Pubdate: Fri, 20 May 2005
Source: News & Advance, The (VA)
Copyright: 2005 Media General
Contact:  http://www.newsadvance.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2087
Author: Chris Buors

IMMORAL DRUG LAWS

I wonder if church member and letter writer Pamela Self of Amherst has ever 
thought about the immorality of the prohibition drug laws? The law fails 
the four cardinal virtue tests of temperance, prudence, justice and 
fortitude. Temperance and prohibition are irreconcilable not to mention the 
imprudence of spending vast sums from the public treasury in a futile 
effort to save people from temptation. It is the duty of parents, not the 
state to instill character traits like resisting temptation.

Great Americans like George Washington, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and 
Martin Luther King Jr. certainly did not condone blind obedience to the 
law. "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God" was Jefferson's personal 
motto. In a free country the right to challenge authority must also be 
instilled in the children or far from being out of control, the country 
will be in total control of a tyrant. Eternal vigilance is the price that 
liberty extols.

And imagine, I'm from Canada where the ideas of Jefferson and liberty for 
all still resonate. The ugliest thing about state control of medicines and 
diet is that the state also has to control the ideas the people hold about 
their medicines and their diet too, said Jefferson in his "Notes on 
Virginia." Trouble is, when you live in a country where the ideas are 
controlled, you are not free anymore.

The idea of putting people in jail because they do not share the same 
ideology as yourself is called persecution in the history books. It is 
always the aggressors who are seen to be the criminals in history books. It 
is not the drug dealers who aggress in supplying the demands of American 
users, it is the supporters of prohibition who are the aggressors, and no 
matter how you dress it up today, the history books will criminalize your 
legacy as aggression.

Pamela Self ought to consider how the billions spent on the immoral war on 
the American people would have been better spent on constructive efforts 
based on voluntary cooperation rather than on turning America into a police 
state.

CHRIS BUORS

Winnipeg, Manitoba 
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