Exportation of the US War on Drugs. This perspective suggests that the continued emphasis on supply reduction can be explained by political influence from the United States that promotes the strict prohibitionist approach to drug control.

Hidden Agendas. This perspective suggests that the continued emphasis on supply reduction can be explained by the secret involvement of agencies like the CIA in international drug smuggling and the alleged ties of global political elites to drug money and the drug trade. The general idea is that these powerful interests promote the strict-prohibitionist approach to drug control in order to maintain high drug prices and profit margins that they then tap into for large, untraceable sources of money.

Distributive Politics. This perspective suggests that the continued emphasis on supply reduction can be explained by the fact that a punitive approach to drug control most benefits the politically active middle and upper-classes of society by keeping them “safe” from the most undesirable effects of the drug problem, while demand control policies most directly benefit the politically inactive under-classes who are the most severely effected by the drug problem (Boyum 1998).

Social Judgments/Social Control. This perspective suggests that the continued emphasis on supply reduction can be explained by the psychological need to blame “others” and use them as scapegoats for intractable social problems (Alexander 1990). A related argument is that the drug war embodies the inherent conflict between the need for social control and the desire for personal autonomy with “drug warriors” personifying the need for control, and reformers personifying the desire for personal autonomy.

ASSESSING POTENTIAL EXPLANATIONS

Survey of Canadian Drug Policy Experts⁵

It is, of course, highly likely that several or all of these factors have some role to play in explaining the lack of progress on drug policy reform in Canada. In order to begin to more accurately assess the contribution of each of these explanations, I conducted a survey of Canadian drug policy experts and asked them to rank from highest (1) to lowest (6) according to the perceived contribution of each to the observed outcome. The results of this survey are presented below:

N = 6

⁵ The survey was sent via email to 13 drug policy experts in Canada. Six experts responded to the survey, they were: Patricia Erickson at the University of Toronto, Robert Solomon at the University of Western Ontario, Neil Boyd at Simon Frasier University, Line Beauchesne at the University of Quebec, Eric Single at the University of Toronto, and Benedickt Fischer at the University of Toronto.