Pubdate: Fri, 12 Jun 2009
Source: Western Standard (Canada)
Copyright: 2009 Western Standard
Contact:  http://www.westernstandard.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3448
Author: Pierre Lemieux
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Marijuana - Canada)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing)

THE LIBERTICIDAL 'WAR ON DRUGS'

Bill C-15, Imposing Mandatory Minimum Sentences for Drug-Related
"Crimes", Passed on Third Reading. Expect to Lose More of Your Liberty.

You believe that mind-altering drugs are not conducive to the good
life and cause broken lives (instead of being the consequence of
them), that individuals who consume them are not always the most
endearing representatives of mankind, and that your own children
should stay away from drugs?

Even if you believe all this, you should strongly disagree with Bill
C-15, adopted in third reading by the House of Commons on June 8. The
new law will, among other repressive measures, impose minimum jail
sentences to anybody convicted of trafficking marihuana or producing
whatever small quantity of it for the purpose of trafficking.

More generally, even if you believe everything in the first paragraph,
you should oppose the so-called "war on drugs". The Economist, the
famous British magazine which combines an incestuous attachment to the
establishment with a genuine concern for (some of) our liberties, has
criticized the war on drugs for two decades. "oeBy any sensible
measure" , they wrote in a recent issue (May 5th, 2009), "oethis
100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is
why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to
legalise drugs."  Even the new U.S. "oedrug czar"  expressed some
doubts about the all-out war on drugs which the U.S. government has
exported and imposed all over the world.

The failure of the war on drugs is for everybody to see. According to
official statistics, 45 per cent of Canadians have used cannabis, and
11 per cent have consumed cocaine, at least once in their lifetimes.
Between 1989 and 2004, the rates of cannabis use doubled.

It may be argued -- and I think it is true -- that liberalization
would increase drug consumption through lower prices, but it would do
so without the enormous and continuing costs of the war on drugs. I am
not mainly referring to the billions of dollars of taxpayers' money
spent on this war ($40 billion per year in the U.S. alone), but to the
stimulation of organized crime and to the criminalization of millions
of peaceful citizens, often young people who will carry criminal
records for the rest of their lives. Every year, 1.5 million Americans
are arrested for drug offences. In Canada, like in the U.S., many are
led to theft or prostitution in order to sustain drug habits that are
made more expensive by supplier risks and boosted black market prices.

In the U.S., where one in every 31 adults is either in prison or on
parole, 55 per cent of the population of federal prisons and 21 per
cent in state prisons are serving time for drug offences (The
Economist, April 2, 2009). Is this what we want in Canada? Remember
C-15 when your neighbour or your son or granddaughter will be sent to
jail.

The war on drugs has served as an excuse for a wholesale onslaught on
our liberties and an obscene increase in government power. It has
justified money laundering laws, detailed surveillance of money
transactions, new search and seizure powers, civil forfeiture,
reversal of the burden of proof, militarization of the police, and so
forth. Bill C-15 continues the trend.

We paid this humongous price not only for countering hard,
debilitating drugs, but also to fight soft drugs like marihuana which
is not more risky than tobacco and certainly wreaks less havoc than
alcohol.

And who are we to think that this or that individual should not
consume this or that product? If he is so stupid, why does he have the
right to vote? Perhaps drugs (whatever you include in this category)
are like "soma" in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, repressing
unwelcome but useful emotions and experiences; or perhaps, in certain
circumstances, they open new dimensions of reality. Whose body is it,
anyway? John Stuart Mill gave the definitive answer in On Liberty
(1859): "Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is
sovereign."

Last but not least, those of us who don't consume the drugs that the
state actually defines as illegal should remember one unavoidable
feature of a free society: there is no way we can expect drug
consumers to defend our own peaceful rights -- to browse the internet
or have guns in our bedrooms or purchase incandescent light bulbs or
whatever -- if we don't also recognize their rights to do what they
please on their own property.

How did MPs vote on C-15? All the Liberals present in the House sided
with the Conservatives. The NDP and Bloc Quebecois, who usually jump
on any opportunity to crush individual sovereignty, were, in this
case, on the libertarian side of the fence, and voted "Nay". Two
Conservative MPs who many of us thought could be trusted to rise in
defence of liberty chose instead to do their job as obedient voting
machines and to bring their little stone to the construction of the
Soft Police State. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake