Let’s Start with a Story
Issue #37 July 2024
This issue is a modified and updated excerpt from “Buzz Kill: The Corporatization of Cannabis”.
In the previous issue of DPA, I covered the enormous economic liability of drug misuse in Canada while emphasizing that it is our legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco, that are responsible for most of the costs to the Canadian economy. So, what should we do about drug misuse and the harms and costs it can create?
Ideally, drug use and problems would not be addressed in isolation, but within a broader framework of healthy and responsible living. This must include coordinated approaches of prevention, treatment, harm reduction and relentless advocacy on the social, commercial, and political determinants of health.
A few issues ago, I introduced the idea that drug use and drug harms occur on a dynamic spectrum. It is not realistic to think that we are going to shepherd everyone into the safe end of the spectrum and keep them there. Remember the populist meme from a few years back of “creating a drug-free society”? Not gonna happen. The more feasible public health goal is to do what we can to maximize the amount of time that people spend at the safer end of the spectrum. This is what prevention initiatives try to do. Less time spent by fewer individuals in the higher-risk section means less harm to people and lower costs to the economy.
A comprehensive approach to prevention has two indispensable components: demand-side prevention and supply-side prevention. I will discuss these components in next month’s issue. For this month, I will attempt to entertain you with a story that was formative of my career path at a time when it was just beginning. Its relevance to the prevention of drug problems will be obvious. It might be an important chapter in my origin story. I hope you enjoy it.
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One of the most memorable and influential experiences from my very early career occurred one afternoon when I attended a lecture on Canada’s drug laws. I was still fresh out of a graduate school program in psychology at the University of Waterloo and recently employed as a drug counsellor and community developer in the Hamilton office of The Addiction Research Foundation of Ontario. The lecture was held at the Foundation’s May Street campus in Toronto’s upscale Rosedale neighbourhood. The speaker was Western Ontario University Law Professor, Robert Solomon. I recall that as I waited for the session to begin, the room was abuzz with conversations. Professor Solomon walked into the room and up to the podium. He took a few seconds to organize his speaking notes. Then, with no introduction or fanfare, he looked up from his notes, scanned the room with unapologetic eyes, and froze the conversations by unleashing the commanding and stunning proclamation that Canada’s drug laws were founded on racial prejudice. The room fell into a seemingly long dramatic silence before Professor Solomon went ahead to deliver a stirring account of the origin of Canada’s Opium and Drug Act (to be followed by the Narcotic Control Act). He talked of how in early years of the twentieth century, such Acts appeared as one means of persecution of Asian populations, some of whom preferred a recreational drug from their own culture – opium, over Canada’s more accepted recreational drug – alcohol. Solomon also talked of drug policy gone seriously awry, and how it could be much better. The intent of the Act as a tool of prejudice has been challenged by some academics. However, at the time, Solomon’s assertion was a provocative, even subversive, message for not only the addiction field, but also for the usually genteel Rosedale environs, and probably for almost everywhere else in Canada. It was an important message.
The details of Solomon’s account were prelude to a more contemporary war on drugs that would cost so many people their dignity, freedom, livelihood, and even their lives – all at enormous economic cost to the taxpayers of participating countries – which encompassed almost all western democracies, including Canada. Solomon’s story also sounds hauntingly familiar to us. A century after the persecution of Asians by drug law, we are reading accounts of how people of colour are disproportionately targeted by drug law enforcement. The wars on drugs, in any era, have been ineffective, costly, and inhumane. This must stop.
I did not fully realize it at the time, but Professor Solomon’s talk would eventually change my career plans. I appreciated that, as a drug counsellor, I might be able to help one person at a time with a small part of their struggle with a drug problem. Clinical work remains an indispensable role in the drug field, and one we must generously resource. But Professor Solomon’s talk opened other possibilities.
I spent that evening at Toronto’s Delta Chelsea Hotel. During my restless attempt at sleep, with the backdrop of Yonge and Gerrard and Bay Street traffic noise, and seemingly perpetual sirens, it occurred to me that policy could change society. An enlightened, well designed, properly implemented policy could prevent the struggle with drug problems for many thousands. I saw my future that night, and in a manner of thinking, I started to paint some of the broad strokes of my book, “Buzz Kill”.
Order: “Buzz Kill: The Corporatization of Cannabis”
Canada / USA: University of Toronto Press utpbooks@utpress.utoronto.ca
UK / International: Central Books contactus@centralbooks.com
Or at your local bookstore. ISBN: 978-1-55164-795-1
They will appreciate your support.
Mike DeVillaer
Hamilton Ontario Canada
July 29, 2024