So the opposition to cultural progressivism in the U.S. has not been a class-based goal of maintaining emphasis on materialist issues, but instead has been a matter of religious conservatives seeking to maintain the role of traditional moral values in American culture. The same conflict can be seen in divisions in the Canadian right, particularly between the secular Progressive Conservatives and a vocal and strong contingent of fundamentalist Christian social conservatives within the Canadian Alliance pushing moral issues related to abortion, same-sex marriage, crime, and the traditional role of women. But the greater secular nature of Canadian society as a whole keeps these issues from gaining the critical mass necessary to produce the sort of divisions apparent in the U.S.--divisions that have been so important to maintaining the American drug war.

In a complete reversal of the conventional wisdom vis-a-vis the respective roles individual rights play in the U.S.--the seat of liberalism--and Tory Canada, a growing preoccupation in Canada for individual rights has prevented the worst excesses of the U.S. drug war from gaining ground here. The drug crime rate plunged immediately after the introduction of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 because of the new restrictions it placed on the extravagant powers of search and seizure Canada accorded its police before that time (Tremblay 1999). Similarly, Canada’s Human Rights Commission policy on alcohol and drug testing severely restricts workplace drug testing in comparison to U.S. practice (Canadian Human rights Commission 2002). And while drug convictions have permanently disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of Americans, the majority of whom are of African-American descent, a recent Supreme Court ruling in Canada has upheld the rights of federal prisoners to vote.

The differences between American and Canadian attitudes to drug use might be explained by Canadians’ exposure to alternate issue frames through their own media. While Canadians were exposed to the war on drugs message particularly, but not exclusively through American media sources, Canadian media sources were, at times, presenting an alternative view. A survey of 1,366 statements about drug policy in five media sources during 1997 (after the height of the American drug war) found that 82% of coverage advocated reform of current drug laws through either legalization, decriminalization, or other reforms compared to 18% of statements which favoured continued criminalization. Within Canadian news reports, 85% of the evidence and arguments presented endorsed reform, while 93% of editorials called for reform. The two most popular frames appearing in the sources studied, which included national and local, electronic and print sources, focussed first on the failure of the drug war/prohibition approach, and second on the rights argument that drug use is a matter of individual choice and individual responsibility (On Balance 1998).

In such a political culture, it should perhaps be no surprise that the third bulwark for the American drug war-- the political right itself--offers another disappointment to the would-be drug warrior in Canada. Canada’s right, despite its law and order proclivities, are nevertheless in the forefront of calls to decriminalize marijuana. Canadian Alliance MP Keith Martin flanked by conservative think tank the Fraser Institute, has spearheaded efforts to build public support for the decriminalization of marijuana. The divide separating the Canadian and American right would seem to be a wide one. But the differences narrow considerably if the ultimate symbol of drug policy, rather than its surface issues, are taken into account.

By placing the marijuana issue in the context of a personal choice that should be free of government interference the Canadian right can still employ the symbolic aspects of the drug issue to foster a conservative social agenda, but in a manner that is more likely to resonate with Canadian, and specifically with Canadian postmaterialist concerns--an example of the generalized overriding principles to which Feldman (1988) refers.