Vancouver man denied US entry due to LSD use decades ago

A respected Vancouver, BC-based psychotherapist was recently denied entry at the border into the United States by a customs guard who googled him, and found he had written an article about his experiences with LSD forty years earlier. Apparently this displayed sufficient "moral turpitude" for the border guard to determine that the 66-year-old intellectual was a threat to the American way of life or some such. The only way into the States to see his children was by applying for a waiver, at a price tag of $3500 for a 90% chance of getting in, and he'd likely have to reapply for that exact waiver every time he wanted into the country. Needless to say, that's not practical.

Eugene Oscapella... an Ottawa lawyer, who lectures on drug policy issues in the department of criminology at the University of Ottawa... sees the American security system upgrades and the potential uses alarming.

"This is about the marriage of the war on drugs and the war on terror, and the blind, bureaucratic mindset it encourages. Government surveillance in the name of the war on drugs and the war on terror is in danger of making us all open books to zealous governments. As someone mentioned at a privacy conference I attended in London, U.K., several months ago, all the tools for an authoritarian state are now in place; it's just that we haven't yet adopted authoritarian methods. But in the area of drugs, maybe we have."

The US government defended its actions:

"Both our countries have very similar regulations regarding issuance of visas for citizens who have violated the law. The issue here is not the writing of an article, but the taking of controlled substances. I hear from American citizens all the time who have decades-old DUI convictions who are barred from entry into Canada and who must apply for waivers. Same thing here. Waiver is the only way."

Of course, in this case, the psychotherapist in question doesn't have a conviction. Still:

"Anyone who is determined to be a drug abuser or user is inadmissible. A crime involving moral turpitude is inadmissible and one of those areas is a violation of controlled substances."

If there's no criminal record, as in Feldmar's case?

Not necessarily the criterion, Milne said. You can still be considered dangerous.

Well, there you have it. In the post 9-11 world, I do get that it's important to be wary of dangerous types. Yet I wonder how much of our resources are completely wasted by stretching the definition of "dangerous" to the point where, at its extreme, it's a meaningless political designation that must be slavishly obeyed, rather than allowing actual human common sense to be part of the diagnosis. Admittedly the world has become one gigantic episode of "24" and I don't know anything about the dangers lurking on the other side of the border, especially in Vancouver where, you know, they have liberal attitudes and stuff. But still, this falls on my ears with resignation; it's not even surprising that this goes on, and that's the sad part. Ethan Nadlemann, director of the Drug Policy Alliance, commented:

"Nobel Peace prize winners, some of the great scientists and writers in the world have experimented with LSD in their time. We know people are being pulled out of lines and racially profiled as part of the war against terrorism. But this is a different kind of travesty, banning someone because they used a substance in another country thirty years ago," he said.

Welcome to the brave new world.