Drug Reform Principles and Policy Debates: Harm Reduction Prospects for Cannabis in Canada

Abstract

Contrasting the official harm reduction aims of Canada's 10-year national drug strategy with the actual evolution of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the authors find little evidence of harm reduction, and much of sustained and punitive prohibition. The example of the criminal sanctions currently being applied to cannabis possession offences serves to illustrate the limits of what can be achieved in reducing the impact of criminalization when the fundamental ban on personal use and access is retained. Theoretically informed by constructionist analyses of the styles and strategies of social problems discourse, a moral basis of drug use entitlement is expounded from which rational reform might be more fruitfully argued. Despite its official mandate in Canada to develop more pragmatic drug policy alternatives, the harm reduction movement, posing public health solutions based on empirical analysis, is nonetheless needful of a rhetorical foundation by which to denounce prohibition as a morally objectionable intervention in the private lives of individuals.