70 to 90 % of crimes in Canada are related to drug or alcohol abuse, according to Statistics Canada. Cannabis offences accounted for three-quarters of all drug-related crime. More than two-thirds of these were for possession.
Globe and Mail, Saturday, August 11, 2001

Tony Smith

Tony Smith joined the Vancouver Police in 1973. He was aware that a year earlier the Le Dain committee recommended to Parliament that marijuana be legalized. Prime Minister at the time Pierre Trudeau let the police know that he supported that recommendation; but Tony felt that the number of marijuana arrests did not reflect Trudeau's thinking.


"I have no doubt," he says, and indeed there was probably a consensus amongst officers, that some members made marijuana arrests to boost their wages, through overtime earned attending court." He also witnessed that officers who concentrated only on drug issues created problems, as they were simply not available for the multitude of other issues needing police attention.

He was soon assigned to the Car 86 program, in which officers collaborated with social workers to aid families in need of intervention. Here he noted that the one factor wherever violence or extreme hostile behavior was displayed was not illegal drugs, but alcohol.

Another of Tony's assignments was the Pawnshop Squad, where he noticed that in most pawnshops at least 90% of the goods were stolen. Almost all of the thieves were addicts, who would quickly take their money to nearby drug dealers.

"Probably 90% of the property crimes are perpetrated by drug addicts looking to fund their addictions. Property crime I'm quite sure would almost disappear, if there was some mechanism by which they didn’t have to steal to support their habits."

Based on his 28 years of service, Tony's greatest concern is the enormous amount of money pouring into criminal organizations from prohibition. "We can give the drug industry to three groups of people: we can give it to private enterprise, we can give it to the government, or we can give it to the criminals. And we've made the worst choice, we've given it to the criminals."