Pubdate: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 Source: Glendale News-Press (CA) Webpage: www.latimes.com/tcn/glendale/news/opinion/la-gnp-mailbag17ajul17.story Copyright: 2002 Times Community Newspapers Contact: http://www.latimes.com/tcn/glendale/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/167 Author: Alan Randell DRUG LAWS HURT MORE THAN HELP I suspect the reason police officers don't very often attempt to indoctrinate kids older than grade six or so with their anti-drug DARE clap-trap (that doesn't work anyway) is because the older children may ask difficult questions like these: 1. Why are you giving this lecture and not someone who really knows about these drugs, such as a user or physician? 2. The Bill of Rights implies that citizens have the right to pursue their own form of happiness so long as they harm no one else (by "harm", I don't mean causing anguish to friends and family, otherwise we would jail all divorcing parents along with any kid who didn't do his or her homework. I mean direct, physical harm). Thus it seems Americans 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? 3. 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? 4. Is it not true that, far from protecting users from harm, banning a drug harms them much more than would otherwise be the case because it cuts them off from access to drugs of known potency and purity? Weren't thousands of Americans poisoned or blinded by adulterated alcohol during Prohibition? Didn't the problems vanish when alcohol was legalized again? 5. Canada's 1973 Le Dain Commission concluded, "There appears to be little permanent physiological damage from chronic use of pure opiate narcotics." Why, then, ban heroin? 6. If prohibition is so great, why did America give up on the prohibition of alcohol? 7. Is it not true that if drugs were legalized, the power of the Colombian cartels would be severely curtailed? After all, Prohibition created Al Capone, not the other way around. 8. Is it not true that if marijuana were legalized, marijuana growing operations would be no more dangerous, do no more damage and steal no more hydro than the average tomato grow operation? Ditto for meth labs. 9. Given the above points, what else could drug prohibition be other than a Hitler-like government pogrom designed to distract the voters'attention away from more important issues by ruining the lives of an identifiable minority of innocent people? Alan Randell, Victoria B.C., Canada - --- MAP posted-by: Beth