By framing the issue as one of personal choice instead of personal morality, the Canadian right primes values quite different than those used by the American right but obtains much the same purpose--promoting a minimalist, libertarian vision of government that has little to do with people’s everyday lives. Such a vision ascribes great importance to the role of maintaining social order--so that those who make the laws can be protected from those who break them--but abandons, indeed repudiates, any responsibility to uphold social justice through the traditional means of redistributing wealth and opportunity through accessible public health and education services. When, in 1986 Brian Mulroney decreed to Canadians that they were facing an illicit drug epidemic, just two days after Ronald Reagan announced the renewal of his drug crusade, the two leaders’ pronouncements fell in two different contexts. Indeed, though both statements referred to illicit drugs, their statements were serving decidedly different purposes.

The Prime Minister’s statement, apparently off-the-cuff and unexpected, (Erickson 1992) pledged support for an important trading partner and ideological ally. Evidence now suggests that in the days and months leading up to the famous Shamrock Summit which seemed to capture a new affability in Canada-U.S. relations, Mulroney had met with stiff U.S. demands for Canada to increase military spending and cut social programs, if necessary, as the cost of getting Washington to sign a military trade deal (Chase and Sallot 2002).

In the President’s pronouncement was a redrawing of the battle lines on which a crucial ideological battle was being fought--a battle in which the objective was not advancement toward greater social health but retreat from government responsibility to undo social inequalities, in favour of a greater emphasis on its duty to maintain social control. Perhaps expressing support for Reagan’s symbolic drug war was a way of treading some middle ground by mollifying a powerful trade partner, expressing ideological solidarity, and cementing the relationship between the two countries without overtly attacking social programs to increase military capacity—a hot button issue with Canadians, whose indifference to their armed forces is surpassed only by their attachment to their medicare.

The great anthropologist Mary Douglas claims that virtually all societies, primitive and modern, use blame and ideas of ritual pollution to alert members of the community to their duty to adjust their behaviours to conform and contribute to the public good.

Pollution seen from this point of view is a powerful forensic resource. There is nothing like it for bringing their duties home to members of the community. A common danger gives them a handle to manipulate, the threat of a community-wide pollution is a weapon for mutual coercion. Who can resist using it who cares for the survival of the community (Douglas 1994:6)?

In the U.S., drugs symbolize a serious threat of pollution to America’s character, to her morals, and to a way of life. In Canadian tradition, the threat of pollution--whether the term is used in a literal or figurative sense--derives from America itself, a characteristic that both attracts and repels.

The close and constant proximity of “the elephant” has created a number of themes and preoccupations in Canadian political life--not the least of which is preserving our identity against a constant inflow of American values and culture even while we paradoxically welcome and seek their overwhelming presence in our lives.

The title of this article refers to the quintessential statement of Canadian compromise, uttered in its original by William Lyon Mackenzie King, father of Canada’s early opium legislation and the prime minister who made of concession and compromise a fine art. Compromise has always been the hallmark of Canadian policy as we balance precariously the demands of our First Nations, British and French roots, the influence of our American and European trading partners, and our chosen, indeed entrenched, multicultural present and future.