevitable consequences, nor can they deny government responsibility for every prohibition murder and every drug addict fallen outside the realm of medical attention. Nor can government following the prohibition model pretend it does not take personal government responsibility for the associated criminal spree of car thefts, break-ins, and all the rest associated with its prohibition policies. The government policy’ ‘prohibition murders’ are just the tip of the ice berg of all the voluminous social harm that inevitably follows prohibition anywhere in any jurisdiction.
That this social decline inevitably comes with prohibition is not in doubt; the only question is: “How steep and fast is the decline?” The answer to this question is in the numbers. The larger the proportion of the prohibition ‘illegal’ economic sector in a jurisdiction, the bigger the criminal element subcultures, and so the bigger the decline of the ‘legal’ society as a whole.
The sole reason for prohibition is to keep drug prices artificially high. There are no other reasons based in reality because that is all prohibition succeeds in doing in the real world.
Some cite the additional reason of employment for government officials and the legal caste, but there is so much other work these can be doing (stock fraud, computer crime…) that a release of these resources from the prohibition jobs will lead not to official unemployment, but to their employment in other much more beneficial areas.
In response to the recent increase in prohibition murders, government has decided to throw more policing at the problem; that is, “make prohibition more prohibitive”; that is, raise drug prices and profits higher still, increasing the competition within this private sector; make the stakes higher yet; and so ensure that the rate of prohibition murders increases still more- exactly as we have seen in Mexico where a new government also decided to make prohibition more prohibitive.
Market forces are market driven, not personnel driven; that is, no matter how many people get killed or locked up in this market, so long as prohibition keeps the market what it is, new personnel will line up to take their places. If you want to inhibit a market, you tax it, regulate it, and control it- ask any of the legal sectors of our economy.
Responsibility for the recent spate of prohibition murders falls squarely upon the shoulders of government and its policy of prohibition. It is not a ‘failed’ policy if the government’s intention is to keep drug prices and profit margins high. Increasing the ‘strength of prohibition’ by throwing more money, police and punitive costs at ‘the problem’ will only serve to make the problem bigger by raising the stakes. Clearly, since prohibition is the problem, making prohibition bigger makes the problem bigger. It seems that is what the present government, with the opposition’s prodding, has decided to do. Hence responsibility for the inevitable increase in prohibition murders, just like in Mexico in this tried and true model, falls squarely on the shoulders of this government and the official opposition. “Do not forgive them, for they know exactly what they do” – that is: demand an end to prohibition and vote them out.
The scale of prohibition murders in any society depends on the proportional scale that the prohibited economic sector holds in any given market as a whole. In BC, pot alone stands at a 6 billion proportion of the BC economy according to police estimates; add to this all the other prohibition sector drugs as well as all the prohibition-associated property crimes and so forth, and one can at least double this figure, making the prohibition-based criminal economic sector by far the biggest economic sector in the BC economy today. That’s the reality; that’s our identity today. All the Miss Pollyanna, self-hurrahing government rhetoric aside, that’s what BC today is mostly all about, and throwing 168 more police at prohibition (withdrawing policing where it is so sorely needed) will only serve to make the prohibition-related problems worse.
Those who would wish for a beginning to finding a solution to the problems we associate with Vancouver's Lower Eastside, but which can be found in most urban centres in BC today, should first of all demand that the BC government act forthrightly and immediately to end prohibition across the board once and for all. Bogus hand wringing and feel good fake 'programs' and 'pilot projects' that serve little but to avoid coming to grips with the root of the problem, prohibition, will ultimately achieve nothing once again.
Best regards,
E T Millyard
In the early 1970s the Le Dain Commission’s report along with other Canadian reports unanimously recommended to regulate cannabis the same way as alcohol. Since Canada ignored those recommendations, the problems associated with prohibiting the relatively safe, socially acceptable, God-given plant cannabis have escalated. And it’s not limited to Canada; look at what’s happening in the U.S. and Mexico.
Millions of North Americans have utter contempt for North America’s discredited cannabis laws, which are nothing more than government subsidized discrimination. Millions of North Americans demand cannabis and one way or the other that demand will be honored. Cannabis will be cultivated and it will increase rather than decrease. Except for those who profit, nearly every person who uses cannabis would prefer to acquire it from regulated sources but all will purchase it in the black market if necessary. It’s just a matter of who consumers give their money to. Right now consumers are ready, willing, able and eager to give it to regulated sources along with its share of taxes to government but if government doesn’t want it, the money is changing hands either way.
Stan White
Dillon, Colorado
This and previous governments promise all the increases in policing etc. They promised community based help for the Riverview people too. Truth is the cops in the province are almost 1000 short, and cannot train enough, fast enough and all you have is a growing population of rookies. It is nothing but smoke and mirrors. Every year Ottawa and the province promise more police and announce figures and positions to what end? They cannot keep up with the baby boomer attrition now. Where are the new ones going to come from?
And the bleating about the government being to blame for all the ills because of 'prohibition' is hollow. You elect what you deserve. The people elect the politicians who make, or don't, the laws of the land. Don't like it? Vote for someone else.
To think you will stamp out gangs because you take away one source of revenue is naive. Gambling is legal. Oops I forgot, we still have a thriving bookie business. Why is that? People trafficking, prostitution are very lucrative. Want to legalize that? Or is that just a bit too much for your sensibilities? Besides, the papers tout that 90% of the crime is done by 5% of the population. Why don't we just make it easy to lock that 5% up? Too simplistic? Ya, you're probably saying that is against the Charter too. Darn.
I am glad to hear you have more faith in established organized crime. It fall alongside your paranoia about the big government conspiracy.
Thank you for supporting my point about the bang up job the government (read you the voter) is doing in regulating harmful substances. You can add the 1700 to that list (if your figures are correct) under your regime. I am sure only the addicts will be able to get their hands on meth and heroin and cocaine and crack once they are striclty regulated like ritalin, talwin, oxycontin, percoset et al under your plan.
So what is your best guess in commodities that the "gangs" will turn to in order to supplement their newly deprived income? Or are you suggesting that they will become all law abiding citizens. Oh, perhaps toxic waste disposal. No wait... they already do that. Hmmmm. Perhaps they will now come out and vote with the other simple minded voters you refer to. Maybe we could get a 30% voter turnout. No wait I guess everybody is happy. Well not everybody right angels?
Glen
White Rock
Does the good judge Paradis know that the u.s.a. consumes '350 metric tons of COCAINE and 40 tons of HEROIN each year'? Why would any Canadian in his/her right mind promot the 'American l.e.a.p.' if they can't save America from being the "drug infested s__t-hole" it is.
www.thepigs.ca
THEY DO..
However, generally it is the product itself (shop lift it), and normally it isn't THOUSANDS of dollars worth of equiptment.
But, people steal for their "video game" addictions to. And people don't seriously argue to ban them because of it!
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