Canada Emerges as the World’s Meth and Ecstasy Pusher

I got back from the Gobi desert a couple of days ago, and I’m still digging sand grains out of my ears and slowly catching up with the news. Massive street protects over a contested election in Iran – interesting, perhaps even momentous, but not really much of our Canadian business. Robert Fisk, as usual, has a fascinating take on the whole thing. Michael Jackson dead – yawn. Never much liked his music, never really cared about his admittedly colourful personal life, in fact had largely forgotten that he was still alive. Abousfian Abdelrazik on his way back to Canada, and in fact due to touch down in a couple of hours as I type this. It’s about bloody time.

Something else that caught my attention was Canada’s growing reputation as an international drug pusher. Anyone concerned about Canada’s balance of trade, which has been looking a bit unhealthy lately, can take comfort from the fact that we supply most of the methamphetamines seized in Australia and Japan thanks to our “Asian criminal organizations and biker gangs”. We also sell quite a bit of ecstasy these days, moving away from our rather one-dimensional position as a nation that “traditionally produces a lot of cannabis and consumes a lot of cannabis.”

Needless to say, not everyone is happy with these developments. The Globe and Mail huffily editorialises that “Canada’s latest export surge is cause for shame”, and informs us that the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime wants Canada “to be as pro-active as the United States and Mexico in restricting imports and purchases” of chemicals that can be used to produce illegal drugs. Apparently those nefarious Asian criminal organizations are bringing in their raw materials from China. Meanwhile, Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan has been complaining about the “tolerant attitude towards drugs” that exists in parts of Canada.

My own intoxicant of choice will always be Scotch whisky, but in my opinion a tolerant attitude towards at least the softer drugs is pretty much what Canada needs. Our police officers, crown attorneys and judges have better uses for their time than prosecuting people for using and distributing substances that are probably no more dangerous than tobacco or alcohol, and that could be taxed and regulated in fairly similar ways.

Nevertheless, the emergence of this issue is perhaps a useful reminder that globalisation is an unruly, many-splendoured thing. If watches and washing machines can be traded internationally, then so can ecstasy and methamphetamines – not to mention weapons and child pornography. If dentists and computer programmers can cross borders in search of work, vulnerable people can probably be coaxed across them and coerced into various forms of bonded labour. If scientific knowledge and rational ideas can be spread over the internet, so can disinformation and zealotry. Openness to the world is important to our country, but it does have its complications and dangers.

Corwin