Backgrounder

Date: November 20, 2007

Release: Immediate

National Anti-Drug Strategy

The National Anti-Drug Strategy is a collaborative effort involving the Department of Justice, Public Safety Canada and Health Canada and includes three action plans:

• preventing illicit drug use;
• treating those with illicit drug dependencies; and
• combating the production and distribution of illicit drugs.

Prevention

The Prevention Action Plan focuses on equipping those most impacted by the issues, as well as parents, educators, law enforcement, and communities with information and tools, as well as the capacity, to intervene to prevent illicit drug use before it happens.

The Prevention Action Plan will:

• refocus existing community-based prevention strategies, programs and services on youth;
• develop resources and tools for preventing drug use – such as tool kits for parents; educators, and health professionals, and materials for school-based awareness and prevention strategies for both elementary and secondary school students;
• launch a new, awareness campaign to discourage young people from using drugs; and
• provide assistance to communities affected by drug-related crime.

Budget 2007 announced $10 million in new funding over two years to launch the awareness campaign. This new funding will bolster the resources the Government of Canada already invests annually in prevention activities to address illicit drug use.

Treatment

The Treatment Action Plan supports innovative and effective approaches to treating and rehabilitating individuals who pose a risk to themselves and the community.

The Treatment Action Plan will:

• promote collaboration with provinces and territories to support drug treatment services where needed (e.g. services for youth, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside).
  
  This collaboration will include:
  • improvements to the treatment system through investment in foundation pieces such as developing national benchmarks for evaluation, and data collection; and
  • enhanced treatment and support for First Nations and Inuit;
  • provide diversion and treatment programs that are outside the justice system for youth offenders with drug-related problems at the various stages of the criminal justice system; and
  • develop new tools for the RCMP to refer youth at risk to treatment programming.

Budget 2007 announced $32 million in new funding over two years to implement the Treatment Action Plan. This will bolster the existing resources the Government currently spends on treatment initiatives to address illicit drug use.

Enforcement

To complement drug prevention and treatment efforts, the Enforcement Action Plan bolsters law enforcement efforts and their capacity to effectively combat marihuana grow operations and synthetic drug production and distribution operations.

Specifically, the Enforcement Action Plan will:

• enhance law enforcement’s ability to combat marihuana and synthetic drug production by providing additional dedicated personnel to better detect, investigate, disrupt and dismantle criminal organizations involved in the production and distribution of illicit drugs and enhance the capacity to prosecute those responsible
• enhance Canada’s capacity to ensure compliance with the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, particularly for precursor chemicals used in the production of illicit drugs;
• augment law enforcement’s capacity to inhibit the cross-border movement of precursor chemicals and illicit drugs;
• help stem and seize the flow of illicit drug-related proceeds of crime generated by organized crime
• improve the ability to conduct joint investigations with law enforcement partners in the US; and
• ensure that strong and adequate penalties are in place for serious drug crimes;

Budget 2007 announced approximately $22 million over two years in new funding to implement the Enforcement Action Plan as a component of the National Anti-Drug Strategy.

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Department of Justice Canada
November 2007