Pubdate: Sat, 09 Feb 2002
Source: Peterborough This Week (CN ON)
Copyright: 2002 Peterborough This Week
Contact:  http://www.peterboroughthisweek.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1794
Author: Alan Randell
Note: Parenthetical comment at bottom courtesy of the This Week Editor

BANNING DRUGS HARMS USERS AND NON-USERS

To the editor:

Re: "Havelock homes part of nation-wide drug sweep," Feb. 1, 2002. 
Aided in no small measure by uncritical news stories such as this, 
our government continues to oversee a brutal pogrom designed to 
distract our attention from more important issues (and provide bigger 
budgets, not to mention free drugs for our police officers) by 
ruining the lives of the innocent few who ingest or sell certain 
drugs, especially those of Asian origin.

Please, don't insult my intelligence by insisting the drug war is 
there to protect users from harmful drugs.

Banning a drug harms users (adulterated drugs and jail time) and 
non-users (murder and mayhem on our streets) much more than if the 
drug were freely and legally available. If that were the reason, why 
don't we ban alcohol and tobacco too?

Hitler's armies may have lost the war but his ideas seem to have 
found ready acceptance here in Canada.

Alan Randell,
Victoria

(You can't be serious.)
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