Given these findings, what suggestions can be made to help move Canada toward a more balanced approach to drug control? First, I would suggest that progress on this issue will require effective leadership to overcome the powerful combination of pro-enforcement bureaucratic interests and US hegemonic pressures that currently stand in the way of significant reform. In other words, without effective leadership this issue will likely remain grid locked in the prohibitionist status quo for the foreseeable future. On this point, the work of the Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs may signify the emergence of progressive leadership on drug control policy in Canada. The case of cannabis decriminalization serves as a reliable indicator of progress on drug reform in Canada, and the near-success of a private member’s decriminalization bill last Spring suggests that the time may indeed be ripe for change (see Footnote 8). One would hope that the Liberals killed the Martin bill not out of a desire to subvert the democratic process, but because they did not want to be upstaged by a conservative Alliance MP on the issue of drug reform. If the second explanation is the correct one (and lets hope it is), then I believe that the Liberals should be pressured to introduce their own cannabis decriminalization bill after the House Special Committee on the Non-medical Use of Drugs tables their final report in November 2002.

Second, with regards to the less significant influences of hidden agendas, social judgments/social control, and distributive politics, from personal experience I have found that it is often issues that are hidden from view that create the most difficult stumbling blocks to true growth and evolvement. This is true on both the individual and collective levels. Simply put, it is exceedingly difficult to heal that which we do not consciously see. Given that several of the less visible explanations assessed in this article may actually sit behind the continued lack of balance in Canadian drug control policy, I believe that it is imperative that we begin to honestly confront the unconscious, unintended, and otherwise “hidden” influences that have allowed this issue to languish in myth-based political absurdity for the last thirty years. To conclude, I’d like to share one of my favourite thought-provoking quotes:

Wisdom is a function of validated observation and a willingness to accept the truth no matter how uncompromising it may appear.

       --Anonymous

I wonder if we are indeed ready to accept the uncompromising truth about Canadian drug control policy and begin the long march toward a more rational approach to drug control.