DRUG LAWS A COVERING FIG LEAF

Re: Real action on drug crime, Nov. 28 Valley Echo.

I have a few questions for Kootenay-Columbia MP Jim Abbott about his
evident support for drug prohibition, a program he should know was
initiated during the first half of the 20th Century as a means of
persecuting and 'controlling' blacks (marijuana) and Chinese (opium).

1. 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?

2. Is it not true that, far from protecting users from harm, banning a
drug harms them much more than would otherwise be the case because it
cuts them off from access to drugs of known potency and purity?

Weren't thousands of Americans poisoned or blinded by adulterated
alcohol during Prohibition.

Didn't the problems vanish when alcohol was legalized
again?

3. Doesn't drug prohibition cause street level drug
dealing?

Why would anyone buy drugs in the street if the corner store sells
them?

4. Is it not true that if drugs were legalized, the flow of funds to
terrorist groups would dry up?

How much money does Osama bin Laden make from booze and
tobacco?

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 the
prohibition of alcohol?

7. Is it not true that if drugs and prostitution were legalized, the
power of the Hells 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?

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.

Rather than protecting anyone, drug laws serve to provide highly
useful, functional and beneficial scapegoats.

They provide a ruling class with fig leaves to place over the
unsightly social ills that are endemic to the social system over which
they preside.

And they give the general public a focus for blame in which a chemical
'bogeyman,' or the 'deviants' who ingest it, are the root cause for a
wide array of complex social problems.

ALAN RANDELL

Victoria