Pubdate: Sun, 11 Dec 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: Chris Buors LOCAL D.A.R.E. PROGRAM ELICITS A RESPONSE To the editor: The harshest criticism of D.A.R.E programs was absent in the recent report. The Gestapo long ago noted that uniformed police officers could take advantage of parents ingraining children to trust the police. The Gestapo were charged with instilling the "right" morals in their charges too. Today, D.A.R.E. officers exert influence and do not impart truthful information about drugs. The purpose is to indoctrinate children against drug and that is the reason that the program has lost it's luster. The question of whether government ought to regiment the idea of citizens in a free country never sees the light of day in Canada. "Were the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potato as an article of food" wrote Thomas Jefferson in his Notes on Virginia. "Government is just as infallible too, when it fixes systems in physics. Galileo was sent to the Inquisition for affirming that the earth was a sphere. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." The government in a free country has no more right to tell a man what substance that he can ingest than the government has right to tell him what ideas he can put in his head. Canada has not been free ever since the Opium Narcotic Act of 1908 was passed. There is no control of thedrugs, but ideas and bodies sure are controlled. We ought to do something about that, like maybe start telling the kids the truth. A pharmacologist to teach them about substances and an anthropologist to teach them about the ceremonial and ritual use of substances which is as old as humanity is itself. Chris Buors Winnipeg - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake