Pubdate: Tue, 04 Jun 2002
Source: Daily Press, The (CN ON)
Copyright: 2002 Daily Press (CN ON)
Contact:  http://www.timminspress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1001
Author: Alan Randell

WRITER TAKES ISSUE WITH COUNTRY'S DRUG LAWS, MEDIA COVERAGE

RE: KAP OPP seize over $200, 000 in illicit drugs, June 1.

Our drug laws make no sense whatsoever.

Not only are they an affront to the constitution, not only do they send 
crime rats into the stratosphere, not only do they hurt users rather than 
help them, they also fail the test of logic.

If drugs are banned because they are harmful, why don't we ban tobacco and 
alcohol?

These laws are nothing less than a state sanctioned, Hitler-like program 
designed to divert our attention from more important issues by ruining the 
lives of the innocent few who happen to use or sell certain drugs.

How did the politicians win our approval, or at least our acceptance, of 
such a manifestly evil crusade? The media, in two ways.

First of all, you immerse us in a torrent of "objective" accounts of the 
mayhem without allowing the victims' stories to be told; gradually we are 
persuaded "they only have themselves to blame."

Second, you never miss an opportunity to allow those who profit from the 
drug laws (cops, drug experts, prosecutors, politicians, etc.)to tell their 
stories, while allowing only the occasional op-ed or letter from those who 
oppose the law.

If you want to know how it came to be that most Germans acquiesced to 
Hitler's policies towards the Jews, you only have to realize that a flood 
of "news" stories like this has made us think that rousting innocent people 
off to jail is normal.

We shrug and turn the page.

Are we better than the Nazis because our drug laws threaten an innocent 
minority with jail rather than with execution? I think not.

Are you better than the German newspaper editors who published anti-Jew 
propaganda as ordered by Hitler's government?

Considering you have the option to be objective about the state's drug war 
on its own citizens rather than simply acting as a conduit for the 
dissemination of government propaganda, I would say you're a lot worse.

Unless the media change their ways, I fear that police states will soon be 
established all cross the "free world."

Alan Randell
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