Pubdate: Wed, 14 Sep 2005
Source: Kelowna Capital News (CN BC)
Copyright: 2005, West Partners Publishing Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.kelownacapnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1294
Author: George Kosinski
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)

'ILLEGAL' DRUGS ARE A POLITICAL CHOICE

To the editor:

Re: Mountie's Efforts Applauded, Sept 11 Capital News.

A doctor and a police officer conducting "research projects and behaviour 
modification studies" to stop teenagers from using marijuana. This is 
disturbingly reminiscent of Nazi officers and doctors researching and 
experimenting on captive Jews, gypsies and homosexuals, as well as 
Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel, Cancer Ward, about doing time in mental 
hospitals in the USSR as the result of being selected for "re-education" to 
correct wrong political views.

Of course, we don't have to put these children in mental hospitals-we 
already hold them captive during school hours. I'm beginning to wonder what 
it will take before people start realizing that, regardless of their 
personal opinions about marijuana, possession or distribution of marijuana 
is only a crime against politicians, not against society.

As Paul Krassner warned many years ago: "The drug war has transformed the 
military-industrial complex into the prison-industrial complex.

Fascism is already here, it's just friendly fascism, with spin doctors 
galore to explain how it protects you. The millennium will be a battle 
between individual freedom and friendly fascism. As long as a government 
can arbitrarily decide which drugs are legal and which are illegal, then 
those who are behind bars for drugs are political prisoners."

Is it really worth destroying democracy to try to stop people from using 
the most benign and, but for it's legal status, the most popular 
recreational drug on the planet?

George Kosinski

Gibsons 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman