Pubdate: Wed, 28 Feb 2007
Source: Merritt Herald (CN BC)
Copyright: 2007 Merritt Herald
Contact:  http://www.merrittherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1446
Author: Stanley Reitsma
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?137 (Needle Exchange)

NOT THE ANSWER

Editor:

There are calls for the legalization of pot, because we cannot get rid of it.

Pot should never be legalized. Drugs fry people's brains and drugs 
kill, period. Do drugs and people high on drugs make them better 
parents, spouses and employees?

We should continue the war on drugs. I will admit the drug war is not 
very successful, but just because we cannot eradicate an evil, does 
that mean we give in? We have not stopped rape or drinking and 
driving, but do we then legalize all that, because we fail to 
eliminate that? Of course not! Why should drugs be different?

Some people act like idiots, and do bizarre things, but does that 
mean help them carry on that way?

Advocates for legalization will cite that prohibition never worked in 
the 1920s to ban alcohol. So when it was repealed did that end all 
alcohol problems? When it was lifted the number of alcoholics 
skyrocketed and that is due to the fact that all of a sudden there 
was no legal penalty against drinking. Many started drinking who 
never did during prohibition because of the penalties and got hooked. 
We haven't stressed the desire to not to drink. Ending prohibition 
did not end the massive size of organized crime.

Every law has a moral component to it. It expresses a morality, but 
it can also change people's moral views when something is legalized. 
Something that was considered evil by most can have the ability to 
make people doubt the evilness of that same something if it is legalized.

Legalization of drugs will cause untold misery to those who get 
hooked and I call that exploitation. Do we want more people needing 
addiction programs? Any one successfully treated by an addiction 
program will first say they dearly wish they never had the easy 
access to the vice that got them addicted in the first place. Often 
they would say if that vice were illegal they would not have 
experimented with it, which got them hooked.

It is amazing that the previous Liberal government clamped down hard 
on tobacco, but was talking about decriminalization of pot. If 
tobacco causes a wealth of health problems, why won't pot?

It is insane for the government to provide people who land in jail on 
drug offenses a needle exchange program for them if they do drugs in 
jail. Jail is supposed to punish behaviour. How can someone be 
allowed to partake an activity in jail, which was the same activity 
that got him there in the first place? No wonder people get confused 
about whether they have permission to smoke pot.

I have helped in a soup kitchen and will continue to do so and I have 
seen the thorough ruin that drugs have done to people. To see how 
hooked they are because of drugs is heart breaking. People who pedal 
drugs have callous disregard for the damage they do to others. They 
should be behind bars.

Stanley Reitsma

Carman, Man.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman