Pubdate: Tue, 02 Apr 2002
Source: Langley Advance (CN BC)
Copyright: 2002 Lower Mainland Publishing Group Inc.
Contact:  http://www.langleyadvance.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1248
Author: Alan Randell
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n580/a07.html

DRUGS: BAN CREATES HARDSHIPS

Dear Editor,

Why do governments prohibit certain drugs [Crime!: Drugs top Langley's 
crime list, March 26, Langley Advance News]? Is it to protect users from harm?

No, that can't be the reason, because users suffer more (adulterated drugs 
and jail time) when a drug is banned, as compared to when it is legally 
available, and besides, the most dangerous drugs of all, alcohol and 
tobacco, are legal.

Is it to reduce the crime associated with illegal drugs?

No, that can't be the reason, because banning a drug always gives rise to 
more crime (drug cartels, petty crime by users as prohibition makes drug 
prices much higher, violent disputes between dealers) than when the drug is 
legally available.

Is it that our drug laws are nothing less than a brutal pogrom designed to 
distract our attention from more important issues, and to provide bigger 
budgets for our police officers, by ruining the lives of the innocent few 
who ingest or sell certain drugs?

After the Holocaust, people asked themselves, "How did it happen? How was 
it possible that a majority of the German people was persuaded to accept, 
if not support, Hitler's brutal policies?"

One of the reasons might well have been a stream of "objective" newspaper 
accounts of the terror, written in such an uncritical, matter-of-fact 
fashion that it seemed to the non-Jewish reader that persecuting Jews was 
"normal." After a while, the majority simply shrugged and allowed the 
government free rein to commit genocide.

Despite all the talk about how the Holocaust must never happen again, it is 
happening again, all around us, only the victims this time are the users of 
certain drugs. Like the German people before us, the media have lulled us 
into tolerating state sanctioned evil. Those who do not use illegal drugs 
have become acclimatized to the cops' incessant hounding of those innocent 
souls who do. We shrug and turn the page.

What to do? Assuming you care about innocent people being carted off to 
jail (possibly not, because persecuting a innocent minority does sell 
newspapers), please make your drug bust stories less one-sided in favour of 
the cops by including the comments of the individuals arrested and their 
families as well as, wherever possible, the comments of someone who opposes 
these laws.

Please try to put a human face on the suffering.

Alan Randell

Victoria
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MAP posted-by: Beth