ONE MAN'S MARIJUANA IS ANOTHER'S ALCOHOL

To the editor:

Re: "Current Strategies no
fix to Ottawa's drug abuse
problem," Kourier-Standard,
May 16.

Let me clear up a mystery for Mary Cook.

Drugs have a ceremonial and ritual use in all cultures, which explains
why the vast majority of people handle drugs responsibly, never moving
on to so-called addiction.

Alcohol is the ceremonial substance of western civilization.

Examples are that it is alcohol in the priest's goblet and we toast
the bride and our friends with alcohol in our ceremonies.

Coca is the ceremonial substance of the South Americans. Opium served
that role in Mideast cultures that shun alcohol.

Cannabis is a bamboo plant that served as the ceremonial and ritual
substance of the Asian cultures.

I find it interesting that Mary Cook finds addicts and drug users have
no moral agency, yet traffickers and dealers do.

That is eerily similar to tobacco company executives being somehow
responsible for the bad choices of their customers and alcohol
beverage companies somehow being responsible for all the misery
boozers inflict on themselves.

It is in the forbidding of the fruit that gives drugs their
irresistible luster and it is the authorities' lies we are told about
drugs that causes problems.

"The problem" boils down to some people wanting to take drugs that
other people don't want them to take. Prohibition is the name the
history books give that problem.

All human beings have free will that cannot be destroyed by periodic
table substances no matter what the combination makes.

The theory of addiction has never been proven but that doesn't stop
our law makers from protecting us from the drug dragon today.

Addicts are internal enemies of the state brought about by
criminalizing vice.

Too bad Mary Cook doesn't write an essay on all the damage and harm
the passing of unjust laws of the past have caused.

All the harm she attributes to drugs would be revealed to be all the
same harm and damage alcohol was said to be responsible for in the
past.

It became clear in very short order that alcohol prohibition was
responsible for a lot more harm and damage than alcohol itself ever
was and the same is true of drugs today.

Prohibition delivers the gangsterism of black markets.

Repealing prohibition is the time tested and true policy of how to
deal with all the harm and damage moralists attribute to inanimate
objects that have no moral agency what-so-ever.

It is the free choice of smokers, drinkers and drug users when those
substance pass their lips.

Those actions are all vices that moralists love to criminalize because
they see abusing the law as a short cut to bring about a 1,000- year
sin-free existence that will bring about the Second Coming.

So now that Mary Cook understands why people choose to use drugs which
she does not use, will that change her mind? I don't think so.

Might just as well argue with the Pope that there is no
God.

Chris Buors,

Winnipeg