MEDIA RELEASE: Ottawa, For Immediate Release, August 20, 2015
During election campaigns, it is expected that misrepresentation of the facts will occur, this is accepted as just part of the campaign.
Information relating to drug policies in this 2015 election, however, for political purposes, has gone beyond mere misrepresentation and dissemblement to direct falsification of the facts.
An organization calling itself the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (ICSDP) has been claiming that its information on drugs – especially on marijuana – is “scientifically” based, in order to refute information provided by the Conservative Leader, Stephen Harper. The information provided by ICSDP, however, is only thinly veiled propaganda based on trumped up evidence, in order to engineer a policy of drug legalization.
The information provided by ICSDP is not objective. ( *See below) The members of ICSDP and its “Scientific Board” are all active advocates in the drug legalizing debate. Its “Scientific Board” includes three lobbyists for the drug injection site located in Vancouver. According to information obtained under the Access to Information Act, these same three individuals received $18 million from the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) between 2003 and 2011 to carry out research on the site. The political objective of their research was to support the drug injection site by attempting to falsely “prove” its success. Without exception all their results were highly supportive of the facility. These studies were peer reviewed only by supporters of the drug injection facility. Contrary to standard scientific procedure, these researchers refused to share their data so that the studies could be replicated.
The claims by ICSDP are similarly based on manipulated evidence, which is not just overblown, but is deliberately misleading and false.
The distribution of this so called “scientific” evidence by ICSDP during the election favours the drug policies of the NDP and Liberal parties, and simultaneously discredits the drug policies of the Conservative party.
This distribution of completely false information by ICSDP, without disclosing the bias of the source of information, has crossed the line of acceptable practices during an election campaign.
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Source: Gwendolyn Landolt, National Vice President , REAL Women of Canada
*A team of researchers from the UF Drug Policy Institute, Harvard University, and other institutions authored a lengthy response to a recent monograph written by the George Soros- funded ICSDP claiming that cannabis health claims have been overblown. Click here to view document.