APPARENTLY POT GROWING IS YOUR RIGHT IN OAK BAY

Re: Police bust marijuana grow operation on Cadboro Bay Road, Oak Bay
News, Aug. 20.

Lord, save us from a free, but lazy press.

At a time when our drug laws are being questioned as never before,
how is it possible that, as far as one can determine, your reporter
failed to ask the police officer a single question about the efficacy
or otherwise of the law prohibiting certain drugs? Isn't that what
reporters do, ask questions? Here are a few pertinent questions your
reporter should ask the next time he has a chat with a drug cop:

1. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms implies that citizens have the
right to pursue their own form of happiness so long as they hurt no
one else. Why, then, does the government feel it has the right to
punish individuals for what they choose to ingest into their own
bodies?

2. Is it your position that the police are duty bound to enforce any
law no matter how unjust? Perhaps I should remind you that Adolph
Eichmann protested he was simply following orders when he assisted in
implementing Hitler's Final Solution but the Israelis hanged him
anyway. Did Eichmann get a raw deal in your estimation? Would you
feel hard done by if you were sentenced to a few years in jail for
your part in enforcing drug prohibition, a strategy many have
characterized as a state sanctioned pogrom against an identifiable
minority of innocent people?

3. If drugs are banned because they are harmful to users, why then
are tobacco and alcohol not banned?

Doesn't this seem unfair to those who prefer illegal drugs?

If we ban one harmful drug, shouldn't we ban all harmful drugs?

4. Is it not true that banning a drug cuts the users off from access
to drugs of known potency and purity and thereby harms them far more
than would otherwise be the case? Weren't thousands of Americans
poisoned or blinded during Prohibition? Didn't the problems vanish
when alcohol was legalized again?

5. The 1973 Le Dain Commission concluded, "There appears to be little
permanent physiological damage from chronic use of pure opiate
narcotics." Why then ban heroin?

6. If prohibition is so great, why did America give up on Prohibition?

7. Is it not true that if drugs and prostitution were legalized, the
power of the Hell's Angels would be severely curtailed? After all,
Prohibition created Al Capone, not the other way around.

8. Is it not true that if marijuana were legalized, marijuana grow
operations would be no more dangerous, do no more damage and steal no
more hydro than the average tomato grow operation?

9. I've been told that police officers support laws like our drug
laws because they increase crime and hence police budgets and police
power. In fact, I'm told they would be in seventh heaven if tobacco
and/or alcohol were banned. Would you care to comment?

For me, there is no more reason to punish drug users and dealers
today than there was in the past to hang witches, lynch blacks,
incarcerate Japanese Canadians or gas Jews. In fact, drug prohibition
is nothing less than a state-sanctioned pogrom against an
identifiable minority of innocent drug users and distributors in
order, first, to ostracize them, and then, to destroy them.

Kind of makes you wonder who won World War II, doesn't it?

No, I don't have too much respect for the police these days.

Alan Randell
Victoria