Pubdate: Mon, 12 Apr 2004
Source: Record, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2004 Lower Mainland Publishing Group Inc.
Contact:  http://www.royalcityrecord.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1654
Author: Chris Buors
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v04/n541/a06.html

RAISING THEIR IRE FROM AFAR

Editor, The Record:

Letter writer Larry Bennett ought to consider what constitutes "traditional 
thinking" because Alan Randell's proposal is the traditional self 
responsibility thinking of Jeffersonian classic liberalism which traces its 
roots back to Aristotle.

To be more specific, the war on (some) drugs is all about the work habits 
of other cultures.

Opium-smoking Chinese people were congregating in Vancouver after doing the 
back-breaking work of building this nation's railroad. Whiskey-drinking 
hung-over white union members had a tough time keeping up with the "coolies."

Canada's first drug law, the Opium Narcotic Act of 1908, was born of a race 
riot in 1907 in Vancouver over the issue.

Thirty thousand Chinese were deported from Canada over that piece of racist 
legislation from which prescription rights were born. The work habits of 
the South American coca leaf chewers is legendary too.

It is only when the white missionary medicine men arrive does there start 
to be problems in these most ancient of cultures. The fact that America has 
bullied the world into the drug war and destroyed the traditional cultures 
of peoples all over the world ought to be viewed from an inverse to see 
just how exactly perverted the drug war is.

One of the deadliest substances is tobacco. The Americans are the world's 
largest exporters. What if China decided that the way to rid themselves of 
the plague of tobacco addiction was to spray the fields of North and South 
Carolina? That is precisely what Americans do to the Columbians.

Asserting that something is immoral does not make it so. My measure of 
morality uses temperance, prudence, justice and fortitude, which are the 
four cardinal virtues of St. Thomas Aquinas.

The drug war does not measure up to a single one. In fact I would suggest 
that the harm Americans have inflicted on other cultures by wanting to live 
in a regimented worldwide drug-free Utopia is vainglory defined. It is the 
Americans who live in a Sinful State and deliver a culture of death 
everywhere they go.

Talk about misguided moral righteousness run amok!

Chris Buors, Libertarian Party of Manitoba 
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager