LETTER OF THE DAY

Editor, The News:

The concept of drug addiction needs to be addressed. Drug use is a vice,
not a crime or a medical disorder. Addictions are stigmatizing terms that
are culturally conditioned. Addictions reflect more what myths a culture is
willing to believe than any supernatural force of allurement attributed to
drugs.

All drugs are combinations of chemicals found on the periodic tables. None
have supernatural forces.

In secular states, the language of medicine has transformed what were for
thousands of years sins into disease, to reflect the intellectual
expectations of our age. Addiction is in reality lust, for pleasurable
experiences and gluttony, some people just don't know when to stop. Those
are two of the seven deadly sins.

The hypothesis of biological vulnerability to drugs or any thing never been
proven. It would be like proving there is a biological vulnerability to
Christianity. Just what kind of chemical imbalance causes people to believe
the dead can rise, on which the entire faith is based?

In that respect "treatment" can more readily be defined as "soul
doctoring." Treatment is always some form of "12 step" program that is
faith based. Drug prohibition ought to be repealed, then society would
stand a chance of understanding the forces at play.

Cocaine and heroin would be worth about the same as a pound of coffee,
absent from draconian law. At six or seven dollars a pound, users could
afford all they want by flipping burgers and would not have to resort to
crime, they could damn well afford their own needles too.

When the gluttonous have had all they can stand and decide to do something
else with their lives, then they can pay for their own treatment too. That
is if they are still alive.

The state has no duty or right to protect people from themselves. If a free
man wants to eat poison that ain't nobody's business but their own.

"The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect
the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his
estate, which more nearly relate to the state? Will the magistrate make a
law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others;
but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills."

- -Thomas Jefferson

Chris Buors

Winnipeg, Man.