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 So when it was repealed did that end all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.