LEAP Tour '08 - Drugs 101: Safety, Health and Human Rights - Judge Jerry Paradis
Judge Jerry Paradis - Drugs 101: Safety, Health and Human Rights
Monday, September 1st, 7pm – 9pm
University of Otago Law School "Moot Court"
10th Floor, Richardson Building, University of Otago, Dunedin
Jerry Paradis retired as a judge for the Provincial Court of British Columbia, in 2003. During his time on the bench, he dealt with over a thousand cases involving the possession, trafficking, or production of drugs. His experiences led him to become a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), an organization comprised of current and former members of the law enforcement and criminal justice communities who speak out about the failures of existing drug policies. He is visiting New Zealand as an Executive Board Member of LEAP to present to the NZ Law Commission's review on Drug Policy and the Law.
Jerry Paradis
Judge, Provincial Court of British Columbia
"Prohibition makes all of us - not just the user or the addict - less safe and secure."
Jerry Paradis obtained his law degree from the University of British Columbia in 1969. By 1975, he had already been appointed to the Provincial Court of BC, on which he served as a judge until his retirement in 2003. Canada's provincial courts handle about 95% of the country's criminal cases, and so Jerry dealt with over a thousand drug cases, be they for possession, trafficking, or production. "My awareness of the futility of and damage caused by prohibition came gradually," he relates, "but I can say that I was without any doubts from the late '80s on." Nevertheless, Jerry's judicial oath required him to apply the law, and that's what he did...as temperately as he could. Although he garnered some media flak for what some saw as his leniency, he was successfully appealed only once. "In other words, although the media occasionally had trouble with my drug-case decisions, the prosecutors almost never did."
Shortly after retiring, Jerry found himself even more seriously pondering the drug issue, and the result was a research paper, "A Modest Proposal for a Sane Drug Policy". Jerry also writes an occasional column for his local community newspaper, The North Shore News, several of which have been devoted to various aspects of the issue. He writes of how the current policy on drugs diminishes everyone. "It diminishes judges by requiring them to shut their minds off from the irrationality of what they are required to do. It diminishes the lawyers on both sides of the table - the prosecutors, by forcing them to pursue people and issues that they know full well belong in the field of health care; and defense counsel, by forcing them to play silly charter-of-rights games instead of dealing with real issues. And it diminishes the police by forcing them to see drug users as the other, the prey, and therefore as not worthy of much serious second thought." The greatest irony that Jerry observes from scanning the notes he made on each of the 1,000+ drug cases over which he presided is that "the same number of people are still choosing to ingest mood-altering substances, the same proportion are addicted, and there is the same persistent but increasingly lucrative and efficient system of supply. We - citizens, police, judges - have lived and worked within the orthodoxy that all drugs are inherently evil (except, of course, alcohol) and that prohibition and punishment can rid us of them. How wrong we have been." This is why Jerry is a member of LEAP.
