Pubdate: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 Source: Northumberland Today (CN ON) Copyright: 2014 Sun Media Contact: http://www.northumberlandtoday.com/letters Website: http://www.northumberlandtoday.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/5003 Author: John Robson Page: A4 HAS TIME COME FOR US TO REVISIT PROHIBITION? Ottawa has a problem with guns and gangs. Several problems actually. But the biggest one, as usual, is conceptual, because if you don't realize what you're doing wrong you can't change it. On the surface our problem is a spate of people being shot in the legs in public housing. The victims then "refuse to cooperate with the police," sociology-speak for "they won't tell the cops who did it." They know, of course. This is drug trade violence and they are shot by partner-competitors when deals go bad or over turf. But they won't talk partly because they are more afraid of their rivals than of polite society and partly because they are deeply alienated from polite society. So far so bad. Now what shall we do? One obvious measure is to ban handguns. Admittedly they are already illegal and a salient feature of criminals is they don't obey the law. Nevertheless it's Olivia Chow's solution to Toronto's considerably more serious gun violence even though (a) the people using handguns there are already breaking the law just by owning them; (b) city council did ask Parliament to re-ban them in 2008; and (c) Chicago and Washington D.C. long had handgun bans and hideous rates of handgun violence. Another obvious measure is to "reach out to the community." If sociologists with uniforms and sidearms study the root causes, tell people it's naughty to shoot other drug dealers in the leg, and set up midnight basketball or something, the problem will turn its hat around, pull its pants up and get a straight job. There are two other obvious things we can do, so obvious we rarely notice they are choices. We can maintain Prohibition on virtually all psychoactive drugs except alcohol, caffeine and tranquilizers (even nicotine is being driven underground). And we can maintain a lavish welfare state to trap people into dependency. Occasionally a voice is heard crying in the wackiness that the first two policies aren't fixing the problem because they don't address the root causes and the other two aren't fixing it because they are the root causes. Besides, if the current approach isn't working we need something new, even in Canada, where we hate to upset things with fresh, bold thinking. Fundamentally I'm against drug prohibition for adults. First, we must all work out our own salvation in fear and trembling. Second, as with prostitution, if I have no right in a state of nature to prevent you smoking pot I can't delegate that authority to the state. I realize some people don't agree, and think they should be able to belt you with a nightstick if you like different drugs than them. Others insist that intoxication is not a private matter because it affects the community by its consequences or its example. But so do gluttony, greed, sloth and pride. And surely we realize asking the Nanny State to eliminate them, minutely regulating every aspect of our conduct, will render us miserable without purging sin from our hearts. Certainly we should be able to shun the dissolute and deny them charity. But that means less government not more. Which is also the solution to gang gun violence. Right now drugs are popular but illegal. This creates a lucrative black market. People in this trade cannot call the police if they are robbed or cheated, so they develop "informal" enforcement mechanisms. The resulting gunplay menaces innocent bystanders, scandalizes the public, and frustrates normal policing because its main victims aren't on the side of the law. Is this price worth paying for the satisfaction of knowing millions of Canadians are taking drugs illegally rather than legally? If not, at the risk of thinking clearly about what we're doing, we should revisit Prohibition. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom