Pubdate: Tue, 28 Nov 2000
Source: Edmonton Sun (CN AB)
Section: Letter of the Day
Copyright: 2000, Canoe Limited Partnership.
Contact:  #250, 4990-92 Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta, T6B 3A1 Canada
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Author: Chris Buors
Note: Parenthetical remark by the Sun editor; headline by newshawk
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1762/a02.html

DRUG TAKING NOT A CRIME

WELL, MINDELLE Jacobs, it seems we need just a little more evidence before 
we commit to "treatment" of drug addicts. First you could offer proof that 
the addictions model of drug taking holds water. The theory of addicition 
has never been proven. What has been proven many times over is that drug 
taking is a vice, not a crime or a medical disorder.

It is volition that is the key to understanding the drug issue. Forced 
treatment has failed everywhere it was tried. Forced treatment is eerily 
similar to forced conversion of religious values. Drug taking is a moral 
and a social issue.  It is certainly not a medical issue.

We can fool ourselves for as long as we like but the brutal truth is that 
there is only one solution. Restore our natural right to drugs. It is a 
right owned by mankind since time began. Freedom and liberty means 
responsibility for our own moral decisions. If a man wants to eat poison, 
it is no business of the state to save him from himself, besides that 
saving people from themselves cannot be done.

In all the research ever done it turns out that people control their drug 
taking for reasons that are important to them. Believing in the myth of 
drug addiction certainly does all those parasites of prohibition who 
benefit from the interventions of the therapeutic state good, but believing 
in myth has never stopped one single person from doing drugs if that is 
what they want to do.

Chris Buors Winnipeg, Man.

(Killing yourself is illegal which means that society tends to intervene to 
try to save the stricken from their vices, addictions or harmful predicaments.)
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