Pubdate: Sun, 21 Jul 2002
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2002 Southam Inc.
Contact:  http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Peter Webster
Note: Headline by newshawk.
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n1350/a11.html

POLITICIANS SUPPORTING PROHIBITION SHOULD RESIGN

Re: Cauchon, letters, July 18.

Your letter writer might persuade me that Martin Cauchon, the Minister of 
Justice, should resign, but only for the fact of his complicity in 
prohibitionist policy up until the day of his refreshing announcement.

In the same vein, I would also demand the resignation of every other 
politician who has ever supported prohibition in spite of the 
all-too-obvious evidence that it is counterproductive, spawns great 
corruption and crime, and is conducive to the widespread commission of 
persecutions and crimes against humanity. We need only review the real and 
horrible effects of the bogus war on drugs in Latin American nations to 
illustrate the latter.

Drug prohibition is wrong, it is bad law, and as the U.S. Constitutional 
scholar Alexander Bickel wrote: "We cannot, by total reliance on law, 
escape the duty to judge right and wrong ... There are good laws and there 
are occasionally bad laws, and it conforms to the highest traditions of a 
free society to offer resistance to bad laws, and to disobey them." Why are 
there not many more in government with even the modest courage of Mr. Cauchon?

Peter Webster,

review editor, International Journal of Drug Policy, France
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