Lessons from pot about legalizing other drugs in Canada: Don Pittis

Economists have been among the most insistent that theprohibition of drugs and alcohol doesn't work.

In what many have observed as a perverse symbiosis between enforcement agencies and the producers of illicit drugs, cracking down on the substancespeople use to addle their brains only makes producing them more lucrative.

U.S. economist Peter Reuter, a scholar known for his early research onthe illegal drug market, observed thisrelationship when it came to cannabis and cocaine.

"The relatively high prices of these drugs historically are a consequence of enforcement," he wrote in the abstract for a 1986 paper titled Risks and Prices: An Economic Analysis of Drug Enforcement.

More than 30 years later anddespite billions spentto stem their use, illegal drugs,especially opiates,continue to devastate communities. The death toll in Canada more than 10,300in less than three yearsis large enough thathealth experts warn it may be having an effect on Canada's overall life expectancy.

Nowan increasing number of experts are observing Canada's legalization of cannabis for lessonsa kind of trial run for getting drugs out of the hands of organized crime.

There are plenty of criticswho say that, so far, Canada's legalization has been a failure, partly because governments refused to learn from the experienceofplaces like Colorado that led the way. Among them areIan Irvine, an economist at Montreal's ConcordiaUniversity.

"The illegal market is really being wiped off the map in Colorado," said Irvine. "There were two things necessary for that: One is accessibilityand the other was price. But here we still have high prices and have low accessibility."

Government missteps

Government bungling may be partly to blame. In Ontario, for example, after many delays, 25 retail licences were granted by the province, but to date, nearlyhalf have failed to open.

That lack of access is helping to keep the illegal drug sellers in business. Irvine says similar mistakes are being made across the country.

When it comes to price, Jean-FranoisCrpault,from theToronto-basedCentre for Addiction and Mental Health, is no supporter of low pricing or other free market measures to take on criminal suppliers.

While libertarians might see a free market fordrugs as a good thing, those likeCrpault, who advocate liberalization as a harm-reduction measure, viewlegalization or decriminalization more asa necessary evil:It is a means of preventing worse damage.

Just as with tobacco and alcohol, governments can use taxes to set prices low enough todissuadeconsumers from seeking other sources,but high enoughto discourage consumption.

And rather than liberalizing the rules around cannabis advertising to bring them in line withalcohol standards, Crpault favours reining in alcohol promotion to make it more like weed.

According to Crpault,the legalization of cannabis has led to a re-examination of substance use and abuse in new contexts. There are already U.S. studies that show legal weed can actas a substitute for opiates and alcoholboth of which are more damaging.

"The legality of a substance,or thelegal availability of it, should be at least roughly proportional to the level of harm," saidCrpault, citing the concept behind a new European drug strategy.

Under a policy like that, alcohol would be more tightly regulated than psychedelic drugs, such as MDMAand ketamine, whichCrpault says are seen as less risky than alcohol for adults and may also offer therapeutic effects.

While critical of Canada's stumblingcannabis legalization process, Michael Armstrong, a business professor at BrockUniversity in St. Catharines,Ont., says that recent data from Statistics Canada shows people are willing to pay more for a legal product.

While theillegal market will never disappear entirely, Armstrongpredicts that once legal shops have expanded enough, offering enough of the right product, at the right qualityto satisfy demand, illegal pot will be about as common as illegal wine.

"I expect it will be very much the same, eventually," he said.

Cannabis vs. opiates

Armstrong also suggests that busting illegal dispensaries before people have a legal alternative will be a waste of police resources and will merely drive the illegal trade deeper underground. But once there are enough pot shops in operation, a crackdown could push illegal prices close enough to theirlegal alternatives, makingthe black marketnot worthwhile.

Then, with the legal price as a ceiling, the symbiosis between enforcement and criminal income will be broken, he says.

Despite the obvious differences between cannabis and street drugs like heroin, there are many lessons to be learned from marijuana'slegalization, saidRebecca Jesseman, with the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction.

People from around the world are coming to Canada to study the different provincial and territorial legalization models as they develop, she said,to see what works and what doesn't.

For instance, the issue of quality control, which has attracted some buyers to legal cannabis stores, applieseven more so when it comes toopiates, which are now so often adulterated andmade deadly with substances likefentanyl.

In some places in Canada, including Vancouver's Crosstown Clinic, patients are provided with medical-grade heroin for supervised injection. Other places offer testing for purity and strength.

As with cannabis, access iscrucial, especially for those withaddiction.

And while we must wait until the legal cannabis market developsfurther to be sure, Jessemanbelieves Canada's experiencemay show that legal sources really do drive out illicit producers by removing the risk premium.

What's more, wheneven the most brutal and expensive means of rooting out illegal drugsfail, legal cannabisoffers an example of what may be possible.

"There are many different distribution models we can look at, and I think the important thing isto consider each substance on its own properties, merits and impacts," said Jesseman.

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