Pubdate: Fri, 01 Mar 2002
Source: Cambridge Reporter, The (CN ON)
Copyright: 2002 The Cambridge Reporter
Contact:  http://www.cambridge-reporter.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1470
Author: Alan Randell

DRUG LAWS USELESS

Re: Hilborn Pot Bust no Surprise to Her, Feb. 19.

Why do governments prohibit certain drugs? Is it to protect users from harm?

No, that can't be the reason because users suffer more (adulterated 
drugs and jail time) when a drug is banned as compared to when it is 
legally available, and besides, the most dangerous drugs of all, 
alcohol and tobacco, are legal.

Is it to reduce the crime associated with illegal drugs? No, that 
can't be the reason because banning a drug always gives rise to more 
crime (drug cartels, petty crime by users as prohibition makes drug 
prices much higher, violent disputes between dealers) than when the 
drug is legally available.

Is it that Canada's drug laws are nothing less than a brutal 
Hitler-like pogrom designed to distract our attention from more 
important issues (and to provide bigger budgets and free drugs for 
our police officers) by ruining the lives of the innocent few who 
ingest or sell certain drugs? Bingo!

After the Holocaust, people asked themselves, "How did it happen? How 
was it possible that a majority of the German people was persuaded to 
accept, if not support, Hitler's brutal policies?"

One of the reasons might well have been a stream of "objective" 
newspaper accounts of the terror that were written in such an 
uncritical, matter-of-fact fashion that it seemed to the non-Jewish 
reader that persecuting Jews was "normal." After a while, the 
majority simply shrugged and allowed the government free rein to 
commit genocide.

Despite all the talk about how the Holocaust must never happen again, 
it is happening again, all around us, only the victims this time are 
the users of certain drugs instead of Jews. Like the German people 
before us, the media have lulled us into tolerating state-sanctioned 
evil.

Alan Randell

Victoria, B.C.
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MAP posted-by: Josh