Pubdate: Mon, 01 Apr 2002
Source: Esquimalt News (CN BC)
Copyright: 2002 Esquimalt News
Contact:  http://www.esquimaltnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1290
Author: Alan Randell

DRUG LAWS ARE FASCIST

In response to Esquimalt News' Police Briefs, on March 25, titled "Grow-op 
bust."

Why do governments prohibit certain drugs? Is it to protect users from 
harm? That can't be the reason because users suffer more - using 
adulterated drugs and serving jail time - when a drug is banned than when 
it is legally available. Besides, the most dangerous drugs of all, alcohol 
and tobacco, are legal.

Banning a drug gives rise to more crime (drug cartels, petty crime by 
users, violent disputes between dealers) than when the drug is legally 
available. Our drug laws are nothing less than a brutal Hitler-like program 
designed to distract our attention from more important issues by ruining 
the lives of the innocent few who ingest or sell certain drugs.

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 reader that persecuting Jews was "normal".

Like the German people before us, the media have lulled us into tolerating 
state sanctioned evil.

Assuming you care about innocent people being carted off to jail, please 
make sure your drug bust stories are less one-sided in favour of the cops 
by including the comments of the individuals arrested and their families as 
well as, wherever possible, the comments of someone who opposes these laws.

Alan Randell

Knutsford Place
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth