DIRTY LAUNDRY

Re: One Step Closer to a Police State, June 15.

The war on drugs has served as a justification for numerous, often
excessive, intrusions into the private lives of Canadians -- the latest
being the federal money-laundering provisions described by Terence
Corcoran. Nothing more closely resembles the actions of an authoritarian
society than the intrusions we are forced to endure in this futile and
destructive war.

First, we engender a lucrative black market by prohibiting drugs. Then, to
attack the profits flowing from the black market we create, police and
governments assert the right to diminish the fundamental rights of all
Canadians. Eventually, those "exceptional" powers of intrusion introduced
to deal with drugs will evolve into the norm in many areas of state-citizen
interaction. Sic transit liberty.

Eugene Oscapella
Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy
Ottawa