Pubdate: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 Source: Medicine Hat News (CN AB) Copyright: 2002 Alberta Newspaper Group, Inc. Contact: http://www.medicinehatnews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1833 Author: Devin Olmstead PROHIBITION DOESN'T WORK re: Dr. Colin R. Mangham's letter published Sept. 16. Mangham says a lot of things. Like most prohibitionists he spews little more than meaningless hot air. Nobody is saying that abusing marijuana or any substance is a good thing. What we are saying is that the restriction of law has not improved the situation. The law has not reduced either demand or supply. In fact it has caused dealers to push drugs harder in order to profit from the unnecessarily valuable substance, thereby creating more users and more demand. Up until about 100 years ago when we decided to persecute racial segments of society by restricting their drugs of choice, all drugs were as available as baking powder. Opium and marijuana have been used for thousands of years for many different reasons. Heroin was invented by Bayer as a cough suppressant. Morphine and cocaine were commonly used without any concern because it was never a problem before prohibition. People become addicted to many things that feel good whether it is a skydiving adrenalin junkie or someone who is sexually promiscuous. The criminal and social problems surrounding addiction are created and amplified by prohibition. Serious problems that otherwise would not exist have arisen as a result of prohibition and prohibition's inflation of the value of otherwise valueless substances, including the rise of violent gangs, government corruption, disease from markedly increased needle use and death. The reason the Senate choose this cause to focus on is that the House of Commons has refused to hear anything that might suggest that prohibition is the complete failure that it is. Normally in our democratic process the Commons would weigh the evidence and formulate a decision. This has not occurred and so the Senate has chosen to listen to rather than ignore reality. Perhaps Mangham should focus on the dangers of drugs released without thought of patient safety and pushed by doctors all in the name of profit, drugs that replace tested and effective drugs that are no longer profitable due to patent expiry. Or focus on the epidemic of untreated and improperly managed pain by the medical profession, leading to assisted suicide, all because of an irrational fear of addiction and a complete misunderstanding of proper pain management techniques. The Senate should be applauded for having the backbone to do the right thing. In spite of powerful American threats to impede trade, uneducated or scared MDs and years of prolific propaganda, the Senate did the right thing. The senators are not guilty of expressing mindless opinion. They conducted a study that was all encompassing spanning years and costing millions, resulting in a summary more than 1,000 pages long that Dr. Mangham says we should ignore because in his opinion the result of the study is "cop-out realism to the extreme?" It must be understood that Dr. Mangham is truly a professional prohibitionist. He is not interested in reality. His paper Harm Reduction and Illegal Drugs: The True Debate advocates prevention. Prevention through law is the real pipe dream. An utter failure proven by the current state of affairs. A situation caused by years of lies and prohibition. Devin Olmstead - --- MAP posted-by: Beth