Vancouver's "420 festival" on Sunday in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery was a sad display of open community contempt for our criminal laws in Canada. It was an equally sad commentary on the extent to which an unhealthy drug culture has developed in Vancouver almost as a matter of course, with our public leadership failing to challenge it. As I walked along Georgia Street, I observed hundreds of young people, many of them in their early teens, blatantly flounting the law and disrespecting their own bodily and mental health by inhaling the toxic smoke of dried cannabis buds in full public view. [continues 165 words]
RE "LETTERS to the Editor," by Dan McTeague (Oct. 28): Although Dan McTeague, MP, insists that cannabis decriminalization is forbidden by the UN treaties, he should take note that there exists a perfectly good escape clause: The UNDCP World Drug Report (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, Page 185) states: "... (none of the) three international drug conventions insist on the establishment of drug consumption per se as a punishable offence. Only the 1988 convention clearly requires parties to establish as criminal offences under law the possession, purchase or cultivation of controlled drugs for the purpose of non-medical, personal consumption, unless to do so would be contrary to the constitutional principles and basic concepts of their legal system." (Italics mine.) [continues 76 words]
SIR, - Ian Oliver wrote (July 23) that we should let science settle the "cannabis controversy". But considering the way "scientific results" are today bought and sold like any other product of industry, "science" might not be a sufficiently sharp tool for deciding anything even slightly controversial. On the contrary, we should let history settle the question of cannabis prohibition. A study of the history of modern prohibition reveals that it has been brought to us by a remarkably small coterie of messianic do-gooders. They were a small band of true believers who foisted prohibition on the world as if it were the long-lost 11th Commandment. [continues 189 words]
Re "It's all spliff and polish," (Feb. 21): "It's wrong to go down that road," said Tory MP Elsie Wayne. "That is the worst step that Canada can make right now for the future of our young people." I quite agree. It's a much better solution to put young people in jail and burden them with criminal records. Eventually, that must solve the problem. Just look at the wonderful results that the Americans have achieved. Peter Webster (Do we detect some sarcasm?) [end]
Paul Bobier ends his informative summary of the marijuana situation ("High Time", Dec. 26 2002) with the statement, "Needed in the national marijuana debate is more information on cannabis' total effects on human health, and that may take years to get." This is patently untrue, at least for purposes of drug policy change. Only radical prohibitionists -- moral entrepreneurs -- try to insist that marijuana is so harmful that it requries an everlasting ban throughout the known universe. Most reasonable people, adequately informed, can easily agree that even excessive marijuana use is less dangerous than the corresponding excessive use of alcohol, or even normal use of tobacco (20 or more cigarettes a day). In fact, the mortality and untoward side-effects from marijuana use are less than that of many over-the-counter drugs such as aspirin. One might even cite the many statistics that show that eating junk food is by far the more destructive and life-threatening activity, thus the question of risk and danger cannot be the deciding factor in marijuana policy without discrediting our agreed intentions and policies in these much wider areas. [continues 304 words]
Re: Cauchon, letters, July 18. Your letter writer might persuade me that Martin Cauchon, the Minister of Justice, should resign, but only for the fact of his complicity in prohibitionist policy up until the day of his refreshing announcement. In the same vein, I would also demand the resignation of every other politician who has ever supported prohibition in spite of the all-too-obvious evidence that it is counterproductive, spawns great corruption and crime, and is conducive to the widespread commission of persecutions and crimes against humanity. We need only review the real and horrible effects of the bogus war on drugs in Latin American nations to illustrate the latter. [continues 94 words]
In reference to your April 14 editorial "One lousy message," regarding Yale University's reimbursement of students who lose financial aid because of convictions for drug possession: With your strident view that flouting the law is irresponsible behavior, you ignore the possibility, no, the certainty that not all laws made by mere humans are good ones, and according to basic principles of free societies, bad laws are to be resisted as a public duty, especially when lawmakers cannot be persuaded to change them in a timely manner. [continues 138 words]
THROUGHOUT history, noble experiments of prohibition intended to rid the world of the "immorality of intemperance" and the "scourge of addiction" have repeatedly failed. Our modern version of this folly has left us with overwhelming prison populations, a criminal industry whose proceeds comprise more than ten per cent of world trade, general disrespect for law and government, and increasing use of the prohibited substances by younger and younger people. It becomes obvious yet again that prohibition, when logically analysed, does not control drugs nor their use, but is an abandonment of control to black market forces. [continues 962 words]
THROUGHOUT history, noble experiments of prohibition intended to rid the world of the "immorality of intemperance" and the "scourge of addiction" have repeatedly failed. Our modern version of this folly has left us with overwhelming prison populations, a criminal industry whose proceeds comprise more than ten per cent of world trade, general disrespect for law and government, and increasing use of the prohibited substances by younger and younger people. It becomes obvious yet again that prohibition, when logically analysed, does not control drugs nor their use, but is an abandonment of control to black market forces. [continues 978 words]
Re: Ignoring health hazards of marijuana 'hypocritical', March 7. The claim that medicinal cannabis is more harmful than tobacco has little recognized scientific support. It represents a moralistic stance that capitalizes on current anti-tobacco hysteria to support continued cannabis prohibition. It is surely more dangerous to the respiratory passages to live in a polluted urban area such as London or Los Angeles than to have a few daily puffs of medical cannabis. The quantity and frequency of marijuana use required for a given application such as anti-nausea is low, so the smoke intake is very modest compared with the around-the-clock breathing of polluted air. [continues 166 words]
Before gaining access to the public ear in The Detroit News, supporters of prohibitionary policy such as Susan L. Hiltz should be required to show whether prohibition does or does not deliver its purported goals. In fact, all major studies of prohibitions throughout the ages show that they reliably exacerbate the very problems they intend to remedy. This was the major reason why alcohol prohibition in the United States was repealed. If "legalizing drugs ... sends a dangerous message to our children and our communities," as Hiltz insists, what message is transmitted by insistence on following a doctrine that simply does not work and never did? Peter Webster Review Editor International Journal of Drug Policy Auvare, France [end]
Froma Harrop's Jan. 9 column, "Take me out of the nanny society," hits the nail on the head, and if mere good sense could change the course of drug policy in the U.S., surely this article would cause a revolution. But drug prohibition is today too important a tool for U.S. political institutions, and too critical an issue for certain economic interests to expect that significant drug-law reform will be initiated in the United States. This is why we Europeans are proceeding decidedly toward reform, refusing to kow-tow to the U.S. on these matters. [continues 66 words]
The Home Office minister Bob Ainsworth says many young people get their information about illegal drugs from friends, drug dealers or urban myths (Teenagers targeted in drugs crackdown, December 27). The prime reason for this is that for over a half-century, government and prohibitionist myths about drugs have been so absurd that any alternative has seemed believable. Millions smoke cannabis because it is enjoyable, or medically, socially or artistically useful, and yet the government insists that such people should be "brought to justice" in one way or another. It seems the urban myth that cannabis is totally harmless is far more innocuous than the government myth that prohibition is a logical or effective response to its popularity. Peter Webster Review editor, International Journal of Drug Policy vignes@monaco.mc [end]
The Editor, Sir, Propaganda aside, and reduced to essentials, it matters not whether cannabis use is harmful, or deemed immoral by some. What matters is that a large number of citizens in free societies the world over insist that cannabis prohibition is a failure, and produces more harm than the drug itself could possibly do. For example, a recent USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll indicates that 34 per cent of Americans want marijuana prohibition ended. Even greater support is found in other European countries and in Canada. This fact brings up an important issue: considering generally-accepted principles of democracy, by what right does a government refuse to accede to the demands of a large, conscientiously dissenting minority? If a significant number of citizens desire a change of law, yet the government refuses even to consider their desires, we have the extremely anti-democratic situation which no small number of writers and scholars have warned us about: the tyranny of the majority. [continues 191 words]
Re: "New drug czar, DEA chief seen as hard-liners," May 11. With radical prohibitionists now appointed to every drug policy position in the current administration, perhaps the U.S. can finally enforce the drug laws like they should be enforced. Let the Drug Enforcement Administration now arrest all drug users, whether casual or seriously addicted, all those weekend tokers, all those crazy mushroom imbibers, all those deluded "medical marijuana" fans, and let thousands of new prisons and treatment centers be built to house all these evil people, and finally... finally... what? [continues 95 words]
Re: "The wrong stuff" (Daily News editorial, May 8). With radical prohibitionists now appointed to every drug policy position in the current administration, perhaps we can finally enforce the drug laws as they should be enforced. Let the Drug Enforcement Administration now arrest all drug users, whether casual or seriously addicted, all those weekend tokers, all those crazy mushroom imbibers and all those deluded "medical marijuana" fans, and let us build thousands of new prisons and treatment centers to house all these evil people, and finally ... finally ... what? [continues 93 words]
It would appear that newspapers are more addicted to perpetuating myths about drugs than telling the truth. "Pot use sky-high," Dec. 27.) The worst of these myths is that the prohibition of drugs has any social benefit at all, for actually it exacerbates the very problems it is supposedly designed to combat. But don't take it from me, please do your research before you parrot the "findings" of prohibition-oriented institutions. Peter Webster Int. Journal of Drug Policy (It must be nice to be right when everybody else is wrong.) [end]
A better way to prevent drug abuse would be to fight poverty, not drugs. Peter Webster, Auvare, France Related: Rice, http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n771/a06.html ; Huffington, http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n733/a07.html Note: Original post URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n803/a01.html [end]
You ask: "A six-year-old boy shoots one of his classmates dead. Who is to blame?" (In the dark heart of smalltown America, March 9) I will tell you. America itself must "take the rap" for producing the very situation from which we can expect such tragedy. In various stories about the shooting we have heard the prosecutor blame "the drug culture". But before we blame crack, or easy access to guns for the shooting, consider that more than one author has found the reason why crack cocaine became an "epidemic" in the United States but not elsewhere. [continues 120 words]
In a free society, the rights of individual autonomy are inevitably dependent on the principle that members of minorities must be protected from the tyranny of the majority. The greatest failing of drug prohibition is not, as the authors suggest, the abuses relating to its enforcement but that large numbers of citizens - a sizable minority - are being punished for activities that they honestly believe are their own business and within their rights. Peter Webster, International Journal of Drug Policy, Holland Related: The Harper's article "This Is Your Bill of Rights, On Drugs" is at: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n1252/a01.html [end]
