Pubdate: Fri, 12 Oct 2007
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2007 The Vancouver Sun
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n1140/a04.html
Author: Ken Waters

LIBERALIZED CHARTER GIVES MORE RIGHTS TO DRUG DEALERS

Re: Harper vows jail time for drug dealers, producers, Oct. 5

Before Vancouver NDP MP Libby Davies decides to criticize Prime 
Minister Stephen Harper for his plans to incarcerate drug dealers, 
she may wish to reconsider the effects of what she considers her 
enlightened policies.

The Downtown Eastside, the heroin capital of North America and 
disease sector of our city, is the result of poverty mixed with 
tolerance of drug crimes. The drug dealers, many of whom are in 
Canada illegally, leave a swath of ruined lives far out of proportion 
to their numbers. These dealers remain at large because of lenient 
judges, a non-functional deportation system, and a political 
bureaucracy which performs better at sustaining itself than 
protecting the public.

The comparison to American drug enforcement is distracting and 
erroneous for many reasons. Before our Charter of Rights was styled 
in the American manner, with greater freedoms for criminals and more 
hindrances for police, our drug crime was comparatively isolated and 
contained. It was the liberalizations that enabled a political and 
social relaxation towards drugs which, in the runaway ideology of 
Davies, would expand into no enforcement at all.

The public may not recognize that drug dealers far surpass murderers 
in their destruction of human life, but may wish to visit Main and 
Hastings to view the current progress of Davies's philosophy of law 
enforcement.

Ken Waters

Vancouver
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman