Pubdate: Sun, 24 Sep 2000
Source: Winnipeg Sun (CN MB)
Copyright: 2000 Canoe Limited Partnership
Contact:  http://www.canoe.ca/WinnipegSun/home.html
Author: Chris Buors
Note: Parenthetical remark by the Sun editor

WHAT JUSTICE?

The judges in Manitoba need to give their heads a shake.

Psychiatric nurse injects cocaine into a willing 17-year-old and receives a 
30-month sentence.

Erickson pedophile Robert James Beatty molests a 10-year-old and receives 
12 months with outstanding charges of a similar nature yet to be heard.

What's wrong with this picture?

Simple. The judges in Manitoba have been so brainwashed with drug 
prohibitionist propaganda they can no longer tell the difference between 
vice and crime.

Let me remind the justice providers of Manitoba what well-respected 
American jurist Lysander Spooner said, before the idea of demonization, 
medicalization and criminalization of drugs was ever thought of, in his 
1875 essay A Vindication of Moral Liberty.

"Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes 
are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another. 
Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own 
happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no 
interference with their persons or property. In vices, the very essence of 
crime -- that is, the design to injure the person or property of another -- 
is wanting."

Chris Buors, Winnipeg

(Maybe you should run for office.)
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