Pubdate: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 Source: Abbotsford News (CN BC) Copyright: 2001 Hacker Press Ltd. Contact: http://www.abbynews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1155 Author: Alan Randell QUESTIONS FOR THOSE WHO HOSTED DRUG FORUM Editor, The News: Re: The forum on drugs, hosted by the Odd Squad and Langley-Abbotsford MP Randy White, that took place in Abbotsford this past Tuesday night: Here are a few questions the audience should have asked the cops at the forum: 1. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms implies that citizens have the right to pursue their own form of happiness so long as they hurt no one else. Thus, it seems Canadians have the right to ingest any drug, however harmful. Why do you feel the government has the right to punish individuals for what they choose to ingest into their own bodies and jail those who supply them? 2. Would you feel hard done by if you were sentenced to a few years in jail for your part in enforcing drug prohibition, a strategy many have characterized as nothing less than a Hitler-like government pogrom designed, first to ostracize, and then to annihilate an identifiable minority of innocent people? 3. Is it your position that the police are duty bound to enforce any law, no matter how unjust? Would you, for example, help to enforce a law requiring the imprisonment of all Jews? Perhaps I should remind you that Adolph Eichmann protested he was simply following orders when he assisted in implementing Hitler's Final Solution, but the Israelis hanged him anyway. Did Eichmann get a raw deal in your estimation? 4. If drugs are banned because they are harmful to users, why, then, are tobacco and alcohol not banned? Doesn't this seem unfair to those who prefer illegal drugs? If we ban one harmful drug, shouldn't we ban all harmful drugs? 5. Is it not true that banning a drug cuts the users off from access to drugs of known potency and purity and thereby harms them far more than would otherwise be the case? Weren't thousands of Americans poisoned or blinded during prohibition? Didn't the problems vanish when alcohol was legalized again? 6. The 1973 Le Dain Commission concluded: "There appears to be little permanent physiological damage from chronic use of pure opiate narcotics." Why, then, ban heroin? 7. If prohibition is so great, why did America give up on prohibition? 8. Is it not true that if drugs and prostitution were legalized, the power of the Hells Angels would be severely curtailed? After all, prohibition created Al Capone, not the other way around. 9. Is it not true that if marijuana were legalized, marijuana grow operations would be no more dangerous, do no more damage and steal no more hydro than the average tomato grow operation? 10. I've been told that police officers support laws like our drug laws because they increase crime and hence police budgets and police power. In fact, I'm told they would be in seventh heaven if tobacco and/or alcohol were banned. Is that true? For me, there is no more reason to punish drug users and dealers today than there was in the past to hang witches, lynch blacks, incarcerate Japanese Canadians or gas Jews. Alan Randell Victoria - --- MAP posted-by: Beth