Pubdate: Wed, 29 Sept 1999 Source: Ogdensburg Advance News (NY) Copyright: 1999 St Lawrence County Newspapers Corp. Address: P.O. Box 409, Ogdensburg, New York 13669 Fax: (315) 393-5108 Author: Terry Koch Note: Accepts LTEs by mail only! Must be signed w/phone# DRUG PROBLEM WORRIES SOME It's the big stumbling block for some economic conservatives and social liberals who otherwise might walk right through the Libertarian Party door. But there it is. Take it of leave it. Libertarian Party members believe you should be free to use any drug at all, whether it's herion or tobacco. "We're the only national party that has since its founding taken the position that you own your own body, life, and property," said Dottie-Lou Brokaw, "and that government has no business regulating what you drink, what you smoke, what you own, what you sell, or what you buy." In what sounded more like an effort to place a consistent plank on the party platform that personal experience ("I myself choose not to use drugs," she says), Brokaw talked about the belief of many libertarians that all drugs, from tobacco and alcohol to marijuana, crack cocaine, and heroin, should be legalized. "You should be allowed to grow marijuana just like lettuce," she said. That particular drug, she said, "has been so demonized by propaganda that nobody thinks of it" as anything but an evil substance. "Why are we putting people into jail for this peaceful, honest choice?" Prohibition of drugs, she said, raises prices, decreases quality, and increases the danger of those substances, whether they be marijuana or cocaine. "Prohibition creates crime and danger for everyone." She said she believes that if all drugs were legalized, the "more addictive, stronger substances" would be less likely to be used. "If people want to self-medicate," she said, "they will go for the least amount of medicine. "If we legalize marijuana first, and get rid of the marijuana laws, we could see what would happen." The illegality of heroin, she said, makes it more dangerous because addicts use unclean needles; when clean needles are proposed, government objects. The Libertarian approach extends to currently legal drugs, like tobacco and alcohol. "Tobacco shouldn't be demonized by people who don't like tobacco," she said, and the same is true of alcohol. - --- MAP posted-by: manemez j lovitto