Pubdate: Fri, 01 Mar 2002
Source: Christian News (CN BC)
Copyright: 2002 Christian News
Contact:  http://www.canadianchristianity.com/cgi-bin/bc.cgi?bc/index
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1697
Authors: Alan Randell and M. R. Heinrichs
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n182/a08.html

TACKLING THE DRUG PROBLEM

Editor, BC Christian News:

Re 'Grappling with drug use' (January): How profoundly disappointing to see 
the church cooperating with evil rather than confronting it and working to 
eliminate it.

Canada's drug laws are nothing less than a brutal Hitler-style pogrom 
designed by the government of Canada to distract our attention from more 
important issues. These laws are ruining the lives of the innocent few who 
ingest or sell certain drugs. And please, don't insult my intelligence by 
insisting the drug war is there to protect users from harmful drugs. If 
that were the reason, why didn't we ban alcohol and tobacco too?

Also, 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.

Hitler's armies may have lost the war, but his tactics seem to have found 
ready acceptance here in Canada. May God forgive them.

Alan Randell, Victoria 

Editor, BC Christian News:

The 'four-pillar' approach, advocated by Vancouver's Mayor Philip Owen, is 
a mixed bag of incompatible ingredients -- prevention and treatment along 
with supplies of needles and safe injection sites -- offered to fix an 
already complex problem. How can we expect drug users to get a straight 
message out of such a mixed bag?

As for 'harm reduction': This is the same philosophy that has trumpeted the 
'safe sex' message, and supplied teens with condoms to hopefully avoid 
disease. Our federal government is giving smokers the message that our 
society has no place for them, yet it is willing to fund 'safe' shoot-up 
galleries.

Why is the funding not going for prevention and rehabilitation? If handing 
out free needles is working, why is the largest increase of HIV-AIDS 
infection among I-V drug users?

The harm reduction philosophy is flawed at its very roots.

M. R. Heinrichs, Abbotsford.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager