Pubdate: Thu, 20 Dec 2001
Source: Hope Standard (CN BC)
Copyright: 2001 Hope Standard
Contact:  http://www.hopestandard.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1397
Author: Ray Carlson

SNOOPING ISN'T THE ANSWER

RE: Learn the Signs of a Grow Op

Suggesting that people snoop on neighbors' activities and report what they 
find to the police on the off-chance that someone may be growing marijuana 
is advocating invading others' privacy in order for police to invade their 
civil rights in a way that will only increase the paranoia of 
neighborhoods. Such an article encourages the type of nosiness that isn't 
going to make anyone cherishing their own privacy feel safer.

The entire idea that we are each other's keepers when another's activities 
does us no harm, is a bad idea, and a harmful one to enforce. It causes us 
to pass laws against free choice, then turns citizens against each other in 
the name of enforcing these unfair laws. Citizens of free states should 
resist such intrusions into our personal choices. After all, we are adults, 
and the government is supposed to be not our parent, but our servant.

Ray Carlson

  California, USA (as received on email)