MANY CRIMINALS DESERVE DEATH OR AT LEAST LIFE IN PRISON

They are the killers of our kids. That is what they are. So, why do we
not kill them back?

I am no huge fan of the CBC television. But if there is one thing the
Mother Corp that feeds off the public tit does well, it is digging
into stories until it goes well beyond the meat and into the bones. It
can be unbelievably talented at doing that, the journalists it sicks
on big stories are tenacious and talented and so are well informed
about what is going on. They did it late last week. I saw this show on
CBC Newsworld and it was about crack cocaine and its incredible hold
in Canada where it is a billion-dollar business that offers up people
as sacrifices.

And while I was watching this brilliantly put together piece of harsh
journalism, my mind wandered back to a cold day a few years ago when I
was invited to visit with a bunch of parents. We met in a board room
of a north Regina company, tucked into a strip mall near a grave yard.

The parents were around the table, and not one looked as if he or she
had a good night's sleep the night before. They were tired and their
eyes showed it. They all had jobs. They all had nightmares. The
nightmares were their kids. And the fuel for those nightmares was that
every one of those parents had children who were addicted to crystal
meth, another killer drug that is allowed to wander among us.

There was only one rule that day. I would not print the names of any
of the parents there.

I can remember sitting there, as a parent myself, thinking how
difficult and how courageous this was of these parents to have come to
me, a complete stranger, and spill the stories of the terror of their
lives. Their kids were slowly killing themselves on crystal meth, and
nobody was paying attention to them. I can remember driving away from
that two-hour session with tears welling up in my eyes.

I was a parent too. I had kids. They both would have ample opportunity
to try crystal meth, or crack cocaine, or whatever other drug was out
there that promised only a short ecstatic ride to death.

For years, the Saskatchewan Party had tried to push the topic into the
public spotlight. But not until the parents of kids came forward and
told their horrible stories did the provincial government catch on.
And, they did some stuff. They used advertising and they promised more
money would be devoted to fighting crystal meth and to places where
kids could go for treatment. This was good, albeit a small step in a
long journey. But it did not get to the root of the problem.

It is like cutting off the head of a weed, but leaving its roots to
remain entrenched and grow. The root of the drug problem is the
dealer. Get rid of him, it is over.

Despite the presumably best efforts of the NDP government, drug use
continues in this province. It is a billion-dollar industry in Canada
and according to the CBC show, the people at the top rarely get
caught. It is only the thousands below them who deal in drugs who get
caught.

And two things come from that. One is, the people who are caught are
swiftly replaced. Two is, the ones who are caught end up back on the
streets selling the drugs. And killing our kids.

No, neither one of my kids is hooked on drugs. And those who sit
behind the shield of their smugness saying it is only the children of
negligent parents who end up on drug rides to hell are not living in
the real world. Not true. I have met good parents who are solid
citizens totally involved in their family and community lives who have
children who have taken the ride down into the gutters of life.

Some of the kids end up with lives wrecked. Some of them end up
dead.

There is only one solution to all of this. Those who deal in drugs,
who sell them to our kids, who make them available to the children of
this country, should be sentenced to death, or at the very least, life
sentences with no parole. After all, by filling the kids of this
country with drugs, they are, in effect, sentencing many of them to
death as well. It's time to put a stop to all this carnage. Yes, it
is.