DRUGS A RIGHT

Editor, The Sun:

There are deeper questions to ponder about the DARE program than Art
Gradillas brought up in his recent letter to the editor. For instance,
ceremonial drug use is as old as mankind is itself - is it a good idea to
stamp ceremonial drug use out? Is it amoral for the state to control the
thoughts of its citizens with political demonizations? Drugs are inanimate
objects and are therefore of no danger to anyone. It is a political
designation that there are such things as dangerous drugs. Hitler neither
drank alcohol nor smoked cigarettes. Hitler certainly did not use
ceremonial drugs. Does that mean I should emulate the personal and
political views of Hitler?

The ugliest aspect of the war on drugs is that in order to control what
substance a man may put in his body the state must control what ideas a man
may put in his head. Is it not a characteristic of totalitarian states to
control thoughts? Public schools have the inherent ability to exert
influence. The police who teach DARE wear their uniforms to exert influence
and do not impart truthful information. In every other culture and time
that was called indoctrination. The Hitler youth "educated" by the Gestapo
had exactly the same goals, to ingrain the "right" morals onto
impressionable youth. Are the goals of DARE to educate or to indoctrinate?

That DARE has been criticized for causing more harm than good ought not
surprise those who still believe in freedom and liberty with responsibility
for our own drug use that those notions still entail. The law is but the
tyrants will when it violates individual rights, said Jefferson.

We have a natural right to drugs, all of them. It is a right mankind has
owned since time began. Those who would inflict their tyranny over the mind
of men shall forever have the admirers of Thomas Jefferson to argue with
them that the idea of personal autonomy in self-medication is an
inalienable right. The eternal hostility Jefferson swore to has been
discarded by well-meaning Americans less than 200 years after the founding
of the so-called land of the free. Restore our natural right to drugs.

CHRIS BUORS, Winnipeg, Canada